Steven Lares

AP Psychology Summer Work

Meyer, A. (2013). Are Doctors Overconfident? Psychology Today. Retrieved from:
http://www.psychologytoday.comlb logl c-is-cognition/20 1308/are-doctors-overconfident
Summary: The author of this article explains that doctors sometimes tend to be overconfident in
their abilities. A study she conducted with her colleagues involved 118doctors diagnosing four
cases based off of real life cases. The cases ranged fromtwo easy to two difficult ones. The
doctors were asked what they would diagnose, and most importantly, their level of confidence
for each case. For the easy cases, the doctors had scored 55% success but scored 5% onthe
difficult cases. Even though the doctors had much less success with the difficult cases, they still
reported similar confidence levels. They reported 7.2 levels of confidence for the easy cases, and
reported 6.4 for the difficult cases.
Critique: When reading this article, I found the validity of her claims to supported by the study
shehad conducted. The article mentions that 118 doctors were chosen to diagnose cases based
off of real life cases. This shows that in areal life scenario, doctors would most likely make the
same decisions that were recorded inthis scenario. Also, this was an average statistic of alarge
doctors, so asecond study could have been made based on asmaller group.
Application to Approaches: The cognitive approach would be the most accurate way to describe
this scenario. The author suggests that most people would seemto trust the doctor's experience
andjudgment. However, this may prove to be counter-intuitive. The doctor may put too much /'
confidence onhis or her abilities based off of their past experience or knowledge. This is
evidenced by the author's findings that the doctors began to request less help as the difficulty of
the cases raised.