The privileged status of prestigious terminology: impact of "medicalese" on clinical judgments.

Purpose: Health professionals frequently use medical terminology like dyspnea or nasopharyngitis. These two studies examine how the use of medical terms affects the judgments of seriousness, prevalence, and disease; and diagnostic judgments.

Method: In study 1, a survey containing the names of 22 diseases with either a medical or lay description was completed by 47 undergraduate psychology students and 25 medical students, who were asked to judge seriousness, prevalence, and how "disease-like" it was.