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Gender acts as a context for interpreting diagnostic criteria
Author(s) -
Flanagan Elizabeth H.,
Blashfield Roger K.
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
journal of clinical psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.124
H-Index - 119
eISSN - 1097-4679
pISSN - 0021-9762
DOI - 10.1002/jclp.20202
Subject(s) - psychology , context (archaeology) , affect (linguistics) , diagnostic accuracy , clinical psychology , developmental psychology , psychiatry , social psychology , medicine , communication , paleontology , biology , radiology
This study used a unique methodology to determine the aspects of case vignettes that elicited an effect of case gender on diagnosis. A total of 99 psychiatrists and psychologists were shown cases representing a man or a woman that contained varying numbers of histrionic and antisocial criteria. The cases were presented by computer a few sentences at a time. Clinicians were asked to offer a diagnosis for the case after each group of sentences was presented. Results indicated that case gender tended to affect clinicians' diagnostic decisions when criteria related to that diagnosis were shown, suggesting that case gender was acting as a context in which diagnostic criteria were interpreted. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Clin Psychol 61: 1485–1498, 2005.