Psychotherapy preferences as a function of Ss' conceptual systems

Examined the relationship between conceptual systems and preferences for behavioral or client-centered approaches to therapy. One hundred and forty college students were administered measures of their conceptual systems and of their therapy preferences; the latter included descriptions of the two therapies. Two weeks later, they were exposed to audiotaped excerpts of one of the two therapies and afterward indicated again their preferences between the two therapies. It was hypothesized that therapy preferences would be distributed nonrandomly across conceptual systems, with a greater proportion of persons in the more abstract systems who preferred client-centered approaches than in the more concrete conceptual systems. This hypothesis was supported at the .001 level. It also was found that therapy preferences were relatively stable, with very few Ss who actually changed their perferences after they had listened to the demonstration tapes.