PhD defence Ali Yunus Emre Akça

Keywords: Bias, Symptom validity, Sociodemographics, Stereotypes

"When It Is Fake and When It Is Flawed: The impact of biases in professionals’ decision-making about the veracity of symptom reports"

People do not always report their health honestly. Exaggerating or downplaying symptoms can result in incorrect treatments, unfair decisions, or improper social benefit payouts. Although professionals use specific assessment methods to identify “feigners” and distorted symptom reporting, there is concern that an evaluator's own stereotypes about an assessee's race, gender, age, socioeconomic status, or education might distort their judgment.

This dissertation examined these potential sociodemographic biases across four studies. Research showed that some professionals imagine a "typical feigner" as a young, less-educated White woman. A second study found that psychology trainees generally stereotype feigners as low-income, less-educated White men, based on scenarios tailored to indicators of suspicion suggested by the DSM, the standard manual for psychology. The DSM-based indicators may not introduce new biases but may instead influence the strength of existing sociodemographic biases. Additionally, two studies showed that psychology trainees tend to choose tests that confirm an assessee’s claims rather than check for feigning, regardless of gender. Encouragingly, an assessee’s race or gender did not affect how professionals interpreted ambiguous test results. Ultimately, subtle, pre-existing stereotypes can influence professional assessments, highlighting the need for better bias-awareness training.

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