This article is for use only of students enrolled in GPS 520: Advanced Social Psychology for purposes associated with this course and may not be retained or further disseminated.
Leary, M. R., & Miller, R. S. (1986). Clinical inference. In M. R. Leary & R. S. Miller, Social Psychology and Dysfunctional Behavior: Origins, Diagnosis, and Treatment (pp. 122-146). New York: Springer-Verlag Inc
Imagine that you
learn of a 16-year-old girl who has begun inquiring "How many aspirin does
it takes to kill somebody?" She is newly pregnant and has been deserted by
her boyfriend, and is a member of a strict, authoritarian family in which the
father drinks heavily. She is not an attractive girl, but she is a solid
student. Is the girl really suicidal? Should she, or her entire family, be urged
to seek psychological treatment? If so, what diagnosis applies and what
treatment is appropriate? What criterion can gauge her progress, and when can
therapy be stopped?
Clinicians and
counselors are constantly asked to answer thorny questions like these, assessing
the behavior and circumstances of other people and judging whether change is
desirable or likely. In this, they are much like anyone else as they evaluate
and interpret the behavior, intentions, and personalities of those they meet.
The formal judgments of therapists usually have more impact than a layperson's
casual observations, however, and errors are less allowable. It is thus
particularly important to understand the person perception or interpersonal
judgments of clinicians and counselors, and an extensive body of social
psychological research is applicable here.
Unfortunately, the
overriding lesson of studies of interpersonal perception is that we are much
poorer judges of others than we believe ourselves to be. It has long been known,
for instance, that. we quickly form impressions of other people from only
limited information about them, and that, once formed, those impressions are
rather resistant to change. Early studies of person perception in general (Asch,
1946; Bruner & Tagiuri, 1954) and of therapists' judgments of clients in
particular (Meehl, 1960; Rubin & Shontz, 1960) showed that impressions were
rapidly formed and that the presentation of additional, even contradictory
information often did little to change them. In recent years, however, both
social and clinical psychologists have come to realize that the potential
problems with our social judgments go far beyond mere haste and resiliency. We
seem to select, weigh, and interpret information in ways that sustain our
existing beliefs, practically guaranteeing that, whatever we think, we will seem
to be right. We see patterns in behavior where no patterns exist, and we are
confident of factual beliefs that in truth are quite wrong. Moreover, our
behavior toward people is influenced by our beliefs about them, and even our
erroneous predictions about others can become self-fulfilling as we create in
others the responses we expect to find. In short, recent studies of social
cognition have compiled a catalogue of faults and biases in human judgment that
seem to be common, if not unavoidable, components of social thought (e.g.,
Nisbett & Ross, 1980).
For all of their
expertise, cleverness, and wisdom, professional psychologists appear to be prone
to some of these judgmental shortcomings, and in this chapter we examine those
potential problems that seem to us to be most relevant to clinical practice. Our
intent is not to belittle the processes of clinical inference, for its problems
are pitfalls for us all, scientists and practitioners alike (Mahoney, 1976). As
Wiggins (1981, p. 14) aptly noted, clinicians' errors are human errors, and we
may all profit by understanding them better:
Are the judgmental
shortcomings and biases of clinicians distinctively different from those of
other professional decision makers? That is, have these shortcomings been
demonstrated in groups of stockbrokers, physicians, intelligence analysts,
electrical engineers, etc.? (Answer: definitely yes.) . . . Given that all of
us-laypersons, clinicians and other professionals-are in the same boat, how
would you evaluate our characteristic judgmental and inferential strategies with
reference to the formal canons of scientific inference? (Answer: C-).
Our challenge, of
course, is to improve social judgment, not simply to criticize it, and the final
section of this chapter examines possible strategies for improving that C-
grade, focusing on potential means of improving human (e.g., clinical)
inference.
Statistical
Versus Intuitive Decision Making
The first
shortcoming we examine is also one of the best known. In deciding on diagnoses
or courses of treatments, clinicians must integrate information from a wide
variety of sources: psychological tests, assessment interviews, demographics,
self-reports, etc. This is often done by subjectively, impressionistically, and
intuitively combining the data to yield an overall judgment of (it is hoped)
high accuracy. Unfortunately, Meehl (1954) and a legion of followers (e.g.,
Goldberg, 1970; Mischel, 1968; Sawyer, 1966; Szucko & Kleinmuntz, 1981) have
persuasively argued that decision makers would do better by pulling out hand
calculators and combining their data in a mechanical, statistical way. In fact,
say these observers, clinicians' faith in their ability to accurately integrate
diverse date is misplaced, whatever their experience and expertise; a clerk with
a calculator can do better.
This assertion has
elicited a number of defensive reactions from wounded clinicians (e.g., Holt,
1970), but it surprises us that anyone would be seriously insulted by the
statistical advocates. No one has ever suggested that clinical expertise is not
essential to the selection of the data to be considered and the validation of
assessment techniques; the superiority of statistical techniques lies merely in
the combination of disparate, incomparable data, and computers are
unquestionably better at that than are people. The best way to integrate such
data is to construct a linear model, as in regression analysis, in which the
diverse sources of data are individually weighted so as to maximize the
correlation between the overall equation and the criterion one is trying to
predict. It sounds impersonal, but it works: "in the entire literature [of
nearly 50 years' time] there is no study that has shown informal judgment
procedures to be superior to predictions made from a simple linear statistical
model" (Wills, 1982, p. 9).
The distinction
between the expert selection of data and its statistical integration was clearly
illustrated by Einhorn (1972). He asked physicians to predict an outcome more
definitive than those usually faced by psychologists (i.e., death) by
interpreting biopsies of patients with Hodgkin's disease. The experts were
totally unable to accurately predict the survival time of the patients, but the
information selected for analysis by the doctors did predict survival time when
used in a linear regression model. Results like these, which also apply to
psychologists (e.g., Dawes, 1979), are so consistent that Wiggins (1981) noted
that "the original issue of clinical versus statistical prediction (should
multivariate input data be combined by a person or a computer?) now seems to
most of us a rather odd topic to occupy the attention of serious scientists for
25 years" (p. 14).
Still, many
clinicians remain reluctant to use statistical decision-making procedures, and
this hesitancy seems to be grounded in two separate concerns (cf. Dawes, 1979,
1982). First, statistical approaches appear to ignore the unique qualities of
individual clients, the idiosyncrasies that can only be appreciated by a human
judge. "Reducing people to numbers" seems distasteful, and clinicians
may be reluctant to forgo the fine-tuning of a diagnosis that seems to require a
professional's intuition. It is probably something of a professional conceit,
however, to assume that one's own subjective impressions should replace the
results of a standardized assessment of proven validity. Instead, one's
intuitive judgments should be added to the linear model to be combined
statistically with other, more impersonal data. Professional judgments can and
should be made, but the integration of those judgments with other disparate data
should still be done through some formal procedure.
This all sounds
quite complicated, and the time, equipment, and sophistication needed to do a
regression analysis have also been imposing barriers to the use of statistical
techniques. Although it is less exact, intuitive decision-making is certainly
simpler and quicker (Cantor, 1982). Remarkably, however, one need not do
anything too complicated to improve on mere intuition. Simply guessing at how
much each piece of data should be weighted does better than clinical intuition,
provided that each weight is in the right (positive or negative) direction
(Dawes, 1979). In fact, even treating all sources of data as equally
valuable-that is, not differentially weighting them at all- standardizing them,
and just adding them together works appreciably well (Dawes, 1982; Wainer,
1976). Sophistication is required in choosing the information one needs to know
to make a diagnosis or select a treatment, but once the data are in hand their
integration should be a simple mechanical task, not a test of professional
wisdom. As Dawes and Corrigan (1974, p. 105) suggested, "the whole trick is
to know what variables to look at and then to know how to add.
