This study transformed the clinical versus actuarial controversy into an analysis of rule-of-thumb versus statistical decision-making strategies. To make direct comparisons, clinical and actuarial decision-making strategies by 10 doctoral students in psychology were translated into computer programs and their accuracy was evaluated in terms of classification criteria. Resulting analyses indicated that programmed clinical decision-making strategies, ‘clinistics,’ can contribute to the prediction of behavior. Such a contribution may be of great value inasmuch as statistical prediction may already have reached its theoretical limit in predicting behavior.
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