Perception of symptomatic behaviors.

Abstract

A multidimensional scaling technique, INDSCAL, was used to investigate the underlying structure 18 behavioral and 18 nonbehavioral clinical psychologists gave to 73 symptomatic behaviors descriptive of a wide range of psychopathology. Two partially related dimensions seemed to account for the obtained configuration: Dimension 1 was labeled psychotic-neurotic, and Dimension 2 was labeled turning within oneself-turning to others. These dimensions are similar to those found in other studies. Only limited differences between behavioral and nonbehavioral raters in the structure they provided the diagnostic cues were observed, suggesting that the clinician's theoretical persuasion is not a critical discriminator of the way he views symptoms.