The attitudes of medical students to the field of psychiatry were assessed prior to their first formal curriculum exposure to the field. Students interested in psychiatry as their future medical specialty were distinguished from those with other interests by a greater espousal of a Mental Hygiene Ideology and an expectation of personal benefit from psychiatric treatment. Student future specialty preference was not correlated with machiavellianism nor acceptance of interpersonal etiologies in mental illness. Those students interested in family practice were attitudinally similar to students interested in specialties other than psychiatry.