Effect of sex of therapist and client on therapists' attitudes toward assertiveness problems

Four hypothetical cases that contained descriptions of various assertiveness problems of male and female pseudo clients were presented to 57 male and 88 female mental health professionals. In two out of the four cases presented, female therapists found the client more in need of counseling than did male therapists, independent of the sex of the client. All therapists perceived a female client with a conflict between sexual assertiveness and negative judgments from peers to be more in need of counseling than a male client. All therapist preferred working with a female client in one of the cases. Thus, the effect of sex of therapist and client was not consistent across cases.