Caution in
trusting our intuitive decisions is also advisable in that we are often not
consciously aware of how we have been influenced by particular data. Information
that we think important may not have influenced us at all, whereas data we have
dismissed as trivial may have had a major impact.
The Limits of
Introspection
It seems plausible
to assume that we are usually aware of the manner in which certain information
about a person affects our subsequent judgments about him or her. Studies of
judgmental processes suggest, however, that we actually have quite poor insight
into the origins of our judgments and that we often do not know why we think the
way we do. For instance, Nisbett and his colleagues (Nisbett & Bellows,
1977; Nisbett & Wilson, 1977a, 1977b) have repeatedly demonstrated that
college students often overlook stimuli that are influencing them, often deny
that genuinely important stimuli had any impact at all, and often identify as
critical stimuli that did not influence them a bit.
In studies of this
sort, subjects are usually asked to form an impression of some target stimulus
as the available information about the target is systematically manipulated; as
they form their judgments, the subjects are asked to indicate how influential
various pieces of information are. For example, Nisbett and Bellows (1977) asked
their subjects to evaluate a lengthy job application that either described or
did not mention the applicant's attractiveness, intelligence, recent clumsiness,
car accident, and so forth. The subjects' perceptions of how these data affected
their judgments of the applicant were in most cases quite unrelated to each
datum's actual effects. The subjects simply did not know whence their judgments
came.
In another study,
Nisbett and Wilson (1977a) asked subjects to evaluate via videotaped interview a
foreign professor who was introduced either as a warm, likable fellow or as a
cold, autocratic martinet. The subjects reported their global liking for the
professor and specifically evaluated his appearance, mannerisms, and accent
(which, of course, were the same for all viewers). As one would expect, they
liked the "warm" professor much better than the "cold" one,
and those global evaluations affected their judgments of the target's
characteristics, which were seen as endearing with the warm version, irritating
with the cold. The subjects categorically denied that their (supposedly
objective?) ratings of the three attributes had been influenced by their liking
for the target, however, and some of them actually insisted that their
disapproval of his mannerisms had led to their disliking him-a complete reversal
of the true causal relationship! The subjects were apparently unable to
disentangle their specific ratings of the target from their global like or
dislike for him, but they nonetheless were completely certain that their
judgments were unbiased, impartial, and objective.
Nisbett and Wilson
(1977b) provided another particularly illuminating example of the limits of
introspection. One of their studies asked shoppers to evaluate four identical
pairs of nylon stockings and to pick the pair of the best quality. A serial
position effect emerged, with the stockings on the far right being preferred
over those on the far left by nearly a 4: 1 ratio. When asked to explain their
choice among equals, however, the shoppers conjured up imaginary differences in
materials and manufacture as the reasons for their right-sided preference.
Moreover, when specifically asked about a possible position effect, nearly all
of them completely dismissed it, thinking it a silly idea. These good people did
not know what had influenced their judgments and scoffed at one influential
factor when it was presented to them.
Clinicians
sometimes act the same way. Gauron and Dickinson (1966) asked psychiatrists to
make tentative diagnoses and to rate their confidence in those diagnoses as a
series of data were obtained about a client. A piece of information was
designated as important if it substantially influenced a subject's final
diagnosis or enhanced his confidence in his final judgment. The subjects' own
estimates of the importance of each datum were totally unrelated to its true
importance, however, and it again appeared that the subjects were largely
unaware of the factors that had actually caused them to make the decisions they
had made.
Findings like
these unfortunately suggest that clinicians' inferences may be routinely
affected by variables of which they are unaware, or worse, whose influence they
consciously deny. Like the participants in Nisbett and Wilson's (1977a) study,
for instance, clinicians seem to be influenced by their liking for a client.
Attractive, likable clients may receive more help and greater effort (Doherty,
1971; Fehrenbach & O'Leary, 1982) and be judged as progressing more
satisfactorily than less attractive clients (Brown, 1970; Shapiro, Struening,
Shapiro, & Barten, 1976). As another example, clinicians may be led by
clients' social class to interpret the same objective symptoms differently for
clients of different classes (Abramowitz & Dokecki, 1977; Routh & King,
1972). Similarly, it may be hard for clinicians to make judgments that do not
take a client's sex or race into account (cf. Zeldow, 1984).
In short, the
certainty with which we identify the sources of our interpersonal judgments is
often misplaced. We may feel objective and not be, and the reasons we announce
may not be real. Feeling deliberate and impartial does not make us so.
Personalistic
Biases in Judgment
A broad source of
data that usually has less impact on our judgments than it should is the
situational context in which a person behaves. We seem to be oriented toward
assessing and understanding others' unique personalities and that orientation
leads us to underestimate the extent to which others' behavior is influenced by
the constraints and demands of the surrounding situation. In fact, our judgments
are biased by a tendency to overestimate how much others' dispositions routinely
influence their behavior. Indeed, this personalistic bias is so pervasive and
robust that social psychologists have termed it the "fundamental
attribution error" (Ross, 1977).
Some examples are
in order here. In an early study of personalistic biases, Jones and Harris
(1967) presented undergraduates with debaters' speeches supporting or attacking
Fidel Castro. When the speeches were said to have been freely chosen by the
debaters, the students reasonably assumed that the advocated positions reflected
the speakers' private opinions. In another condition of the study, however,
Jones and Harris forewarned subjects the positions had been arbitrarily assigned
by the debate coach. Subjects in that condition generally ignored the fact that
the speakers had had no choice of what to say and continued to believe that the
advocated positions indicated the speakers' true beliefs.
In a similar
study, Napolitan & Goethals (1979) had undergraduates talk with a counselor
who behaved in a manner that was either warm and friendly or cool and aloof. The
subjects were informed that the counselor's style was either spontaneous and
genuine or prearranged and feigned for the purposes of the study. The subjects
apparently found it difficult to believe that a person acting friendly (or
unfriendly) wasn't really friendly (or unfriendly), however. They disregarded
the possibility that the counselor's behavior had been influenced by the role
she had been assigned and saw her behavior as a reflection of her personality in
every case.
These and other
studies (e.g., Ross, Amabile, & Steinmetz, 1977) demonstrate that we are
likely to overlook or discount even obvious situational explanations for others'
actions. "Behavior" seems to be synonymous with
"personality" whatever the circumstances. Still, studies with naive
undergraduates do not necessarily suggest that professional psychologists are
also prone to a personalistic bias, and one may wonder whether these findings
are generalizable to highly trained scientists.
Indeed they are.
In a content analysis of the first 6 months of the 1970 Psychological Abstracts,
Caplan and Nelson (1973) found that 82% of the research dealing with black
Americans implicitly interpreted their difficulties in terms of "personal
shortcomings," blaming blacks for their problems. Moreover, Batson, O'Quin,
and Pych (1982) have argued that trained helpers (e.g., clinicians and
counselors) are especially likely to infer that "a client's problem lies
with the client as a person even when it is really due to some aspect of the
client's situation" (p. 60). Not only do trained helpers clearly employ
more dispositional explanations for clients' problems than untrained observers
do (Batson, 1975; Batson & Marz, 1979; Pelton, 1982), but Batson et al. also
suggested that both the information available to helpers and their role as
helpers virtually guarantee that personalistic biases will occur.
As observers, for
instance, helpers' attention is focused on the client rather than the situation;
moreover, the client may be seen in a therapeutic setting far removed from his
or her normal environment. The client's dispositions are thus much more salient
than the situational context, and because we tend to attribute causation to
whatever seems salient (Storms, 1973; Taylor & Fiske, 1978), the person gets
blamed. As helpers, clinicians and counselors are expected to help, and most of
their resources are oriented toward changing the client, not the situation (cf.
Batson, Jones, & Cochran, 1979). In addition, the training they receive may
set the expectation that the person is the problem (Snyder, 1977). In short, it
seems that merely being a helpful observer of other people's problems fosters a
personalistic bias; undergraduates asked simply to play the role of peer
counselor in mock counseling sessions adopt a more dispositional point of view
than their "clients" do (Snyder, Shenkel, & Schmidt, 1976).
A tendency to
discount situational determinants of clients' behavior may not always mean that
clinicians' judgments are actually wrong (Batson et al., 1982; Harvey, Town,
& Yarkin, 1981). However, there are two other potentially troubling sequelae
of personalistic biases that should not be overlooked. First, by focusing on
clients' personalities, clinicians adopt a perspective that differs from that of
their clients, who are likely to attend to the situation surrounding them (Jones
& Nisbett, 1971; Storms, 1973). This actor-observer discrepancy is
predictable, but it may occasionally engender some dispute (see chapter 7).
More treacherous
is the possibility that personalistic biases lead to undeservedly negative
perceptions of clients. To the extent that clients are held personally, even
solely, responsible for their various dysfunctions while the contributions of
adverse situations are overlooked, they appear to be even more incapable than
they really are. Wills (1978) reviewed several studies that found that trained
helpers' perceptions of their clients are more negative and damning than those
of lay observers or the clients themselves (even when the clients were normal!).
Moreover, the more experienced a therapist is, the more negative his or her
judgments are likely to be (Fehrenbach & O'Leary, 1982; Wills, 1978). Other
factors probably contribute to these harsh perceptions-for instance,
dissimilarities between therapist and client and exposure to the worst of a
client's behavior-but personalistic biases are almost certainly involved (Wills,
1978).
It is thus often
disadvantageous to underestimate, however unwittingly, situational determinants
of a client's distress. Not only may important influences be overlooked, but
unjustified blaming of the client may result. Personalistic biases are just one
example, however, of the manner in which unspoken assumptions, perceptual
perspectives, and preconceptions about the nature of a client's problems
influence and direct a helper's interpretation of events.
The Constraints
of Preconceptions
Thus far we have
asserted that we should not trust our intuitions when integrating diverse data,
that our decisions are often influenced by factors of which we are unaware, and
that our person-centered perspectives often ignore how much others' behavior is
influenced by situational pressure. Each of these concerns is important, but
they all speak to the manner in which we form our tentative judgments and
hypotheses. What happens once we have some initial judgments in mind?
This is a vital
question that will occupy us for much of the remainder of this chapter, As we
will see, the manner in which we are influenced by preconceptions and tentative
hypotheses is a key concern because we interpret events in ways that are likely
to support and sustain our preconceptions, whatever they are. Once we form a
judgment, or adopt a particular theoretical perspective, our evaluation of
subsequent data no longer seems to be impartial and detached. Instead, our
perceptions of the world are molded and shaped to fit our existing beliefs
(instead of the other way around).
In a striking
demonstration of this process, Lord, Ross, and Lepper (1979) found groups of
Stanford undergraduates who were either in favor of the death penalty (believing
that it deterred crime) or opposed to it (thinking it ineffective). Lord et al.
presented both groups with two research studies, one that suggested that capital
punishment was a deterrent and another that showed it was not. In addition, the
two studies employed different methodologies: Each subject found that one study
used a cross-sectional design, the other a longitudinal technique, but each
design supported the death penalty for half the subjects and opposed it for the
other half. Subjects were thus confronted with mixed evidence that only partly
supported their existing beliefs and logically cast doubts on the certainty of
their positions. Did they accept the mixed data and moderate their stances?
Hardly. They praised and accepted the study that supported their beliefs, but
criticized and rejected the study that opposed their positions. This meant that
when the crosssectional design confirmed their beliefs it was judged to be the
only reasonable way to study the issue, and when the longitudinal design
supported them, it seemed to be the only sensible approach. Evidence with which
they agreed was accepted at face value, but disconfirming data were severely
criticized. The remarkable end result was that when the two opposing groups were
given identical mixed information they each became more certain that they were
right.
Our preconceptions
clearly control our interpretations of incoming information, and other
fascinating examples abound. Carreta and Moreland (1982) reminded us that during
the U.S. Senate Watergate hearings in 1973, supporters of President Nixon were
confronted with daily headlines that increasingly implicated Nixon in criminal
activities. Most people who had voted for Nixon were largely unaffected by the
bad news, however. Unlike McGovern supporters, whose attitudes toward Nixon
became less and less favorable, believers in Nixon maintained their liking for
him; they dismissed the headlines as liberal slander and shrugged off the
burglaries as "politics as usual." Information that contradicted their
beliefs was not believed.
One need not
oppose a person's deeply held beliefs to show that preconceptions control
interpretations, however. Even simple presuppositions structure our perceptions
and judgments. For instance, Snyder and Frankel (1976) showed Dartmouth
undergraduates a silent videotape of a woman being interviewed and told some of
them that the conversation concerned sex, others that it pertained to politics.
Those watching the "sex" interview perceived the woman to be
considerably more anxious and ill at ease than those watching the
"politics" interview, although everyone, of course, saw the same tape.
Finally, social
psychological research suggests that preconceptions control interpretations in
subtle ways; we don't make egregious errors that are easily noticed, but we make
errors nonetheless. For instance, Darley and Gross (1983) showed Princeton
undergraduates one of two videotapes that provided information about the social
class of a young girl named "Hannah. " Some subjects found that Hannah
was rather poor, playing in a paved, deteriorating schoolyard and returning to a
dingy, small home, whereas others found Hannah to be fairly well off, playing in
expansive, grassy fields and living in a lovely house. On the basis of these
demographic data alone, the subjects did not blindly assume that the upper-class
target was doing better in school; they avoided such blatant stereotyping and
guessed Hannah's academic achievement to be about average, regardless of her
social class. However, when Darley and Gross then showed subjects an ambiguous
tape of Hannah taking an aptitude test, her social status clearly affected their
judgments (and in a manner of which they seemed to be totally unaware). The tape
showed Hannah performing inconsistently, correctly answering some difficult
questions but blowing some easy ones. All subjects saw the same tape, but they
interpreted it very differently depending upon their beliefs about her social
class. Subjects who thought Hannah was poor cited her many mistakes and judged
her as performing below her average fourthgrade level; subjects who considered
her well-to-do noted her many successes and rated her as better than average.
These perceivers, then, did not leap to judgments about Hannah on the basis of
stereotypes alone (thus making errors that might be easily noticed). They
reserved judgment until they had more data but then interpreted her actions in a
biased manner that was determined by their stereotypes. We can imagine the
confidence they felt in their judgments, never realizing that other people with
different preconceptions were witnessing the same test results and reaching
completely contradictory conclusions (cf. Vallone, Ross, & Lepper, 1985).
Professionals'
Preconceptions
As unlikely or
threatening as it may seem, the preconceptions of scientists and therapists bias
their judgments in just the same way (Mahoney, 1977). In particular, several
studies show that clinicians' or counselors' theoretical orientations, their
advance knowledge about a client, or even their knowledge of others' judgments
influence the interpretations they form. In a renowned study, for example,
Temerlin (1968) asked psychiatrists, clinical psychologists, and clinical
graduate students to listen to a taped interview with a "prospective
patient." Just before the tape was played, a prestigious, well-respected
colleague mentioned either that the "patient" was "a very rare
person, a perfectly healthy man," or interesting because he "looks
neurotic, but actually is quite psychotic." When "healthy" was
suggested to the therapists, they unanimously agreed that the target showed no
signs of disturbance. By contrast, when disorder was suggested, 92% of the
subjects diagnosed some dysfunction-60% of the psychiatrists considered him
psychotic-although, again, all subjects had heard the same interview.
