Counselor and client personality as determinants of counselor expectancy effects

Seventy-eight students enrolled in summer-session college courses were randomly assigned to serve either as counselors or as clients for a 20-min, role-played peer counseling session. All of the subjects completed a battery of standardized personality measures. Each counselor interacted with two clients. Prior to the sessions, the counselor was led to believe that one of the clients was especially introverted and that the other client was especially extraverted. Dependent measures were based on clients' change scores on a mood adjective rating scale administered before and after the peer counseling sessions. Analyses showed that counselors who were more successful at biasing their clients in the direction of their expectancies (a) scored higher on measures of Dogmatism, Nurturance, and Social Recognition, (b) scored lower on Impulsivity, and (c) were more likely to be women. Clients who were more susceptible to counselor bias scored higher on the Self-Monitoring Scale, the Self-Monitoring Other-Directedness subscale, and Social Recognition. These results are discussed in light of previous research and their implications for research on interpersonal expectancy effects.