Patients' expectancies and hospital outcome.

Although it is widely held that patients' expectancies for therapeutic gain are related causally to treatment outcome, a recent review of expectancy research found scant evidence for the hypothesized expectancy-outcome relationship. Supportive findings were reported only in studies with serious methodological weaknesses. This study tested the relationship between the prognostic expectancies of hospitalized schizophrenic patients and several objective measures of hospital outcome. It also tested the hypothesis that expectancies may bear primarily a predictive, not causal, relationship to outcome. Multiple regression analyses found patients' expectancies to be correlated significantly with 8 of 15 measures of posthospital adjustment and with 14 of 15 measures of prehospital adjustment. The findings supported the expectancy-outcome relationship and also were consistent with a predictive interpretation of patients' expectancies.