Clinical influence
appears to be so complex a process (Cantor, 1982) that it is possible for
professionals to disagree like this and never realize it. Indeed, the
professional training a therapist receives may be a particularly important 11
preconception" that leads him or her to recognize different symptoms and to
make different diagnoses (of the same behavior) than a colleague with another
theoretical bent. For instance, Langer and Abelson (1974) asked both
behaviorally oriented and psychodynamically oriented clinicians to evaluate a
videotaped interview of a man who was described as either a "patient"
or a "job applicant." Regardless of his label, the behaviorists found
him to be fairly well adjusted, but the psychodynamicists considered the
"patient" more disturbed than the "job seeker." Although
reacting to the "patient" label this way is not necessarily
unreasonable (Davis, 1979), a further study found that the psychodynamicists
also believed the "patient's" problems to be more dispositional than
the behaviorists did (Snyder, 1977). The biasing effects of professional
orientation were also demonstrated by Allyon, Haughton, and Hughes (1965), who
taught a schizophrenic, institutionalized for 20 years, to carry a broom by
using cigarettes as reinforcements. They asked a psychoanalyst to evaluate her
and were told that the broom was "(1) a child that gives her love and she
gives him in return her devotion; (2) a phallic symbol, [or] (3) the sceptre of
an omnipotent queen" (p. 3).
Thus, there seems
to be little doubt that a therapist's professional perspective influences his or
her interpretations of behavior (see also Bishop & Richards, 1984). Indeed,
one reading of this literature suggests that the variability in clinical
judgment from one observer to the next implies that "such judgments may be
less informative about the patients they are meant to describe than about the
clinician who makes them" (Grosz & Grossman, 1964, p. 112). Whatever
the case, there are two further examples of the judgmental effects of
preconceptions that deserve attention.
Anchoring
Preconceptions can
function as cognitive "anchors," initial estimates that exert a
disproportionate influence on final judgments. Anchoring effects occur when
initial impressions are not thoroughly revised to accommodate new information;
the result is that different preconceptions yield different judgments that
remain biased toward the original estimates (Tversky & Kahneman, 1974). In
one demonstration of this effect, subjects were provided a random estimate of
some quantity (e.g., the percentage of African countries in the United Nations)
by spinning a roulette wheel. When they were then asked to revise that
"estimate" upward or downward to reflect the true value, subjects
seemed reluctant to change that wholly arbitrary starting point, and their final
estimates reflected the impact of the anchor. For instance, subjects starting
with an "estimate" of 10% would revise upward to only 25%, whereas
those starting with 65% would revise downward to only 45%; the difference in the
two final judgments reflects an anchoring effect (Tversky & Kahneman, 1974).
Similar results
have been obtained with psychologists, psychiatrists, and social workers by
Friedlander and Stockman (1983). They asked their subjects to evaluate a case of
anorexia nervosa by successively reading five detailed interviews, which varied
according to when indications of pathology appeared in the sequence of
information. Substantial anchoring occurred in that late-appearing pathology had
less impact on clinical judgment; when the anorexia was mentioned early in the
sequence of information the case was viewed as significantly more serious,
although by the end of the study all subjects had the same body of information
in hand (cf. Jones, Rock, Shaver, Goethals, & Ward, 1968). In fact,
experienced counselors and clinicians may be especially likely to settle on a
diagnosis prematurely (Friedlander & Phillips, 1984; Hirsch & Stone,
1983; Houts & Galante, 1985), although all of us, once we have made a
diagnosis, tend not to notice new symptoms that are inconsistent with that
diagnosis (Arkes & Harkness, 1980).
In short, even if
we have no biasing preconceptions about a case, the initial impressions we form
as information is received often carry considerably more weight than they
deserve. Whether they are preconceptions or first impressions, we are reluctant
to revise our opinions when new data become available. Indeed, as we will soon
discover, we may even cling to beliefs that can be shown to have no basis
whatsoever. Before we consider belief perseverance, however, there is one more
important example of the constraints of preconceptions to address.
Labeling
When a diagnosis
or any other widely understood label is attached to dysfunctional behavior, it
can become a public preconception that influences the subsequent judgments of an
entire professional community. Labels can channel the perceptions and
interpretations of observers just as private preconceptions do, but they can
have even greater impact: Because they are consensually shared, many observers
are affected. Indeed, some sociologists feel that the societal stigmatization
that accompanies the labeling of abnormal behavior perpetuates deviancy that
would otherwise be transitory (e.g., Scheff, 1975). This "labeling theory
of mental illness" suggests that labels often set in motion events that
exacerbate, not minimize, deviancy and that "helpers who label people may
often create as much harm as good by the very process of practicing their
trade" (Rappaport & Cleary, 1980, p. 77).
The concept that
labeling creates deviancy has been roundly criticized (e.g., Gove, 1975), but it
does have the value of alerting us to the deleterious effects that labels can
have. Labels are particularly consequential in our educational systems, for
example, where they are widely used. Fogel and Nelson (1983) provided teachers
with a diagnostic label for a special education student and then showed them a
videotape-of the child's behavior. The teachers' behavioral observations were
not differentially affected by different labels, but their subjective
evaluations of those behaviors were; the more severe the label, the more
problematic the behavior seemed to be. Similarly, when Burdg and Graham (1984)
informed some of their subjects that preschoolers whose intelligence they would
test were "developmentally delayed, " the children received lower
ratings and actually got lower test scores than other children who had been
labeled as "normal." The "delayed" label affected not only
the examiners' judgments but, apparently, their behavior as well, since they
failed to elicit optimal performance from the children who had been randomly
assigned the pejorative label. Perhaps labels can create ostensible dysfunction
that would otherwise not exist.
Clinicians and
counselors use labels, too, and in a famous (or infamous) study, Rosenhan (1973)
examined the results of labeling sane people as schizophrenic. He encouraged
eight normal people to report to mental institutions on both the East and West
Coasts complaining of vague auditory hallucinations. All but one of them were
diagnosed as schizophrenic and admitted to psychiatric wards, but once this was
done they dropped all pretense of abnormality and tried to convince the staff
that their sanity had returned. This proved hard to do. With a variety of
anecdotal observations Rosenhan argued that "a psychiatric label has a life
and influence of its own" (p. 253); once the pseudopatients were labeled
schizophrenic, much of what they did, however normal, seemed indicative of
schizophrenia. Average life histories were seen as pathogenic, ordinary behavior
appeared maladjusted, and the only observers who seemed able to see through the
ruse were other (real) patients. The pseudopatients were eventually released
after stays that averaged 19 days, but their labels pursued them home; with the
one exception, all of them were still presumed to have schizophrenia "in
remission."
Rosenhan's
suggestion that modern psychiatry is unable to distinguish sanity from insanity
has been rejected by observers who argue that he tested no such thing (Farber,
1975; Millon, 1975; Spitzer, 1975; Weiner, 1975). Still, his investigation
stands as a provocative reminder that we often see what we expect to see.
Expectations, whether they be "preconceptions," "first
impressions, " or "labels," exert powerful channeling effects on
our interpretation and judgment of others' behavior. Moreover, such
preconceptions are not easily changed. Even when we are shown that the evidence
we used to establish a belief is completely false, the groundless belief may
still persist.
Belief
Perseverance
We have already
seen that once we form initial judgments, evidence that supports those beliefs
is readily accepted whereas evidence that opposes those beliefs is denigrated
(e.g., Lord et al., 1979). Another remarkable illustration of this tendency
emerges from studies of belief perseverance that examine the manner in which
people sometimes cling to an impression even "when the evidential basis for
such a position is completely invalidated" (Jelalian & Miller, 1984, p.
