Counselor content orientation, counselor race, and Black women's cultural mistrust and self-disclosures.

Abstract

Black women were exposed to Black or White female counselors who used verbal statements reflective of either a cultural or a universal content orientation. The effects of counselor content orientation, counselor race, and participants' cultural mistrust levels on the frequency and depth of participant self-disclosures, ratings of counselor credibility, and willingness to self-refer were examined. Counselor content orientation related significantly to depth of disclosure and willingness to self-refer, with participants revealing more intimately and reporting a greater willingness to return to counselors when exposed to the cultural as opposed to the universal content orientation. Lower cultural mistrust levels also were related to a greater number of disclosures with Black counselors. Implications of these findings for future research are discussed.It is generally recognized that client self-disclosure is essential to the development of the therapeutic alliance and to counseling effectiveness (e.g., Cozby, 1973;Jourard, 1971;Ridley, 1984). As "the route to intimacy" (Fisher, 1990, p. 8), client self-disclosure is best facilitated under conditions in which counselor and client are able to form a meaningful bond. Furthermore, counselors are more likely to evoke these authentic expressions of self when they are able to demonstrate that they genuinely understand and have concern for their clients. Several studies have attempted to address ways in which counselors can facilitate meaningful disclosures from their clients. These investigations have principally focused on various characteristics of therapist disclosures (see review by Watkins, 1990).A potential hindrance to client self-disclosure is counselor-client racial dissimilarity. Studies have shown that Black clients report lower levels of rapport with White counselors than with Black counselors, prefer Black counselors to White counselors, and report greater counseling satisfaction with racially similar counselors than with racially dissimilar counselors (see reviews by Atkinson, 1983Atkinson, , 1985

Symptoms of Psychological Distress among African Americans Seeking HIV-Related Mental Health Care

“…[19][20][21] Higher levels of cultural mistrust among African Americans have also been found to contribute to more negative views and expectations of psychotherapy. [22][23][24][25][26][27][28] An assessment of the role of mistrust in the government and medical care among an HIV-infected population found more positive health outcomes among individuals who had higher levels of trust in their health care providers. Specifically, mistrust was found to be a barrier to service use, and therefore, those with higher levels of mistrust in their health care providers had lower levels of physical and mental health, more emergency room visits, and less likely to take their medications.…”

Effect of Therapist Color-Blindness on Empathy and Attributions in Cross-Cultural Counseling.

“…Although the effect of color-blind racial attitudes on the therapeutic process has not been directly studied, research evidence from client reports suggests that counselors who were culturally responsive (perhaps a reflection of the degree to which a therapist is color-blind) were rated as more credible and culturally competent (Atkinson, Casas, & Abreu, 1992;Gim, Atkinson, & Kim, 1991;Pomales, Claiborn, & LaFromboise, 1986), reported higher client satisfaction and lower client attrition rates from counseling (Wade & Bernstein, 1991), and had clients who self-disclosed more intimately (Thompson, Worthington, & Atkinson, 1994) than did counselors who were culturally unresponsive. Furthermore, Thompson and Jenal (1994) found that African American women became more frustrated and exasperated with counselors, regardless of their racial background (i.e., African American, European American), when the counselors actively avoided racial content in counseling.…”

Multicultural issues in qualitative research

“….") (Thompson, Worthington, & Atkinson, 1994). In another condition, subjects were interviewed by counselors who used a more universal approach ("As a freshman at this school, you have .…”