Statistical analyses suggest that psychiatrists emphasize hostility,
agitation, previous assaultiveness, and suspiciousness as factors
predictive of violence in psychiatric inpatients. When the actual
correlates of violence in these patients are evaluated, a different picture
of the assaultive inpatient emerges. Examination of differences between the
cues emphasized by clinicians to make their predictions and the empirical
correlates of violence suggests ways of improving the accuracy of clinical
judgments of inpatients' dangerousness.Abstract Teaser