Sexual orientation stereotypy in the distortion of clinical judgment

It has been suggested that if a person's sexual orientation is unconventional, their nonsexual psychological problems will be construed in sexual terms to a marked degree. An experiment is described in which undergraduates read a case study of a man troubled by depression, catastrophizing, heavy drinking, and other maladaptive behavior not obviously related to his sexuality. Half the subjects were told that the patient had had several extramarital affairs, exclusively with men; the others, affairs exclusively with women. Blind content analyses of subject responses revealed that when the man was described as having had homosexual involvements, he was more likely to receive a diagnosis of sexual deviation or have his nonsexual diagnosis justified on the basis of homosexuality, more likely to have his sexual or marital life investigated, and more likely to have his sexuality construed as important in the etiology of his nonsexual psychological problems. The authors' analogue findings confirm cautions voiced by previous researchers regarding predictable distortions to which clinicians may be susceptible in their interpretation of patient problems when homosexuality is part of the patient's past or present life-style.