Alleged sex-role stereotyping in the assessment of women's physical complaints: A study of general practitioners

The present paper reviews possible sources of sex-role stereotyping among physicians, and reports and discusses the findings of an experiment designed to directly assess its effects on their diagnostic inferences.

Abstract

Prevalence studies of psychiatric illness in general practice have consistently found that women are more likely than men to be diagnosed as suffering from emotional or neurotic illness. Viewing physician-patient interaction as a complex social-psychological transaction suggests that this diagnostic pattern results from the interplay of a variety of factors which are not well understood. Sex-role stereotypes which physicians may hold regarding women and their characteristics are one possible factor. The present paper reviews possible sources of sex-role stereotyping among physicians which have been identified by various writers, and then reports and discusses the findings of an experiment designed to directly assess its effects on their diagnostic inferences. A clinical simulation experiment was designed in which physicians' evaluations of male and female patients with identical presenting symptoms (which could be reflective of either psychogenic or organic illness) and clinical findings were compared. If sex-role stereotyping were operating it was hypothesized that the symptoms of females would be more likely than those of males to be diagnosed and treated as reflective of psychogenic illness. The findings were negative with the physicians viewing the patients' symptoms primarily from an organic perspective independent of their sexual status. Various methodological and substantive implications of this finding are discussed.