Work

Are psychotherapists’ first clinical impressions fundamentally biased? An experimental approach.

Year: 2024

Type: article

Abstract: = 56 and 64) in which psychotherapists were asked to give their first clinical impressions in two consecutive cases after a brief presentation of the case (case description and video excerpt) and a short recall task of the information provided. The attentional focus in the recall task served as an independent variable. Therapists had to adopt either a symptom-focused or a strength-focused attentional focus to recall the cases, that is, therapists rated their first case in either the symptom-focused or the strength-focused condition and the second case in the opposite condition. In both studies, therapists in the symptom-focused conditions rated patients as slightly more distressed, less resilient, and less psychosocially integrated in comparison to the strength-focused conditions. However, even statistically significant, these effects were rather small to clinically negligible. Our preliminary results suggest that the first clinical impressions of contemporary psychotherapists are vulnerable in both experiments to be slightly, but not as dramatically, distorted as the Rosenhan experiment would suggest at the time. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Source: Journal of Counseling Psychology

DOI: 10.1037/cou0000766

Authors: Christoph Flückiger, Caroline Kolle, Jan Schürmann-Vengels, Ralf Rummer, Mathias Allemand

Institutions: University of Kassel, Witten/Herdecke University, University of Zurich

Language: English

Topic: Psychotherapy Techniques and Applications

Subfield: Clinical Psychology

Field: Psychology

Domain: Social Sciences

SDG: Good health and well-being

Open Access status: hybrid

Funder: Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung