The Therapeutic Relationship: Inexperienced Therapists' Affective Preference and Empathic Communication

Abstract

The subjects of this study are third-year male medical students who rated videotaped male psychiatric patients for likeability before role-playing a `therapeutic' contact with them. Both liked and disliked patients were confronted in the role-play. Each patient said something positive and something negative about himself. The subjects, who are not trained psychotherapists, were instructed to reply to these self-characterizations in a therapeutic manner. Their replies were blindly rated for empathic quality. It was predicted and substantiated (p < 0.02) that subjects would be more empathic in replying to positive than negative self-characterizations of a liked patient, and vice versa for a disliked patient. A restricted range on the empathy ratings qualified these results. Subjects also attributed higher prognostic expectations and more favourable interpersonal skills to their liked than to their disliked patients (p < 0.01).