The effect of ego development, empathy, and social dominance orientation on the multicultural competencies of rehabilitation trainees

It is well documented that some rehabilitation students and professionals make invalid assumptions regarding culturally diverse clients due to racial and ethnic bias. The following study was an attempt to examine factors that may affect clinical biases of rehabilitation counselor trainees toward African American clients. The factors of ego development, empathy, and social dominance orientation have been identified in the multicultural counseling literature as predictive of multicultural counseling competency of generic counselors. The purpose of this study was to determine whether these factors influence the counseling effectiveness of rehabilitation counseling students who will work with clients with disabilities from diverse cultural backgrounds.; A true experimental design was used to examine the effect of client race (African American and European American) on clinical judgment of 156 European American undergraduate and graduate students. Regression analysis was performed to assess the effect of ego development, empathy, and social dominance orientation on the clinical judgment of European American students toward African American clients. Results suggest that number of practicum/internship and two types of empathy (empathic perspective and empathic awareness) were positively related to the clinical judgment ratings for the African American client, while age, number of rehabilitation courses, and empathic feeling were inversely related to the clinical judgment of the client. Ego development was a significant predictor for clinical judgment of the European American client.