Influence of client socioeconomic status on selected behaviors, attitudes, and decisions of counselors.

Abstract

Seven male and nine female graduate students in counseling psychology were asked to interview an actor and an actress whom they believed to be real clients. To half of the counselors, the players posed as well-to-do individuals, and to half they posed as working class individuals. They briefly mentioned their socioeconomic status at the beginning of the interview and then told the counselor about some of the problems they were experiencing. When the clients were presented as having lower status, a significant correlation coefficient existed between (a) the counselor's selfreported degree of personality similarity to the client and the counselor's self-reported liking for the client, and (b) the counselor's self-reported liking for the client and the counselor's estimate that the client would benefit from long-term counseling. No significant correlation coefficient existed for data collected during high-status interviews. These results suggest that counselors may unconsciously employ a different decision-making process for highand low-status clients.

Race bias, social class bias, and gender bias in clinical judgment.

“…In several studies, prognostic ratings did not vary as a function of social class when different groups of clinicians were given identical case histories except for the designation of social class (Foon, 1989; Settin & Bramel, 1981) or when they were given identical Rorschach test results except for the designation of social class (Koscherak & Masling, 1972). Similarly, prognostic ratings did not vary as a function of social class when clinicians interviewed actors who portrayed clients (Wright & Hutton, 1977). In other studies, less favorable prognostic ratings were made for lower‐class clients than for middle‐class or upper‐class clients when clinicians were given case histories (Franklin, 1985; Rabinowitz & Lukoff, 1995; Sutton & Kessler, 1986), when they listened to a recording of an intake interview (Lee & Temerlin, 1970), and when they were given Rorschach test results (Haase, 1964; Levy & Kahn, 1970; Trachtman, 1971).…”

Perceptions of clients by professional helpers.

“…This process is exemplified by a study of secondary school counselors (Thompson, 1969), in which the author summarized the data as indicating that "counselors prefer to work with clients who have the highest possibilities for outcome success" (p. 73). Perhaps the most compelling evidence of this process is the consistent correlation between likability and prognosis (R. D. Brown, 1970;Doherty, 1971;Elstein & Van Pelt, 19,68;Parsons & Parker, 1968; J. M. Schwartz & Abramowitz, 1975;Shader et al, 1967;Wallach & Strupp, 1960;Wright & Button, 1977); in each case, liking for a client is related to the perception that the client has a favorable prognosis. In psychotherapy relationships this preference for successful clients is compounded by the fact that judgments of therapeutic success are based essentially on posttreatment functioning rather than on amount of change (B. L. Green, Gleser, Stone, & Seifert, 1975;Mintz, 1972), that is, mildly impaired clients who improve only a little are judged as more successful than initially more impaired clients who improve considerably.…”

Training Counselors for Work with Special Populations: A Second Look

“…In fact, a recurring theme in the literature is that counselors working with populations different from themselves experience discomfort and consequently are less effective than they would ordinarily be. For example, Wright and Hutton (1977) found that middleclass counselors preferred middle-class clients to those from a lower socioeconomic class and that their interactions with middle-class clients were of a higher quality than were those with clients of lower classes. Other populations identifiedin the lit-erature as creating some problems for counselors include those who are poor (Lorion, 1974), disabled (Strohmer, Biggs, Haase, & Purcell, 1983), elderly (Sinick, 1979), homosexual (Thompson & Fishburn, 1977), and members of ethnic minority groups (Pedersen, 1977).…”