Seek and ye shall find: test results are what you hypothesize they are
✍ Scribed by Gershon Ben-Shakhar; Maya Bar-Hillel; Yoram Bilu; Gaby Shefler
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 1998
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 184 KB
- Volume
- 11
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0894-3257
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
Expert clinicians were given batteries of psychodiagnostic test results (Rorschach, TAT, Draw-A-Person, Bender-Gestalt, Wechsler) to analyze. For half, a battery came along with a suggestion that the person suers from Borderline Personality disorder, and for half, that battery was accompanied by a suggestion that he suers from Paranoid Personality disorder. In Study 1, the suggestion was made indirectly, through a background story that preceded the test results. In Study 2, the suggestion was made directly, by the instructions given. The experts saw in the tests what they hypothesized to be there. In particular, the target diagnoses were rated higher when they were hypothesized than when they were not.