Effects of diagnostic suggestion on the clinical judgments and recall memories of autobiography

We hypothesized that diagnostic suggestion would significantly affect clini cian-trainees' clinical judgment and recall of autobiographical information . Eighty volunteer Clinician-trainees, assigned to two groups, read an auto biography written either by a depressed or a nondepressed person. Before re ading one of the autobiographies, volunteer clinician-trainees were given o ne of two mental sets: (a) a diagnostic suggestion that the writer had been diagnosed as clinically depressed and is currently receiving individual th erapy, or (b) no diagnostic suggestion. After reading the autobiography, pa rticipants rated the level of depression of the writer and wrote down any i mportant items of information from the autobiography they could recall. A t hree week follow-up session repeating the rating of depression and recall w as conducted. Results showed that giving no diagnostic information for the depressed person had no effect on recall of depression-consistent recall me mories of the person. However, diagnostic suggestion of depression for the nondepressed person was effective in increasing depression-consistent clini cal judgment and recall memories. Implications for counseling are discussed .