The Medical Labels Bias

Dan Ariely recently did some research on it:

What I think this means (and we need more research on this) is that giving individuals a disorder-label causes others viewing them to place the blame on the disorder and not on the person.  Think for example about a parent who is told that their kid has ADHD – would this parent blame themselves less than if they were told that their kid is an active difficult kid? 

I think the answer is yes, and maybe this is one of the reasons that we as a society seem to be obsessed with diagnostic labels (other reasons include incentives for psychologists, medical companies etc).

2006-2011 archives for The Daily Dish, featuring Andrew Sullivan