Stephanie A.

Postema
PSY 1000

Article Summary 2
1. Rosenhan, D. L. (1973). On being sane in insane places. Science, 179, (4070),
250-258

2. Summary
The basic question asked by Rosenhan is what sanity is and whether one can
determine sanity versus insanity. He asks whether or not sanity can be
defined, if there are varying degrees of sanity, and whether the environment
has an impact on insanity in individuals. His thesis was whether physicians
can correctly determine whether or not a patient was sane or insane. This is
an important question because a large part of psychology involves mental
processes and determining ‘sanity’ versus ‘insanity’

3. Experimental design and methodology

The way that this experiment was conducted was by having an initial field
experiment where pseudo-patients were sent to different hospitals. The
pseudo-patients were eight sane people that were admitted to psychiatric
wards complaining of “hearing voices”. They remained unnoticed by staff, but
many of the other patients in the ward questioned their sanity. The
participants were the hospital staff in 12 different hospitals throughout the
United States. The second part of the study involved telling staff at a research
hospital about the initial study and then falsely informing the staff that over the
next few months that pseudo-patients would be admitted, and they had to
determine whether the patient was a true patient or not.

4. Results
The results were that physicians were unable to accurately determine
whether patients in the first part were being truthful or deceptive. In the
second part, hospitals mislabeled pseudo-patients as being mentally ill,
whereas in reality they were fake patients. This show that the hypothesis
is partially supported, but there were issues with the study.

5. Authors’ conclusions
The author believed that the study demonstrates that psychiatrists cannot
accurately differentiate between the sane and insane. Rosenhan explains
his tables and data, and the conclusion was that the first experiment failed
to accurately single out the sane, whereas the second study failed to
accurately detect the insane. He suggests that the environment itself can
cause behaviors that can be misunderstood. He had two solutions outlined
that could correct this problem. The first way to correct this would involve
community facilities and avoiding labeling the insane, as those labels tend
to be harmful in future diagnostics. The second solution would be to
increase sensitivity of psychiatrists and other mental health workers.
6. Critical evaluation
 Stephanie A. Postema
PSY 1000

The overall results of the study are useful because it shows how there is
possibility of misdiagnosis when it comes to mentally ill patients. It also
showed that individuals behaviors may be overly critically analyzed in the
psychiatric hospitals (i.e. when the pseudo-patients were documented for
taking notes). One of the main issues with the study was that the
conclusion was that professionals “could not accurately detect sanity
versus insanity”. Clearly, it is possible to differentiate between the clinically
sane and the clinically insane.