Some factors influencing the unreliability of clinical judgments.

The unreliability of clinical judgment is well known, particularly in the field of diagnosis (1, 8). Little has been done however, toward any analysis of the factors responsible for this unreliability in order that it may be understood, controlled and corrected, Magaret (7), recently has pointed out that we need both a philosonhy of diagnosis and a sophisticated understanding of its nature. Hunt, Witt son, and Hunt (U, 5)j have suggested that our understanding of clinical judgment might be furthered if we conceived of it, not as a unique and special kind of professional performance, but as one example of the broader phenomenon of human judgment in general. The present study takes this approach, and studies the effect upon the clinical judgment of both the professional experience of the judge, and of anchoring the scale which he us using to make his judgment. Both experience (2, 10) and anchoring (3, 9) have been shown to influence judgment in a wide range of situations varying from those of classical psychophysics to the judgments of the prestige of occupations and the undesirability of certain forms of behavior.