Causative vs Predictive Models of Therapists' Expectancies: A Further Evaluation

Abstract

A recent study provided evidence that therapists' expectancies predict but do not cause improvement in schizophrenic patients. Expectancies of clinicians who had no contact with the patients studied were as closely linked to patients' improvement as expectancies of therapists who treated the patients. It was suggested that training and experience of the clinicians, who were provided with summaries of hospital admissions in lieu of patient contact, enabled them to recognize prognostic signs and thus predict improvement with their expectancies. The present study expanded on these findings. Untrained and inexperienced college students were given the same summaries from which they formed and reported expectancies for improvement in the same schizophrenic patients. Their expectancies were less efficient as prognosticators than expectancies of therapists and clinicians but nevertheless yielded approximately 50% significant predictions across 30 measures of patients' improvement. The results are interpreted as supporting the predictive model of therapists' expectancies.