It has previously been demonstrated that decisions made by forensic experts can suffer from issues with both bias and poor reliability. The outcome of Swedish forensic psychiatric investigations can have a major impact on the courts' choice of sanction for a mentally disordered offender. These investigations are performed by multi-professional teams of experts, where each expert is obliged to state their opinion on whether the client has a severe mental disorder (SMD) or not. In the present study, a case vignette design was used to simulate the decision-making process of forensic psychiatric investigations. Of the 73 Swedish experts working with forensic psychiatric investigations, a total of 27 (37%) participated in the study. The results showed that the Swedish experts formulated multiple diagnostic hypotheses about cases throughout the process and revised these hypotheses when presented with new information. There was substantial variation between the experts in which hypotheses were seen as most relevant. While the experts grew more certain of their opinions on SMD during the simulated investigation, there was considerable variation in their opinions both throughout and at the end of the process. Although low statistical power and the sample not being randomized limit generalizations, the results indicate no idiosyncratic patterns in the decision-making processes of Swedish experts or signs of confirmation bias. If used properly, the variation in both process and outcome could be used to safeguard and possibly increase the reliability and validity of the final decision of Swedish forensic psychiatric investigations.

此前已经证明，法医专家做出的决策可能会存在偏见和可靠性差的问题。瑞典法医精神病学调查的结果可能会对法院的裁决产生重大影响。对精神障碍罪犯的制裁选择。这些调查由多专业专家团队进行，每位专家都有义务就客户是否患有严重精神障碍（SMD）发表意见。在本研究中，案例小插图设计用于模拟法医精神病学调查的决策过程。在从事法医精神病学调查的 73 名瑞典专家中，共有 27 名（37%）参与了这项研究。结果显示，瑞典专家在整个过程中对病例提出了多种诊断假设，并在收到新信息时修正了这些假设。专家之间存在很大差异，认为最相关的假设。虽然专家们在模拟调查过程中对 SMD 的看法更加确定，但在整个过程中和结束时，他们的看法存在很大差异。尽管统计功效较低且样本未随机化限制了概括性，但结果表明瑞典专家的决策过程中没有特殊模式或确认偏差的迹象。如果使用得当，过程和结果的变化可以用来保障并可能提高瑞典法医精神病学调查最终决定的可靠性和有效性。