East Asians' or East Asian Americans' Preferences for Different Types of Psychotherapy

Abstract

East Asians' or East Asian Americans' preferences for types of therapies were investigated. Fifty East Asian or East Asian Americans in Mid-Atlantic University completed a series of measures related to Asian values, preferences, and psychological/interpersonal characteristics. They then watched the four videotapes of Dr. Raskin (Client-Centered Therapy), Dr. Comas-Diaz (Ethnocentral Psychotherapy), Dr. Lazarus (cognitive behavioral segment in Multimodal Therapy), and Dr. Persons' (Cognitive Behavior Therapy) sessions, evaluated the session quality and the counselor credibility. They ranked the sessions in order of their preferences and were asked the reasons of their preference. The results indicated that Dr. Lazarus' session was most preferred, and Dr. Persons' session was least preferred by the participants. Participants' ratings of counselor credibility of Dr. Lazarus were significantly associated with participants' Interpersonal Dependency, and Preferences for Insight or Action-Oriented Therapy. The reasons of their preference are discussed.