Do IT students prefer doctors who use IT?

•Patients and peers derogate the skills of doctors who use clinical decision support systems (CDSSs).•We exam the attitudes of undergraduate and graduate IT students towards physicians who use CDSS.•We report that even IT students derogate the medical skills of physicians who use CDSS.

Several studies suggest that clinical decision support systems (CDSSs) reduce physician diagnostic errors, decrease medical costs, and improve the quality of patient care. However, despite the many potential benefits, physicians have been slow to adopt CDSSs and fail to use them when they are available. Some researchers have speculated that physicians are reluctant to adopt these diagnostic aids, in part, due to the widespread psychological bias that patients and peers feel against physicians who use them. This bias has been well documented among the general public. Many have assumed that this human-is-better attitude is limited to older and less computer savvy populations. We test this assumption with two vignette-based experiments. Our data suggest that, when it comes to physicians, even young participants with positive attitudes towards computers (i.e., IT students) have a human-is-better bias.