'Concept creep' in perceptions of mental illness - an experimental examination of prevalence-induced concept change.

ABSTRACT: The perception of what constitutes mental illness is influenced by various social and medical developments. Prevalence-induced concept change is a phenomenon where decreasing the prevalence of a category leads people to expand their judgment of that concept. In this study, we tested whether changing the prevalence of statements describing mental illness results in a change in the concept of mental illness. Based on a population survey (n = 1031), we created a validated set of 273 brief statements depicting either clear symptoms of mental illness, clear examples of healthy behaviour, or ambiguous situations. We presented a subset of statements to 138 students, asking them to judge whether each statement represented mental illness, or not. After 96 statements, we reduced the prevalence of cl

SUBMITTER: Speerforck S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12904865 | biostudies-literature | 2026 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature