The Social Psychology of Clinical Judgment Flashcards
Describe the affect heuristic, the availability heuristic, the anchoring and adjustment heuristic, and the representativeness heuristic.
Affect heuristic- make judgements and decisions in part based on feelings; gut instinct
Availability heuristic- information that is more easily remembered will have greater influence on judgement
Anchoring and adjustment heuristic- clinician is influenced by the timing in which information is collected during treatment (early/late); clinicians can be influenced by the range of clients with whom they work with
Representativeness heuristic- judgement is made by deciding if a person is representative of a category
Describe a gender bias, social class bias, and racial bias that this chapter indicates occur in therapy.
Gender bias- early research relayed that females were less psychologically healthy than males, but that is not the case; there are gender differences in prevalence of diagnoses (males- antisocial personality, females- histrionic personality even when both sexes of clients described the same information); gender is closely tied to stereotypes for some disorders
Social class bias- stressors associated with poverty can contribute to psychological disorders; social class influences decisions made by clinicians regarding therapy (lower SES less likely to be referred to therapy, when referred more likely to have supportive therapy than insight therapy); social class bias does not occur when making diagnoses or making decisions to hospitalize a client; rich have more resources than the poor, so they may be appropriately diagnosed and treated because have good health coverage
Racial bias- more pervasive than gender and social class bias (occurs most frequently with the diagnosis and treatment of psychotic patients- whites more correctly diagnosed); there are disparities in use of psychotropic medication- blacks less likely to receive lithium and SSRIs, less likely to receive 2nd generation antipsychotics, blacks at greater risk for excessive antipsychotic dosing; blacks receive a larger number of psychotropic medications and larger number of injections
