NCE Chapter 4

Social & Cultural Diversity

America has been called the most diverse country on the face of our planet. Counseling a client from a different social and/or cultural background is known as

cross-cultural counseling, multicultural counseling, and intercultural counseling

Reminder: The term multicultural implies that we champion the idea of celebrating diversity and this can be age, sexual orientation, religion, social class, country of origin, race, and even health status. Some exams use the term cultural pluralism to suggest that a minority cultural group will keep their own unique cultural values, yet they still participate in the wider or dominant culture. 

Culture refers to

All of the above - customs shared by a group which distinguish it from other groups, values shared by a group that are learned from others in the group, and attitudes, beliefs, art, and language which characterize members of a group often passed from generation to generation

Reminder: The term macroculture or majority culture on comprehensive exams refers to the dominant culture or the culture that is accepted by the majority of citizens in a given society. When an exam uses the term privilege, it is referring to the fact that some individuals have an unearned advantage, giving that person dominance, access to resources, and therefore power

Our culture is more diverse than in the past. Multicultural counselors often work with persons who are culturally different. This means the client

belongs to a different culture from the helper.

Reminder: The multicultural counselor must assess the client’s behavior based on the client’s own culture—not merely based on the counselor’s culture. The meaning or desirability of a given behavior, trait, or act is based on the culture.

In order to diagnose clients from a different culture

the counselor ideally will need some information regarding the specifics of the culture.

In the United States, each socioeconomic group represents

a separate culture.

Which therapist was not instrumental in the early years of the social psychology movement?

Berne - the father of transactional analysis

________ and ________ would say that regardless of culture, humans have an instinct to fight.

Freud; Lorenz

Reminder: Freud believed that man was basically driven by the instincts of sex and aggression. Lorenz—partially basing his theory on the fact that certain tropical fish will attack an alternate target even when the actual target of aggression is removed—is another believer in the so-called “innate aggression theory.”

________ believe that aggression is learned. Thus, a child who witnesses aggressive behavior in adults may imitate the aggressive behavior.

Social learning theorists

Reminder: The social learning theory contradicts the “innate/ instinct aggression theory” by emphasizing the environment rather than genetics or inborn tendencies. 

The APGA, which became the AACD until 1992 and is now the ACA, contributed to the growth of cross-cultural counseling by

the 1972 formation of the Association for Non-White Concerns in Personnel and Guidance, later known as the Association for Multicultural Counseling and Development.

Reminder: The Civil Rights Act of 1964 (P.L. 88–352) prohibiting discrimination for reasons of gender, race, religion, or national origin was instrumental in terms of setting the stage for minority concerns

Daniel Levinson proposed a controversial stage-crisis view theory with several major life transitions. He

wrote the 1978 classic Seasons of a Man’s Life and the 1997 sequel Seasons of a Woman’s Life AND postulated a midlife crisis for men between ages 40 and 45 and for women approximately five years earlier

Reminder: Levinson’s theory is now viewed as biased against women (i.e., gender bias) since it does not truly deal adequately with women’s development proposing that women receive fulfillment by meeting the needs of their husbands and families. To put it a different way, men dream or have visions, goals, and aspirations about occupations and women dream about their marriage and family and often lack long-term goals. 

The three factors which enhance interpersonal attraction are:

close proximity, physical attraction, similar beliefs.

Reminder: Proxemics, or the study of proximity, relates to personal space, interpersonal distance, and territoriality.

Social psychologists refer to the tendency for people who are in close proximity (say working at the same office or living close) to be attracted to each other as propinquity.

reciprocity of attraction or liking suggests we are attracted to people who like us and find us attractive. For long-term relationships, the matching hypothesis asserts we very often pick a partner who roughly matches our level of attractiveness

The term contextualism implies that

behavior must be assessed in the context of the culture in which the behavior occurs.

Carol Gilligan, although she was an assistant to Lawrence Kohlberg, was critical of his theory of moral development

as she felt it was more applicable to males than females.

Reminder: Kohlberg’s theory did not delineate the notion that women place more emphasis on caregiving and personal responsibility than do me

________ helped to popularize the multicultural counseling movement.

The civil rights movement

Reminder: intercultural counseling means the same thing as multicultural counseling

When a counselor speaks of a probable outcome in a case, he or she is technically referring to

the prognosis (refers to the probability that one can recover from a

condition)

When a counselor speaks of what he or she believes must transpire from a psychotherapeutic standpoint, he or she technically is referring to

recommendations.

One difficulty with formal diagnosis is that a given diagnosis does not imply or recommend a given treatment process.

The 1971 famous Stanford Prison experiment conducted by Philip Zimbardo demonstrated that

people conform to social roles.

