Explaining Away Disorder: The Influence of Context on Impressions of Mental Health Symptoms

Abstract

Clinical assessments involve understanding displays of mental disorder symptoms in the contexts in which they display. Contextual information plays a large role in externalizing disorder assessments. Yet we know little about contextual information’s impact within internalizing disorder assessments. Panic disorder symptoms develop outside environmental effects, but over time symptoms become conditioned responses to one’s environment, making this disorder an interesting test case. In two experiments ( N = 269), lay participants read vignettes about children displaying a single symptom of panic disorder embedded in contextual information that either conformed or did not conform to the presence of panic disorder. Contextual information changed interpretations of panic disorder symptoms and reduced judgments of the likelihood of panic disorder. This effect held when participants made judgments about panic disorder only (Experiment 1) and when alongside externalizing disorder symptoms (Experiment 2). These findings have important implications for understanding interpretive judgments about symptoms within diagnostic assessments of mental health.