Individualism and collectivism : a study of values and inferencing in psychotherapy

The field of psychotherapy is not objective. Like any social construction, it is a product of the values of the culture in which it was developed. The theories and principles that form the cornerstones of Western psychotherapy reflect a number of Western ideals and biases, one of which is individualism. As such, it is important that we examine the impact that such a bias can have on clinical judgment, particularly since so many clients come from collectivist cultures, and since inaccurate clinical decisions that derive from flawed etiologies and character assessment can have such serious repercussions.The following study investigates, both qualitatively and quantitatively, how this individualistic bias in Western psychotherapy influences the clinical judgment and inference-making process. Within a Repeated Measures design, 84 graduate students provided assessments of two different clinical vignettes that were each alternated to reflect a client with either individualist or collectivist values. All participants were also asked to provide qualitative assessments of the casefiles, and a total of seven participants discussed their clinical impressions in greater depth during two different focus groups that were conducted at a later date. The focus groups were organized around four broad-based themes that were intended to clarify the study's earlier findings, and shed light on the processes underlying participants' clinical assessments.Results from this study suggest that clinicians do tend to view individualism as psychologically healthier than collectivism. While the findings indicate that clinicians tend to pathologize collectivism more in men than in women, factors other than gender also appear to interact with individualism-collectivism values to impact clinical assessment. Implications of these findings, as well as proposed directions for future research within the context of this study's limitations, are discussed