Counselor self-disclosure, East Asian American client adherence to Asian cultural values, and counseling process.

Abstract

After completing a measure of adherence to Asian cultural values, 62 East Asian American clients talked about personal issues in a counseling session with a European American counselor who either disclosed personal information or refrained from disclosing personal information. Disclosure condition and client adherence to Asian values did not predict session outcome. However, type and intimacy of disclosure were related to immediate process and session outcome. Disclosures of strategies were perceived by the clients to be more helpful than disclosures of approval/reassurance, facts/credentials, and feelings, with disclosures of insight perceived as intermediate in helpfulness. Disclosures of strategies occurred more frequently in highly rated sessions than in sessions rated low. Also, client-and counselor-perceived intimacy of disclosures was significantly correlated with client- and counselor-perceived helpfulness of disclosures, respectively. Several naturalistic studies have found that counselor selfdisclosures have immediate positive effects on counseling process (Hill, Helms, Spiegel, & Tichenor, 1988; Knox, Hess, Petersen, & Hill, 1997; Ramsdell & Ramsdell, 1993). In a study with actual clients and counselors, Hill et al. (1988) reported that the clients gave the highest ratings of helpfulness and exhibited the highest experiencing levels (i.e., involvement with their feelings) in response to counselor self-disclosures compared with other verbal response modes. In a qualitative study, Knox et al. (1997) found that clients viewed counselor self-disclosures as leading to insight, making the counselors seem more real and human and making clients feel normal and reassured. Ramsdell and Ramsdell (1993), based on a survey of former clients who had at least six sessions of counseling, reported that the counselor’s sharing of personal information was perceived by clients as having a beneficial effect on counseling. Furthermore, in an experimental study in which counselors either disclosed more or less than usual in four sessions of counseling, Barrett and Berman (2001) found that clients in the high-disclosure condition had less symptom distress and liked the counselors more than did clients in the low-disclosure condition. Although very interesting and relevant to practice, there are two major problems with the previous studies. First, no distinctions were made between different types of clients. The participants in most of these studies were comprised of members of various ethnic groups, with most participants from the European American group. Hence, the extent to which the findings directly apply to nonEuropean American ethnic group members, particularly Asian Americans, is not clearly known. Moreover, given the diversity within the Asian American group, particularly in terms of their levels of adherence to the Asian cultural norms, there is a need to study the possible effects of within-group differences. Therefore, the first purpose of the present study was to examine at session outcome how Asian American clients of differing cultural values would react to counselor disclosures during the session. The second problem with previous studies is that no distinctions were made between different types of disclosures. In these studies, counselor disclosures tended to be treated as a unidimensional construct and specific effects of various kinds of disclosures were not studied in depth. Hence, the second purpose of the present study was to examine on a moment-by-moment basis the immediate effects of type and intimacy of disclosure on Asian American clients’ perception of each disclosure made during the session.