Predecisional information distortion in physicians’ diagnostic judgments: Strengthening a leading hypothesis or weakening its competitor?

Abstract

Decision makers have been found to bias their interpretation of incoming information to support an emerging judgment (predecisional information distortion). This is a robust finding in human judgment, and was recently also established and measured in physicians’ diagnostic judgments (Kostopoulou et al. 2012). The two studies reported here extend this work by addressing the constituent modes of distortion in physicians. Specifically, we studied whether and to what extent physicians distort information to strengthen their leading diagnosis and/or to weaken a competing diagnosis. We used the “stepwise evolution of preference” method with three clinical scenarios, and measured distortion on separate rating scales, one for each of the two competing diagnoses per scenario.

Keywords

• clinical reasoning
• diagnostic error
• medical decision making
• bias
• distortion
• proleader
• antitrailer
• personal need for structure
• personal fear of invalidity