Robustness of Scale Effects in Judged Probabilities of Violence

精神疾病患者实施暴力行为的可能性具有重要的法律含义。前期工作表明，临床医生评估的暴力概率对引发暴力的方式高度敏感，导致了极大的不一致。除非概率是一致的，否则它们不能与世界上的实际事件有足够程度的对应，也不能传达关于未来事件的可能性的适当信息，例如个人造成伤害的可能性。本研究利用有经验的临床医生来判断精神病患者实施暴力行为的概率，试图：(1)找出心理健康法中与非自愿住院相关因素的临床医生概率评估不一致的根本原因；(2)考察替代概率评估方法对减少量表不一致性的有效性；(3)考察任务结构和概率培训对临床医生概率评估一致性的影响。

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.