Implications for Multicultural Counseling Training: Motivation, Implicit Race Bias, Empathy and Attribution Bias

Multicultural competency is the crux of training mental health practitioners in order to promote clinical skills, awareness, and knowledge when working with clients of diverse backgrounds; research integrating automatic beliefs about race is limited. Implicit race bias is integrated into the present study to better explain practitioners’ multicultural competencies, motivation to respond without prejudice, empathy, and attribution of client concerns. Participants responded to 1 of 2 vignettes that controlled for client race (i.e., African American, European American). Analyses revealed that client race is an important factor for culturally sensitive conceptualization of clients’ presenting concerns. Attribution of client responsibility for the cause of the problem is directly related to the relationship between implicit race bias and practitioner level of experience. Post hoc analyses revealed that implicit race bias and motivation to respond without bias significantly influence multiculturally competent case conceptualization. However, implicit race bias did not significantly predict ethnocultural empathy, or significantly relate to a number of the variables in the study. Implications of these results for counseling practice, training, and research are discussed.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Doctoral

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Counseling Psychology (UMKC)

Grantor

University of Missouri -- Kansas City

Year dc:date.issued

2015

Author dc:creator

• Charnin, Leia Ann

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Langrehr, Kimberly J.

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/10355/46428

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:mospace.umsystem.edu:10355/46428