Dyadic affective interactive patterns in the intake interview as a predictor of outcome

Abstract Facial affective behavior of patients and therapists is assumed to be closely related to patients' interpersonal patterns and therapists' involvement in these patterns. In this study, facial affect displays of patients and therapists during intake interviews were analyzed to determine their impact on the outcome of the subsequent short-term inpatient psychotherapy. Interviews of ten successful and ten unsuccessful patients (15 female, five male) with two therapists were analyzed with Friesen and Ekman's EMFACS procedure. Feeling states of patients and therapists were registered using the Differential Affect Scale. Reciprocal dyadic patterns of facial affect were determined based on the same lead affect of patient and therapist. As expected, reciprocal patterns predicted an unsuccessful treatment outcome and showed a correlation to positive feeling states in the therapist during the interview. Our data suggest that, in unsuccessful cases, therapists became overly involved in patients' interpersonal patterns.