Male and female counselors at three levels of training/experience conducted an initial interview with a female confederate client. Videotapes of these interviews were viewed by 120 undergraduate males and females who rated the counselors' expertness, indicated counselor behaviors that contributed to their judgments, and rated their willingness to…

Investigated influences of physical attractiveness and self-disclosures of nonprofessional counselors in initial counseling interviews. College females saw audiotaped interviews in which an unidentified male counselor revealed no self-information or expressed demographic or personal similarity self-disclosures. Nondisclosing, unattractive…

Findings indicate that highly flexible self-disclosers evidence a heightened social perceptiveness. They also evidence significantly greater affective empathy and more accurate perceptions of facilitative responding than do less flexible disclosers. (Author)

Interpersonal behaviors and factors may facilitate or hinder the ability of one person to exert influence over another. To investigate the impact of counselor smoking behavior and status on potential clients' perceptions of counselor attributes, credibility, and expected helpfulness, 134 female college students viewed one of three vignettes…

Previous studies have demonstrated the inability of naive observers (i.e., those who have no counseling training) to differentiate an empathic counselor from a content-only counselor on a variety of counselor rating scales. The present study extends these earlier studies by attempting to determine whether individuals who had been clients…

Attempted to determine whether an apparently physically disabled counselor, compared with an able-bodied counselor, would be perceived as exhibiting higher levels of four therapeutic ingredients. Results suggested the disabled counselor was rated significantly higher on all therapeutic variables compared with the same counselor when viewed as…

Subjects viewed one of two female confederate counselors exploring a female confederate client's problem and attempt to influence. Significant results were higher ratings of counselor expertness for the expert than the referent power base, and higher ratings of counselor expertness for low status within the expert power base. (Author)

In two studies the Counselor Rating Form was shown to be sensitive to perceived differences among and within counselors of moderate and minimal levels of training/experience. A significant positive relationship was noted between perceived counselor expertness, attractiveness, and trustworthiness and willingness to refer oneself to the observed…

A group of students listened to one of two matched therapy audiotapes: English spoken with either a standard American or a Spanish accent. Both Mexican-American and Anglo-American students attributed more skill, understanding and attractiveness to the Anglo-American professional than to the Mexican-American professional. (Author/SE)

Research has shown that a client's positive views of a counselor enhance commitment to treatment, positive outcome expectancies, and receptivity to counselor influence. To examine the impact of counselor gender and physical attractiveness on perceived counselor effectiveness, 60 college students evaluated male and female counselors on 15 variables…

Female (N = 4) interviewers, two black and two white, portrayed expert or referent role and attempted to influence 32 white subjects to use problemsolving processes and perform career-planning activities. Significant interactions of race and role were obtained such that black-expert and white-referent interviewers were most influential in attitude…

Counseling is a dyadic interaction between client and counselor, in which their cognitive processes influence how they interact and communicate. To investigate the effect that a match of cognitive complexity between counselor and client has upon the counselor's empathy, 9 counselors and 27 clients participated in a study. After 7 weeks of…

It was hypothesized that Black students' racial identity would affect their perceptions of White counselors' interview behaviors. Results indicated that participants rated culture-sensitive counselors as more culturally competent than culture-blind counselors. Cultural sensitivity interacted with racial identity, with encounter participants rating…

Examined 3 aspects of construct validity of Expectations about Counseling-Brief form (EAC-B): whether it measures expectations about counseling rather than other constructs, whether test items are clearly understood, whether test maintains respondents' attention. Analyzed cognitions of 30 undergraduates to determine which thought processes were…

Counselor predicate use similarity in a social psychological context was considered in a study involving 180 college students. Results failed to support the hypothesis that clients perceive counselors with similar predicate preferences as more attractive or that predicate similarity in natural language is too subtle to detect. (JAC)