Reminder: (APA) ruled the experiment as ethical, but today this would not be the case.

A wealth of research demonstrates that

in most instances, clients prefer a counselor of the same race and a similar cultural background.

The frustration-aggression theory is associated with

John Dollard and Neal Miller

A popular cognitive consistency or balance theory in social psychology is ________ cognitive dissonance theory.

Festinger’s

Reminder: The concept of balance theory suggests that people strive for consistency/balance in terms of their belief systems. Simply put, individuals attempt to reduce or eliminate inconsistent or incompatible actions and beliefs

Leon Festinger, in 1957, suggested that individuals are motivated to reduce tension and discomfort, thus putting an end to the dissonance

Culture is really a set of rules, procedures, ideas, and values shared by members of a society. Culture is said to be normative. This implies that

culture provides individuals with standards of conduct.

A statistical norm measures actual conduct, while a cultural norm

describes how people are supposed to act

Reminder: A statistical norm measures actual conduct, while a cultural norm describes the expectations of how one should act. 

Mores are beliefs and social customs

regarding the rightness or wrongness of behavior.

Reminder: Mores develop as a given group decides what is good and bad for the welfare of the people. People are generally punished for violating the mores; Mores and Morals both begin with “M”

 ________ was the first pioneer to focus heavily on sociocultural issues.

Frank Parsons, the father of guidance

He wrote: Choosing a Vocation

A counselor who is part of a research study will be counseling clients in the polar regions and then at a point near the equator. Her primary concern will be

national culture and ecological culture

Biological similarities and sameness are indicated by

universal culture

Reminder: a multicultural counselor will always keep in mind that he or she—like the client—is a product of universal culture. 

Early vocalization in infants

is nearly identical in all cultures around the globe

Reminder: The cultural environment then strengthens certain verbalizations via the process of reinforcement. The first word usually is spoken after approximately one year of life. The child may use one- or two-word phrases (e.g., “me eat” or “I Betty”) initially. These are known as “holophrases.” Initially, the child’s language is egocentric. By the fourth year most children can construct simple sentences

In the 1920s, Emory Bogardus developed a social distance scale, which evaluated

how an individual felt toward other ethnic groups

Reminder: Ethnicity can be defined as that which pertains to a large group of individuals who are categorized by national, religious, linguistic, or cultural attributes. Measurement of attitudinal attributes began in the 1920s.

Wanting to keep a social distance from a certain group of people is seen as a form of prejudice

According to the foot-in-the-door compliance technique, which has two distinct steps, a counselor who needs to make a home visit to a resistant client’s home

should ask to come in the home.

Reminder: Memory device — Fraser & Freedman start with F like the word “foot” does; Fraser and Freedman conducted an experiment with housewives to test asking for a small favor and having a better chance of getting a person to say “yes” when you ask for a bigger favor.

Momentum of compliance

Most countries have an official language, a stated viewpoint, and a central government. This is reflected mainly by

national culture

Whereas a culture is defined primarily via norms and values, a society differs from a culture in that a society

is a self-perpetuating independent group which occupies a definitive territory.

Reminder: Cultures operate within societies; however, all members of a given society may not share the same culture.

Ethnocentrism

uses one’s own culture as a yardstick to measure all others

Reminder: Ethnocentrism conveys the notion that one’s own group is superior

All of these statements are ethnocentric except

The Gross Domestic Product in the United States exceeds the figure in Mexico.

Reminder: Ethnocentrism is based on opinion

Ethnocentrism

promotes a sense of patriotism and national sovereignty.

promotes stability and pride, yet danger in the nuclear age.

Reminder: ethnocentrism is truly a universal phenomenon in which an ethnic group tries to prove it is superior

the term acculturation on exams related to multicultural studies. The term suggests that ethnic and racial minorities integrate or adopt cultural beliefs and customs from the majority or dominant culture.

Assimilation is said to occur when the individual has such a high level of acculturation that he or she becomes part of the dominant, macro, or majority culture.

Regardless of culture, the popular individual

has good social skills

Social exchange theory postulates that

a relationship will endure if the rewards are greater than the costs.

Reminder: Social exchange theory assumes that rewards are things or factors we like, while costs are things we dislike. The theory assumes that a positive relationship is characterized by “profit.” Reward minus cost equals profit

Balance theory postulates

a move from cognitive inconsistency to consistency.

a tendency to achieve a balanced cognitive state.

Reminder: Inconsistent thoughts are often referred to as “dissonance.” Most counselors agree that dissonance is a distasteful state of mind which the individual will attempt to change. 

Most individuals believe that people whom they perceive as attractive

have other positive traits.

A counselor who works primarily with older adults needs to be aware that

surprisingly, financial security and health are the best predictors of retirement adjustment.