29). In studies of this sort, subjects are usually provided information that
straightforwardly leads to a particular judgment about themselves or others;
they are allowed to formulate those judgments but are then shown that the
original information was bogus and fictitious and utterly without diagnostic
value. The common result is that the judgments persist although they are now
without foundation.
The first such
study was particularly relevant to social psychologists who deceive research
participants and depend on a postexperimental debriefing to erase the subjects'
misconceptions. Ross, Lepper, and Hubbard (1975) asked their undergraduate
subjects to distinguish between authentic and fake suicide notes and provided
them false feedback indicating that they had done very well, very poorly, or
about average. Once this was done, however, the subjects were informed that the
feedback was fake; they were assured it had nothing to do with them and were
shown the experimenter's instruction sheet that had randomly assigned them to
one of the three groups. The subjects were then asked to estimate how well they
had actually done on the task and to predict their future performance on similar
tasks.
Although the
subjects understood that their feedback was randomly assigned to them, the
judgments they had formed with that feedback tended to persist. Logically, none
of the subjects had any valid knowledge whatsoever about their actual abilities,
but the "success" subjects continued to believe that they were pretty
good, the "average" group considered themselves mediocre, and the
"failure" subjects felt that they were not particularly good at the
task. Moreover, a second study by Ross et al. showed that belief perseverance
also influenced observers who watched the procedure, hearing the false feedback
and subsequent debriefing; they, too, continued to judge "successful"
actors as much better at the task than their "failing" counterparts.
Indeed, it was even harder to disabuse observers of their groundless judgments.
Ross et al. found that it was possible to correct most of the belief
perseverance of the actors by engaging them in an extensive discussion of the
perseverance phenomenon and the harm it can do, but observers were largely
unaffected by even this elaborate exposition. Once they had formed an impression
of the actors-even one based on demonstrably fictitious information-it was
remarkably resistant to change.
These findings are
pertinent to cases like one recently in the news in which a schoolteacher was
falsely accused (as it turned out) of child sexual abuse by a student bearing a
grudge. We now know that the teacher is totally innocent, but having once
associated him with a heinous crime, do we really like and trust him as much as
we did before the incident? Erroneous impressions can persevere, and Wegner,
Wenzlaff, Kerker, and Beattie (198 1) have shown that innuendo can have the same
lasting impact on our judgments of others that factual accusations do. Even
headlines that exonerate the innocent (e.g., "Andrew Winters Not Connected
to Bank Embezzlement") produce negative impressions of those involved, and
the perseverance phenomenon suggests that those impressions, although inaccurate
and unjustified, change only with difficulty.
Why do beliefs
persevere when the evidence that supports them is discredited? Ross et al.
(1975) speculated that, once a person creates a plausible rationale for why he
or she is good at evaluating suicide notes, for instance, the rationale may
still seem reasonable and likely even when the information on which it was based
is overturned. Ross, Lepper, Strack, and Steinmetz (1977) found that providing
explanations for hypothetical events made them seem much more likely to occur,
and, using the belief perseverance paradigm, Anderson, Lepper, and Ross (1980)
showed that inventing explanations for one's beliefs made them much more
resistant to evidential discrediting. Anderson et al. provided subjects case
histories that suggested that risk taking made one either a good or bad
firefighter, and then asked half of the subjects to explain why this should be
so. When they then learned that the case histories were totally fictitious,
subjects who had engaged in the causal processing exhibited considerably more
belief perseverance than those who had not; indeed, those who had invented a
theory to explain their beliefs were virtually unaffected by learning that the
data base for their theory was worthless. To some degree, then, belief
perseverance is based on the ease with which causal explanations spring to mind
(Anderson, 1983b; Anderson, New, & Speer, 1985). Whatever explanations are
most salient or available in our memories are likely to seem the most plausible,
even when there is no valid basis for them.
Studies of belief
perseverance do not deny that beliefs often change in response to new evidence.
These studies do indicate, however, that change occurs grudgingly and that
overwhelming evidence will often be required to change beliefs that were quickly
formed (Jelalian & Miller, 1984). In clinical inference, data about clients
are received over a period of time, the validity of a client's self-report is
sometimes uncertain, and judgment involves constant causal analyses and
explanations. As a result, the unwarranted perseverance of outdated hypotheses
is always a possibility. When new, reliable evidence contradicts a clinician's
working hypothesis and the hypothesis should be revised, it may still be hard to
let go of the idea. Coles (1973) described Sigmund Freud's analysis of Leonardo
da Vinci's life and art based on Leonardo's early memory of a
"vulture" coming down to him in his cradle and opening his mouth with
its tail. Vultures were symbols for mothers in ancient Egypt and, with this
revelation in hand, Freud showed how only a man with Leonardo's special
relationship with his mother could have created the Mona Lisa. Unfortunately,
Freud was misled by a bad translation of Leonardo's notes; what Freud assumed
was a vulture was actually a kite. With the basis for Freud's analysis
discredited, did he revise his explanation of Leonardo's behavior? Of course
not.
Perseverance
phenomena are thus found outside as well as within the laboratory (Jelalian
& Miller, 1984; Jennings, Lepper, & Ross, 1981), and those whose
profession it is to explain and judge others' behavior should beware. This is
doubly true, in fact, when the judge is able to select what data are to be
considered; there is always the possibility that we not only value, but
preferentially seek out, information that supports our existing beliefs.
The
Confirmatory Bias
As they engage in
counseling and psychotherapy, clinicians and counselors are not simply the
passive recipients of whatever information their clients wish to divulge.
Rather, they actively seek certain information, integrate that information to
form ideas about the client and his or her dysfunction, and seek to test their
hunches by gathering yet more information. Unfortunately, research on social
inference suggests that, once initial impressions are formed, it is difficult
for people to test the accuracy of those inferences in an unbiased fashion.
Clinicians' and counselors' efforts to test their clinical intuitions can lead
to erroneous conclusions. For instance, Snyder (1981) and his colleagues have
repeatedly shown that undergraduate subjects, when asked to determine whether a
belief about another person is true or false, are more likely to pursue
information that will confirm the belief than to inquire after data that will
prove it wrong. They seem to employ a one-sided strategy of seeking only
instances that support their hypotheses instead of evenhandedly seeking
instances that both do and do not fit them. Thus, Snyder found that people are
biased toward confirming their assumptions about others and, as a consequence,
rarely obtain impartial, representative information about them.
For instance,
Snyder and Swann (1978a) invited half of their subjects to determine whether a
person they would soon interview was an introvert; other subjects were asked to
assess the person's extraversion. All the subjects were then provided a list of
"interview topic" questions with which to conduct the interview. The
questions were either neutral (e.g., "What are the good and bad points of
acting friendly and open?") or biased toward eliciting introverted (e.g.,
"What do you dislike about loud parties?") or extraverted (e.g.,
"What do you do when you want to liven things up at a party?")
responses. In general, the subjects selected questions that were likely to
elicit evidence in support of their preconceptions about the person. The two
groups of subjects thus adopted two very different lines of investigation, with
each group ensuring that their targets would report many of the behaviors they
expected to find. Indeed, Snyder and Swann found that the interviews were so
biased that judges listening to audiotapes of the interactions actually believed
the targets to be fairly introverted or extraverted, depending on the
interviewers' respective preconceptions.
