Reducing Biases in Clinical Judgment with Single Subject Treatment Design

Psychological literature exposes a number of biases that can influence one’s judgment (e.g., pathology bias, confirmatory bias, hindsight bias, misestimation of covariance, decision heuristics, false consensus effect, and over-confidence in clinical judgment). Clinical judgment, the subjective method of arranging client data to establish a diagnosis and a treatment plan, can also be biased and may lead to inaccurate assessment and inefficient treatment. Taking repeated measures of symptoms, similar to the single subjects research design used in the behavioral sciences, may lead to better therapy because it reduces judgment bias.