Effects of counsellor race on racial stereotypes of rehabilitation counselling clients.
OBJECTIVE
This study investigated perceptions of European American, African American, and Asian American rehabilitation graduate students in rehabilitation counselling by assessing their clinical impressions of African American, European American, and Asian American clients. This investigation is a continuation of several studies investigating clinical perceptions and client race.


METHODS
Rehabilitation graduate students in rehabilitation counselling participating in this study were randomly assigned to one of three groups and were asked to review case materials for a client portrayed either as African American, European American, or Asian American. In pursuit of the main effect of client race, three separate MANOVA analyses were conducted: one for African American graduate students in rehabilitation counselling, one for Asian American graduate students in rehabilitation counselling, and one for European American graduate students in rehabilitation counselling.


RESULTS
Contrary to previous findings from comparable research, MANOVA results did not reveal a significant main effect of bias by European American, Asian American, and African American graduate students in rehabilitation counselling against any of the three groups.


CONCLUSIONS
Understanding of the conditions in which racial biases and subsequent judgmental errors are likely to occur (or not occur) should allow clinicians to recognise tendencies for their assessments to be influenced by client characteristics that elicit stereotypes and thereby to make more accurate judgements.
Rosenthal
David A
DA
University of Wisconsin-Madison, Wisconsin 53706-1496, USA. drosenthal@education.wisc.edu
Wong
Daniel
D
Moore Blalock
Kacie
K
Delambo
David A
DA
D000328:Adult; D001741:Black or African American / Q000208:ethnology / Q000523:psychology*; D001213:Asian / Q000208:ethnology / Q000523:psychology*; D003376:Counseling; D006233:Persons with Disabilities / Q000523:psychology / Q000534:rehabilitation*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D015999:Multivariate Analysis; D011287:Prejudice; D011369:Professional-Patient Relations; D013240:Stereotyping; D014481:United States; D044465:White People / Q000208:ethnology / Q000523:psychology*