Patients' conceptions of psychological adjustment in the normal population

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Abstract
This study concerned patients' ability to predict a ‘ normal’ response on two self‐report inventories. There has been a great deal of research on normal subjects' ability to ‘ fake good, bad, mad’ but very little study of psychiatric patients' conceptions of normality. Two groups of psychiatric patients – anxiety state or depressed – and a normal control group filled in two questionnaires twice: first responding honestly and then as they believed a normal person might. The results showed that whereas ‘ normal’ people tend to see other normals as much the same if not slightly less well adjusted than themselves, patients see themselves as less well adjusted than the ordinary person. The controls were not significantly more able to predict the normal response to these measures than the patient groups were. However, the depressed and anxious groups differed in the accuracy of their estimates and in their conceptions of normal functioning.

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