An impersonal
example may help the reader appreciate how biased such confirmatory -hypothesis
testing can be. Suppose you are asked to determine the numerical rule we have in
mind that explains this sequence of numbers: 2, 4, 6 (Wason, 1960). If you are
allowed to generate as many series of three numbers as you like to test your
understanding of our rule, being told each time whether your examples do or do
not fit the rule, how would you proceed? In our experience with hundreds of
students, we have found, like Wason (1960), that nearly everyone tests only
numbers that fit their hypotheses; virtually no one tests possibilities that
would prove them wrong. If they guess the rule is "all even numbers"
they try 8, 10, 12 (which fits our rule); if they believe the rule is
"increments of two" they try 1, 3, 5 (which also fits our rule). Very
few explore a possibility that would negate their hypotheses, like -3, 0, 147,
(it, too, fits our rule!), and by seeking only confirming instances the vast
majority convince themselves of an incorrect belief. Few persist long enough to
uncover the actual rule, "three ascending numbers " "
Importantly,
Snyder and White (1981) found that people recognize the value of disconfirming
evidence but are generally just unwilling to pursue it. Snyder and White showed
that when subjects were asked to determine if a person was not an introvert (or
extravert), they sought disconfirming data with the same single-mindedness with
which they usually pursue confirming instances. Still, confirmatory hypothesis
testing appears to be the norm. Snyder and Swann (1978a) found that subjects
continued to use confirmatory strategies even when they knew the hypothesis they
were testing was rather unlikely to be true, and again when they were given a
$25 incentive for accuracy. And even when subjects were given competing
hypotheses, being asked to determine whether a person was "more like an
extravert or more like an introvert," they chose one possibility and tried
to confirm it instead of adequately testing both hypotheses (Snyder & Swann,
1978b).
Do similar biases
affect clinicians and counselors? To the extent that they do, psychological
professionals may occasionally convince themselves of hypotheses about clients
that are simply untrue. Snyder (1981) suggested, for example, that:
the psychiatrist
who believes (erroneously) that adult gay males had bad childhood relationships
with their mothers may meticulously probe for recalled (or fabricated) signs of
tensions between their gay clients and their mothers, but neglect to so
carefully interrogate their heterosexual clients about their maternal
relationships. (p. 294)
Such a practice
would no doubt confirm the clinician's expectation, since nearly everyone could
report significant conflict with his or her parents (and spouse, and children,
and colleagues) if asked (Renaud & Estess, 1961).
In fact, several
studies have examined clinicians' hypothesis-testing strategies, and when
Snyder's (1981) method of asking subjects to choose their questions from a
preset list is employed, even experienced professionals often lapse into a
confirmatory approach (e.g., Dallas & Baron, 1985). When they are allowed to
construct their own questions, however, the clinicians usually adopt a more
evenhanded strategy, sampling both confirming and disconfirming data (Dallas
& Baron, 1985; Strohmer & Chiodo, 1984; Strohmer & Newman, 1983).
Overall, the less structured an interview situation is, the less likely
confirmatory bias appears to be (Clark & Taylor, 1983; Trope & Bassok,
1982).
Thus, the
confirmatory bias may play only a minimal role in clinical inference, but no one
suggests that it should be casually dismissed; observers unanimously warn that,
without a conscious effort to test one's assumptions in an unbiased manner,
confirmatory tendencies can emerge (Dallas & Baron, 1985; Strohmer &
Chiodo, 1984).
Illusory
Correlations
We have seen that
our preconceptions lead us to preferentially accept and, occasionally, seek out
data that support our assumptions. A final example of the impact of
preconceptions on judgment involves the tendency to perceive plausible
associations between events that are in fact unrelated, or are related in the
direction opposite to that we detect. These fictional associations are
"illusory correlations" (Chapman & Chapman, 1967), and they have
been widely observed in clinical judgment.
-In a famous
series of studies, Chapman and Chapman (1967, 1969) demonstrated that practicing
clinicians often report noticing (and basing judgments on) associations between
clients' responses to projective tests and their symptoms that have no empirical
basis whatsoever. On the Draw-A-Person test, for instance, clinicians report
that muscular drawings are associated with concern over one's masculinity, and
unusual eyes are linked to suspicion of others; on the Rorschach, they note that
various anal and feminine responses are associated with homosexuality. In
reality, such associations do not exist, and the Chapmans were able to show that
naive undergraduates, given projective data in which these various responses
were randomly paired with the various symptoms, nevertheless reported the same
plausible but fictitious correlations the clinicians say they see. Moreover, the
Chapmans (1969) found that both clinicians and naive subjects generally failed
to notice the real patterns in the Rorschach that link homosexuality to less
stereotypical responses (e.g., seeing monsters on Card IV).
Not only are
actual correlations overlooked, but subjects' erroneous perceptions of illusory
correlations are often remarkably persistent. Chapman and Chapman (1967) built a
huge negative correlation between symptoms and stereotypical projective
responses into the data subjects were given and found that the subjects still
insisted that the symptoms and responses were positively related (although the
association between them did not seem as strong). Golding and Rorer (1972)
repeatedly gave subjects an individual Rorschach response, asked them to predict
what symptom would be associated with it, and then revealed the actual symptom,
so that subjects received immediate feedback about the accuracy of their
assumptions as they studied the data; strong illusory correlations were still
obtained. Waller and Keeley (1978) went so far as to provide subjects with
elaborate explanations of illusory correlation, complete with practice sessions
in which true positive and negative correlations were demonstrated, but the
subjects still reported patterns in Draw-A-Person data that were illusory (cf.
Mowrey, Doherty, & Keeley, 1979; Starr & Katkin, 1969).
Results like these
are certainly not unique to clinical judgments (e.g., Jennings, Amabile, &
Ross, 1982). Hamilton (1981) has persuasively argued, for instance, that
illusory correlations help perpetuate erroneous cultural stereotypes (e.g.,
"All those minorities do is collect welfare"). It simply appears that
accurate assessment of covariation between events is much more complex than most
people realize, necessitating consideration of far more than just the frequency
with which the events jointly occur (Crocker, 1981; Nisbett & Ross, 1980).
The difficulty of
these judgments allows peoples' expectations and preconceptions to have as much,
if not more, influence on their judgments as do the objective data they face
(Alloy & Tabachnik, 1984; Kayne & Alloy, in press). People's
preconceptions can influence what they think they see in a set of data, and
those preconceptions often "flourish in the face of evidence that would
create grave doubts in any unbiased observer-certainly in any unbiased observer
who owned a calculator, an introductory statistics text, and some conventional
knowledge about how to use them" (Jennings et al., 1982, p. 227).
Overconfidence
As clinicians and
counselors form their complex judgments, their tentative evaluations gradually
become more certain, and they feel more sure those evaluations are correct.
However, like most people, they are probably more sure of themselves than they
should be. People are generally overconfident that their beliefs are correct,
thinking themselves right more often than they really are. Perhaps this is not
surprising, given that biased interpretations, confirmatory hypothesis testing,
and illusory correlations all combine to shield them from facts that would
disconfirm their beliefs. There are, however, a handful of processes that we
have not yet mentioned that contribute further to people's misplaced certainty,
and in this section we consider additional reasons why we are often more sure of
ourselves than is warranted.
First, some
examples of overconfidence: Fischhoff, Slovic, and Lichtenstein (1977) have
shown that when answering factual general-knowledge questions college students
are wrong more often than they think. Fischhoff et al. confronted subjects with
a wide variety of questions such as "Absinthe is (a) a liqueur or (b) a
precious stone," and "Which magazine had the largest circulation in
1970, Playboy or Time?" and asked them to select an answer and to indicate
how certain they were of their answers. The results showed that the subjects
were consistently overconfident, choosing fewer correct answers than they had
estimated they would. Moreover, they were sure enough of many of their wrong
answers to wager money on them; they were poor bettors indeed, because they
missed about I of every 8 questions they gave 50: 1 odds were correct!
Oskamp (1965)
demonstrated the same phenomenon among clinical psychologists: He provided his
professional subjects with a case study broken into four segments and asked them
to predict the characteristics and behavior of the client, and to rate their
confidence in their judgments, after each segment. The clinicians' predictive
accuracy quickly reached a maximum, but as they read more of the case study
their confidence in their judgments continued to increase. Ultimately, with the
entire case study in hand, the subjects felt that 53% of their judgments were
likely to be correct, but only 28% actually were. The clinicians were thus
overconfident, and Oskamp concluded that "a psychologist's increasing
feelings of confidence as he works through a case are not a sure sign of
increasing accuracy for his conclusions" (p. 265).
