A patient by any other name . . . : Clinician group difference in labeling bias.

Abstract

The effect of labels on clinicians' judgments was assessed in a 2 X 2 factorial design. Clinicians representing two different schools of thought, behavioral and analytic, viewed a single videotaped interview between a man who had recently applied for a new and one of the authors. Half of each group was told that the interviewee was a job applicant, while the remaining half was told that he was a patient. At the end of the videotape, all clinicians were asked to complete a questionnaire evaluating the interviewee. The interviewee was described as fairly well adjusted by the behavioral therapists regardless of the label supplied. This was not the case, however, for the more traditional therapists. When the interviewee was labeled patient, he was described as significantly more disturbed than he was when he was labeled job applicant. The fact that labels create sets that influence subsequent perception has long been established. Researchers have generally studied these effects by providing different labels and observing the reactions they occasion in their subjects. Kelley (1950), extending Asch's (1946) work, has shown that by assigning the label warm/cold to a lecturer, one could significantly affect another's perceptions of that person. A more recent study (Huguenard, Sager, & Ferguson, 1970) demonstrated the same result in simulated employment interviews. Along with varying the interviewer's initial set (warm/cold), they also varied the length of the interview (10, 20, or 30 minutes). While the interviewer's initial set significantly affected his after-interview ratings, the length of the interview did not. Thus, the effect of labels is pervasive and not readily overridden by the additional information that may be provided by a prolonged interaction. In another study of this kind (Rapp, 1965), the researcher had pairs of subjects describe a child's behavior. One member of