Effects of Asian American client adherence to Asian cultural values, session goal, and counselor emphasis of client expression on career counseling process.

Abstract

Seventy-eight Asian American college students who were experiencing career uncertainty engaged in a counseling session with a European American female counselor who focused on either immediate resolution of the problem or insight attainment through exploration of the problem and who emphasized client expression of either cognition or emotion. Clients with high adherence to Asian cultural values perceived increased counselor empathic understanding and stronger client– counselor working alliance than did clients with low adherence to Asian values. Clients who were exposed to the immediate resolution condition perceived stronger working alliance than did clients exposed to the insight attainment condition. Among clients with high adherence to Asian values, those in the expression of emotion condition perceived greater counselor cross-cultural competence than did those in the cognition condition.