Robustness of Scale Effects in Judged Probabilities of Violence

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The probability that a person with mental illness will commit a violent act has important legal implications. Premilinary work shows that clinicians assessed probabilities of violence were highly sensitive to the manner in which they were elicited, resulting in great inconsistency. Unless probabilities are consistent, they cannot have an adequate degree of correspondence to actual events in the world and cannot convey appropriate information about the potential for future events, such as the likelihood that an individual will cause harm. Using experienced clinicians to judge the probability that a mental patient will commit a violent act, this research seeks to: (1) identify the underlying causes of inconsistencies in clinicians probability assessments of factors relevant to involuntary hospitalization in mental health law, (2) investigate the effectiveness of an alternative method of probability assessment to reduce scale inconsistency, and (3) examine the effects of task structure and training in probability on the consistency of clinicians probability assessments.