Clinical Judgmental Biases: The Moderating Roles of Counselor Cognitive Complexity and Counselor Client Preferences

Abstract

This study found that counselor individual differences in cognitive complexity, but not preferences for client problems, moderate the cognitive processes that lead to bias in clinical judgment. A particularly robust and unambiguous clinical bias, known as diagnostic overshadowing (S. Reiss, G.W. Levitan, & J. Szysko, 1982), was selected for study. Consistent with behavior decision (R. Nisbett & L. Ross, 1980) and complexity theories (J. Bieri, A.L. Atkins, S. Briar, R.L. Leaman, H. Miller, & T. Tripodi, 1966), counseling psychologists with lower cognitive complexity were more likely to form biased clinical judgments than were counseling psychologists with higher cognitive complexity (N = 119). Implications of the significant and nonsignificant results for research in clinical judgment and for counselor education and practice are discussed.