The influence of Christian belief on perceptions of counselor empathy, response type, and social influence

This study investigated the influence of counselor Christian belief on counseling process and outcome. Two versions of a videotape in which a professional actress portrayed a client presenting varying levels of Christian belief were shown to counselors/counselors-in-training. Counselors responded in writing to the videotaped client's problem. Raters evaluated the participant-counselors' responses. The dependent variables were the counselors' verbal response types, social influence/power, and empathy of the videotaped client.; 158 counselors/counselors-in-training were randomly assigned to view one of the two versions of the videotape. The first hypothesis, that counselors who matched the clients' levels of Christian belief would be more empathic when compared to those who did not, was not supported. The results showed that higher committed Christian counselors tended to be less empathic toward Christian clients and more empathic toward non-Christian clients. Lower committed Christian counselors tended to be more empathic toward Christian clients and less empathic toward non-Christian clients.; My second hypothesis was that highly committed Christian counselors would use more questions, direct guidance, information providing, interpretation, confrontation, paraphrase, and self-disclosure in responding to Christian clients than low committed Christian counselors; the highly committed Christian counselors would use more of the above verbal responses to Christian than non-Christian clients; and the low committed Christian counselors would use less of the above verbal responses to Christian than non-Christian clients was not supported. The analyses showed that counselors provided more information to and asked more open questions of non-Christian than Christian clients. Higher/moderate committed Christian counselors asked more closed questions of clients than lower committed Christian counselors. Higher committed Christian counselors confronted the videotaped clients more than moderate committed Christian counselors.; The third hypothesis was that higher committed Christian counselors would show more social influence when responding to Christian clients than lower committed Christian counselors; and lower committed Christian counselors would be more influential with non-Christian than Christian clients was not supported. No differences were found across client or counselor belief for social influence ratings.; Discussion of research methodology, counselor Christian belief, and counselor training influenced on research is included. Limitations of the research and future recommendations are presented.