Along with the
influence of our preconceptions on our selection and interpretation of data,
what can explain such overconfidence? We can identify four factors.
Hindsight and
the "I-Knew-It-All-Along" Effect
One way we can
feel as if we know more than we do is to overestimate how smart we used to be.
It is difficult for people not to let their current knowledge of events
contaminate their recollections of their past knowledge, so that they
consistently remember themselves as smarter and less fallible than they really
were. Knowing how things have turned out leads most of us to ,,remember"
that the eventual outcome seemed obvious to us all along; although we could not
have predicted the outcome we nevertheless feel that we "knew it all
along" (Wood, 1978).
Many readers are
familiar with this tendency in players of Trivial Pursuit; someone may come up
with several answers to a question that are nowhere near correct, but still
exclaim when the right answer is announced, "Oh, I knew that!" Several
more formal demonstrations of this phenomenon have been conducted by Fischhoff
(1975, 1977) and his colleagues. For instance, Fischhoff and Beyth (1975) asked
subjects on the eve of President Nixon's 1972 trip to China to estimate how
likely various results of the trip were. After the trip, the subjects were asked
to recall their predictions, but they did not do particularly well. They
remembered forecasting those events that did occur as being more probable than
they had really seemed to them at the time, and similarly they believed that
those events that did not transpire had never seemed very likely.
Hindsight, then,
clearly distorts our judgments of what we used to think and know, generally
leaving us with the impression that we were (and are) more knowledgeable than we
really were. This hindsight bias, or the "I-knew-it-all-along" effect,
has now been demonstrated in several studies (Goggin & Range, 1985; Leary,
1981, 1982; Slovic & Fischhoff, 1977; Wood, 1978), and it apparently is not
easy to avoid; Fischhoff (1977) found that forewarning subjects by telling them
about the bias did not help them correct their judgments.
Importantly, the
bias affects clinicians. Using a sample of clinical psychology interns and
psychiatrists, Hood (1970) found that knowledge of a client's later suicide
distorted the clinicians' judgments of the suicidal intent evident in a
description of the case. Knowing how things turned out, they were sure they
could have predicted them all along. Thus, with the hindsight bias in place,
clinical inference may seem much less difficult than it really is; no matter
what people do, we may feel that their actions are not surprising and that our
ability to judge others is sound.
Reconstructive
Memory
Hindsight studies
suggest that our memories of what we used to know are often faulty. Indeed,
rather than being faithful reproductions of actual past events, many of our
memories are "reconstructive." In other words, we often selectively
misremember certain events, invent details, and fill in gaps, revising our
recollections to produce seamless memories that fit our current circumstances
(Loftus & Loftus, 1980). To the extent that we constantly edit our pasts to
fit our presents, we may produce selective histories that make us seem much more
clever, intuitive, and knowledgeable than we really are.
For example, past
complexities may be remembered as obvious simplicities. Snyder and Uranowitz
(1978) provided their subjects an extensive biography of a woman named
"Betty K. " and then told them a week later either that Betty was a
lesbian or that she was a heterosexual (or her sexual preference was not
mentioned). The subjects' memories for the events of Betty's life were
demonstrably affected by their current beliefs about her sexual orientation:
Those who thought she was heterosexual remembered that she had dated often in
high school, for instance, whereas those who considered her homosexual
remembered that she had not had a steady boyfriend (both of which were true).
The subjects literally found it hard to remember those facts that did not fit
their current impressions.
Our selective
memories also lead us to test our current beliefs in a biased fashion so that,
again, we find support for them. Two days after reading about "Jane,"
Snyder and Cantor's (1979) subjects were asked to evaluate her for a job either
as a librarian or as a salesperson. Remembering her introverted behaviors, half
the subjects thought she would make a great librarian, whereas the other
subjects, recalling her extraverted actions. thought she would be good in sales.
In addition, each group of subjects considered her rather unsuited for the job
for which the other group was recommending her.
Such
reconstructive memory can lead to revisions of our personal histories as well.
Conway and Ross (1984) showed that, in evaluating the success of a study-skills
program, subjects remembered themselves as having started the program with
poorer skills than they had really had. They also reported greater improvement
in their skills than did a waiting-list control group, but their actual
performances did not differ. In short, the subjects believed that the skills
program had been quite effective when it had actually done very little. By
misremembering the extent of their past problems, the subjects were Able to
avoid acknowledging that they had wasted their time. Moreover, had their
therapist requested an evaluation of the program, they would have no doubt
praised it highly. Clients are not always the most objective judges of a
therapist's efforts.
Feedback From
Clients
A great many
studies have now shown that people usually accept uncritically groundless
generalized descriptions of their personalities. They are particularly likely to
accept vague personal evaluations that seem to be based on psychological tests
and are delivered by a professional clinician (for a review, see Snyder, Shenkel,
& Lowery, 1977). This gullible lack of discernment, known as the
"Barnum effect," ensures that those of us in the business of giving
psychological evaluations are likely to receive lots of acclaim for our prowess
that, in truth, is substantially undeserved. We may receive praise from clients
even when very little is accomplished. As Snyder et al. warned, "in no
sense . . . can such praise be interpreted as 'validation' of either the
clinician's skill or assessment procedures" (p. 113).
A final way in
which we can become overconfident is to make exceptions for ourselves and for
the decisions we make. Meehl (1973) described clinicians' occasional reluctance
to apply actuarial data to the individual case; "After all," the
argument goes, "we're concerned with the unique individual, not the
group." The great fallacy of that argument, as Meehl observed, is that,
although departures from normative decision rules are sometimes appropriate, a
policy that allows frequent exceptions will ultimately allow many errors and is
thus indefensible. A clinician who trusts his or her intuition over statistical
probability, who too often believes "This is a unique case," will make
too many mistakes.
In terms of
overconfidence, clinicians and counselors who see themselves as unique cases to
whom this chapter's inferential cautions do not apply are probably much too sure
of themselves. Indeed, it is probably a further symptom of characteristic
overconfidence to assume that one is personally immune to the various biases we
have discussed. Unwarranted certainty and misplaced faith in our own veracity
appear to be hard to avoid (Einhorn & Hogarth, 1978) and are unrelated to
one's intelligence (Lichtenstein & Fischhoff, 1977); however, we might
argue, as social philosophers do, that there is something intelligent in knowing
what it is we do not know, and admitting our faults.
The Behavioral
Confirmation of Erroneous Inferences
None of the
inferential errors we have considered would be so harmful if, eventually, truth
won out and our various errors were corrected. Unfortunately, some of our most
egregious errors are probably never discovered. By acting on mistaken judgments
of others, we can elicit from them the behavior we expect to find, behavior that
would not have occurred without our prompting. Interpersonal judgments can thus
be self-fulfilling prophecies in which we get what we expect from others (which,
in turn, further convinces us of our inferential skill). The manner in which our
beliefs create their own realities, and the potentially therapeutic impact of
this phenomenon, will be detailed in chapter 11; here we simply wish to
illustrate how consequential errors in inference can be.
Snyder, Tanke, and
Berscheid (1977) provided an elegant example. They recorded college males' first
phone conversations with women whom they believed, on the basis of randomly
manipulated photographs, were either physically attractive or unattractive.
Judges' ratings of the conversations indicated that the men were much more
interesting social partners when they thought they were talking to good-looking
women; they were rated, for instance, as more sociable, warm, outgoing,
interesting, bold, and socially adept. The men's (often erroneous) judgments of
the women were clearly reflected in their behavior toward them. How did the
women respond? Those who were presumed to be attractive really did sound more
alluring, reacting to their obviously interested partners by sounding more
appealing themselves. By comparison, the women who talked with the relatively
detached men who thought they were unattractive sounded pretty drab. In both
cases, the men got out of the women the behavior they expected, whether or not
their judgments were sound.
