Poletiek Fenna H
Unit of Cognitive Psychology, P.O. Box 9555, 2300 RB Leiden, The Netherlands.
Behav Sci Law. 2002;20(1-2):19-29. doi: 10.1002/bsl.468.
When assessing dangerousness of mentally ill persons with the objective of making a decision on civil commitment, medical and legal experts use information typically belonging to their professional frame of reference. This is investigated in two studies of the commitment decision. It is hypothesized that an 'expertise bias' may explain differences between the medical and the legal expert in defining the dangerousness concept (study 1), and in assessing the seriousness of the danger (study 2). Judges define dangerousness more often as harming others, whereas psychiatrists more often include harm to self in the definition. In assessing the seriousness of the danger, experts tend to be more tolerant with regard to false negatives, as the type of behavior is more familiar to them. The theoretical and practical implications of the results are discussed.
在为做出民事住院治疗决定而评估精神病患者的危险性时，医学和法律专家会使用通常属于其专业参考框架的信息。这在两项关于住院治疗决定的研究中得到了调查。研究假设，“专业知识偏差”可能解释医学专家和法律专家在界定危险性概念（研究1）以及评估危险严重程度（研究2）方面的差异。法官更多地将危险性定义为伤害他人，而精神科医生在定义中更多地纳入对自身的伤害。在评估危险的严重程度时，专家们往往对假阴性情况更为宽容，因为这类行为对他们来说更为熟悉。文中讨论了研究结果的理论和实际意义。
