Therapists and quasi-therapists in a therapy analogue situation

Evaluated an assumption from previous psychotherapy analogue studies, namely, that trained psychotherapists and untrained quasi-therapists with personality similarities will respond similarly to patient presentations. Ss were 24 male psychotherapists and 24 male undergraduate students, chosen partially on the basis of their responses to an A-B personality scale derived from the work of Whitehorn and Betz (1954). The three-factor experimental design included S personality type (A or B), S professional status (psychotherapist vs. student), and videotaped patient simulations (neurotic vs. schizoid), with all Ss exposed to both patient prototypes. Therapists demonstrated a higher degree of accurate empathy, were less active, made shorter responses, and used more declarative sentences (p less than .01 for each variable). Second-order interaction effects indicated that therapist personality type X patient type pairings produced opposite results for quasi-therapists when compared to professional therapists.