This paper considers three clinical judgment biases in clinical inference: (1) illusory correlation bias, the report by clinicians of a correlation between psychodiagnostic test signs and patient's symptoms which are not correlated or are correlated to a smaller degree than that reported; (2) labeling bias, the tendency of exposure to diagnositc…

Educators should be aware that recent rhetoric about diversity in this country often does not consider the continuing discrimination and mistreatment of Asians. Simply put, the employment situation for Asian and Pacific Americans is characterized by underemployment and the channeling of Asians into a narrow range of jobs. Many people today have…

Two full term and two preterm infants were videotaped while being administered six items from the Brazelton Scale. Infants were assigned alternately the labels "preterm" and "fullterm" and shown to a group of 256 undergraduate students. It was hypothesized that: (1) subjects who view infants labeled as preterm would rate them lower on objective…

The history of the study of human mental ability is an example of the dialectic in social science between those who interpret data within the framework of existing social inequities and those who look for perspectives that might eventually dissolve inequities. The dedication of Henry Herbert Goddard to a belief in the scientific proof of…

Attribution theory suggests that the existence of affirmative action programs may lead individuals to assume that a female or minority affirmative action appointee was hired for reasons other than legitimate qualifications for the job. This inference of incompetence could pose a tremendous barrier to competent women or minority individuals being…

Labeling bias is the distortion of diagnostic judgment as a function of prior diagnostic information. University students (N=102) were assigned to 16 treatment groups, with variables of: prior diagnosis attributed to a videotaped target person ("psychotic" versus none), setting in which the observed sample of his behavior was said to…

This paper discusses how first-grade teachers often perceive which of their students will ultimately succeed in school and which students will drop out. It argues that teachers look at a child's gender, color, behavior patterns, dress, family status, ethnicity, and socioeconomic level and, either consciously or unconsciously, label that child and…