The Role of Trait Empathy and State-Level Emotion in Predicting Helpers' Facilitative Interpersonal Skill

Common factor, interpersonal, and dynamic therapies assume that therapists' trait empathy and in-the-moment emotional experiences play a central role in therapeutic processes. This study tested whether a trait level predictor (empathy) and three state-level emotion predictors (anxiety, positive affect, negative affect) could predict Facilitative Interpersonal Skills (FIS).

A total of 96 participants who self-identified as having an interest in becoming therapists responded to provocative, interpersonally difficult client simulations from the Facilitative Interpersonal Skills task (FIS) as well as a companion set of simulations that were selected to be benign (i.e., less challenging). Helpers completed measures of state-level emotions immediately after the clips. Ratings of FIS were made by both the participants and independent observers.

FIS ratings (Skill) were highly correlated on both difficult and benign clips. Therapist positive affect (but not negative affect) was predictive of observer-rated FIS, whereas anxiety was predictive of helper-rated FIS.

Helpers may associate the ability to modulate anxiety with their self-judgments of being skillful in challenging therapeutic situations. However, trained observations of these skills were associated with helper experiences of positive affect (and not anxiety or negative affect). One implication of this finding is that negative and positive affect may play different roles for how skill is perceived within students learning therapeutic skills versus observers (e.g., supervisors).