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

Assessed the effect of labels on clinicians' judgments in a 2 * 2 design. Clinicians (N = 40) representing behavioral and analytic schools of thought viewed a single videotaped interview between a man who had recently applied for a new job and one of the authors. One-half of each group was told that the interviewee was a "job applicant," while the remaining 1/2 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." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)