Even more
remarkable is the finding that the targets of our judgments may gradually come
to see themselves as we do. Fazio, Effrein, and Falender (1981) examined what it
is like to be the target of confirmatory hypothesis testing. As you may recall,
when subjects test another's extraversion they often ask a very biased set of
extraversion-eliciting questions (Snyder & Swann, 1978a). Fazio et al. found
that, following such treatment, those asked the biased questions described
themselves as more extraverted than they previously had. What is more, they
behaved differently in subsequent interactions. When meeting a stranger, they
were more likely to initiate a conversation, sit closer, talk more, and sound
more extraverted on tape than those previously asked a set of
"introversion" questions. Thus, we may not only get people to behave
the way we think they will, but we may also slowly mold them into the people we
think they are. Such is the power, and the peril, of clinical inference.
.Improving
Clinical Inference
Again, no fingers
are being pointed here. The inferential problems we have discussed are problems
in human judgment and are not peculiar to clinical or counseling psychology.
(Indeed, researchers also commit such errors.) In fact, clinical judgment may
not be as treacherous as this chapter suggests; Hogarth (198 1) argued that most
studies of decision making overestimate our problems by ignoring the corrective
role of feedback in normal social judgments. On the other hand, the studies we
have described may underestimate our problems, since they usually provided
subjects with unambiguous, prepackaged data and implicitly encouraged
participants to do their best (Nisbett & Ross, 1980). In any case, it seems
obvious that the potential for grave errors exists, and many clinicians join us
in urging caution (e.g., Turk & Salovey, 1985, in press). It is important to
do more than just point out the pitfalls, however; our goal should be to improve
social judgment, not merely to derogate it (Wiggins, 1982). What, then, can be
done?
Education
Because there are
limits to our introspection and we do tend to be overconfident, a first hurdle
is convincing decision makers that potential problems even exist (Nisbett &
Ross, 1980). Admitting our fallibility is far from enough, however, because
recognizing inferential errors does not usually make them go away. Recall that
warning people about hindsight biases (Fischhoff, 1977) and illusory
correlations (Waller & Keeley, 1978), for instance, did not help correct
them. Extensive training may be required to allow us to fully appreciate the
extent of our judgmental biases (Fischhoff, 1982).
Turk and Salovey
(in press) suggested a "bias inoculation" procedure in which people
are allowed to experience judgmental errors with subsequent opportunities for
analysis and feedback. The point would be to actually make these various
mistakes so that they could be thoroughly understood and better detected later
on. Nisbett and Ross (1980) would agree that any such training should be as
vivid and concrete as possible, and they advocated the use of memorable slogans
to keep corrective principles in mind: "It's an empirical question,"
so use the facts, not your intuition; "Beware the fundamental attribution
error," and consider situations before labeling dispositions. Educational
approaches can be profitable; the "process debriefing" of Ross et al.
(1975), in which subjects were invited to understand belief perseverance,
speculate as to its origins, and list its potential costs, was fairly effective
in reducing perseverance.
Using
Statistics
For complex
judgments such as assessments of covariation, experience with the problem may
not be enough (Waller & Keeley, 1978); statistical calculations are often
required. For some judgments (detecting covariation with a four-cell contingency
table, for instance) the needed calculations are simple (Nisbett & Ross,
1980), whereas for others (formulating Bayesian probabilities, for example) they
are rather complex (Arkes, 1981). Nevertheless, the use of statistics and the
reasoning that follows from them can cure a great many ills (Dawes, 1979;
Nisbett, Krantz, Jepson, & Fong, 1982).
Arkes (1981)
provides a fascinating example of how an explicitly statistical approach can
salvage wrongful intuition. Assume that you are tempted to make a diagnosis of
multiple personality because the chances that a person who was not a multiple
personality would present you with the symptoms you have observed are, say, I in
100. Such odds do not mean your diagnosis has a 99% chance of being correct.
Because multiple personalities are exceedingly rare (let's assume, generously,
that 1 in 100,000 persons qualifies), your chances of encountering one are quite
remote, and the actual probability that your diagnosis is correct is a mere .1%.
If that seems astonishing, you can appreciate the value of statistics in setting
you straight.
Considering
Alternatives
Several types of
judgments appear to be improved by careful consideration of why we might be
wrong. More specifically, inventing plausible explanations for opposing points
of view seems to help reduce belief perseverance, overconfidence, and biased
interpretation of data. For instance, in a hindsight study, Slovic and Fischhoff
(1977) found that asking subjects to explain explicitly how alternative outcomes
could have occurred reduced the hindsight tendency to assume a particular
outcome was inevitable. Similarly, getting subjects to list specific reasons why
they might be right and why they might be wrong in an overconfidence study
reduced their tendency to overestimate their knowledge (Koriat, Lichtenstein,
& Fischhoff, 1980). Misplaced beliefs are also less likely to persevere when
subjects imagine contradictory causal possibilities (Anderson, 1982). In
general, it appears that the more salient or cognitively "available" a
given belief is, the more plausible it is (Anderson et al., 1985); intentionally
creating explanations for alternative beliefs can thus help us evaluate a given
belief more impartially.
Being Explicit
The more
information we have to process (Lueger & Petzel, 1979) and the more we have
to rely on our faulty memories (Arkes, 1981), the less accurate our judgments
will be. Dawes (1982) encouraged being explicit in our decision making, listing
all logical possibilities and systematically estimating as carefully as possible
the likelihood of each. Turk and Salovey (in press) echoed that suggestion,
urging us to "de-automize" our judgmental processes so that we become
more aware of our own thinking. Critically evaluating our judgments in a
step-by-step fashion through self-interrogation and -thinKing aloud may help
block those fuzzy, intuitive leaps where biases lead us astray. In addition,
accountability, or the feeling that we will have to justify our decisions to
others, may be valuable; Tetlock (1983, 1985) has shown that warning subjects of
their accountability reduces anchoring effects and personalistic biases (cf.
Harkness, DeBono, & Borgida, 1985).
Delaying
Judgment
Finally, there may
be some wisdom in putting off our judgments as long as possible. We have seen
that, as soon as first impressions are formed, they begin to influence our
interpretation of subsequent data. It may improve our judgments, then, to resist
the tendency to arrive at premature conclusions. In fact, Dailey (1952) showed
that the final judgments of subjects who began to predict another person's
behavior halfway through his self-description were less accurate than those of
subjects who made no predictions until the end. Delaying judgment as long as
possible may be a desirable strategy.
Withholding
judgment is probably easier said than done, however, and is likely to require
conscious effort. Indeed, all of the strategies considered in this section ask
us to actively attend to the manner in which we arrive at our judgments of
others. Our inferential habits are frequently faulty, and improving them will no
doubt require careful vigilance. Acknowledging those faults is the place to
begin.
Conclusions
Clinical inference
is open to the same biases, distortions, and errors that cloud all social
judgment, likely leading to a misplaced faith in clinicians' judgmental
abilities. We are prone to ignore how others' circumstances influence their
behavior, and we tend to seek out and preferentially value information that
supports our existing beliefs. If no such information exists, we may perceive it
anyway, and we may even cling to beliefs for which there is no longer any
support whatsoever. We are generally unaware of these inferential pitfalls
because it is hard for us to recognize how data influence our judgments. The net
result is that we are more sure of ourselves than we should be, often trusting
our intuitions over statistical probabilities. We are probably not unable to
change most of these bad habits, but we need first to acknowledge our
fallibility and then be ready to go to work.