Distinctive disorders are less prevalent.
To test the hypothesis that nosologies are biased towards recognizing highly distinctive syndromes and therefore conflate those that are less distinctive, eight subjects judged the distinctiveness of 33 DSM-IV disorders and 20 rheumatic disorders. As predicted, judged distinctiveness was negatively correlated with prevalence for both sets of disorders.
Haslam
N
N
Department of Psychology, New School for Social Research, New York 10003, USA.
Vuchetich
J P
JP
D000328:Adult; D015982:Bias; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D001523:Mental Disorders / Q000145:classification / Q000175:diagnosis*; D011569:Psychiatric Status Rating Scales / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D011594:Psychometrics; D012216:Rheumatic Diseases / Q000145:classification / Q000175:diagnosis; D013334:Students / Q000523:psychology