Remember: IQ scores (intelligence) drops markedly as folks age (MYTH) — in reality, IQ scores remain fairly stable over the life span.

Also, the elderly are incapable of sex (MYTH) — the theory of “terminal drop” or “terminal decline” postulates that a dramatic decrease in intellectual functioning does occur, but even according to this theory, it only occurs during the final five years of life. It usually centers around verbal skills.

ALSO: Counseling clients over the age of 65 is often called gerontological counseling or therapy. Helpers often just say I work in “gero” for short

Most experts would agree that a multicultural counselor’s diagnosis

must be done within a cultural context.

A counselor who is seeing a client from a different culture would most likely expect ________ social conformity than he or she would from a client from his or her own culture.

less

Reminder: We demand more rigid standards from our own culture. 

In terms of diagnosis,

a client’s behavior could be sane and appropriate in one culture, yet disturbed and bizarre in another.

Reminder: the concept of “cultural relativism” implies that one’s behavior can only be evaluated in relation to the culture. Behavior in one culture cannot be judged by that which is considered normal in another culture.

In the United States, a frequent practice is to see a perfect stranger for therapy.

In other cultures it would not be the norm to see a stranger and receive pay for providing help.

According to the cognitive dissonance theory of Leon Festinger, a woman has an approach–approach conflict. She has her choice of a beautiful silver watch and an equally stunning gold watch. Both are different brands. She feels the silver model will be perfect for some of her jewelry and outfits while the gold is ideal for other jewelry and modes of dress. She chooses the silver watch

She will read positive reviews on the silver watch—and possibly negative reviews about the gold model—after the purchase to justify her behavior and reduce post-decisional dissonance

A woman who is being robbed

would find that the number of people who would respond to her distress actually decreases as the number of bystanders increases.

Reminder: The number of people who will help a victim in distress decreases, and the time it will take to intervene increases, as the number of bystanders increases. This phenomenon is billed as the bystander effect or bystander apathy. Everybody assumes somebody else will step in and take charge. This is referred to as diffusion of responsibility.

The converse, or helping an individual in distress, is generally called “altruism” or basically an unselfish concern for others. Altruism could conceivably apply in a psychological sense when you are working with groups and a client is the victim of scapegoating and you step in as the leader to emotionally protect this client.

A counselor reading this book says, “I couldn’t care less about passing my comprehensive exam.” This

is an attempt to reduce dissonance by denial, thus minimizing tension.

The statement “Even though my car is old and doesn’t run well, it sure keeps my insurance payments low”

is an attempt to reduce dissonance via consistent cognitions.

In the case of an individual who purchased a $50,000 watch, cognitive dissonance theory postulates that

he or she might ignore positive information regarding other models and secure a lot of information regarding the $50,000 platinum model AND he or she might focus heavily on negative information regarding rival models

Reminder: cognitive dissonance theory predicts that the person will look for things which are consistent with his or her behavior. Counselors should keep in mind that consistency is considered a desirable personality trait in most cultures.

In the United States, middle- and upper-class citizens seem to want a counselor who

helps them work it out on their own.

Reminder: The theory here is that most middle- and upper-class citizens are taught that independence is a virtue. The person would not want to be dependent on a therapist, parents, or others, as is implied in the other choices

In a traditional culture which places a high premium on authority figures,

all of the above

Reminder: An active-directive model works best with persons who respond well to an authority figure

Cognitive dissonance research deals mainly with

cognition and attitude formation.

Parents who do not tolerate or use aggression when raising children produce

less-aggressive children.

Reminder: Children who are abused by their parents are more likely to be abusers when they have children of their own. Remember that counselors are legally required to report child abuse, neglect, sexual abuse, or exploitation. 

Overall, Rogerian person-centered counseling

has been used more than other models to help promote understanding between cultures and races.

Reminder: Person-centered therapy is nonjudgmental and thus is considered a superb modality for multicultural/multiracial usage

In intercultural/multicultural counseling the term therapeutic surrender means

the client psychologically surrenders himself or herself to a counselor from a different culture and becomes open with feelings and thoughts. - TRUST!

The literature suggests these factors as helpful in promoting therapeutic surrender:

rapport, trust, listening, conquering client resistance, and self-disclosure

In terms of trust and therapeutic surrender,

all of the above

Tip: One good technique is to steer clear of slang or fancy therapeutic jargon and try to speak in a clear, concise, and direct manner. 

A(n) ________ client would most likely have the most difficulty with self-disclosure when speaking to a white counselor.

African American male

Reminder: Males in general sometimes have difficulty expressing feelings.

According to assimilation-contrast theory, a client will perceive a counselor’s statement that is somewhat like his or her own beliefs as even more similar (i.e., an assimilation error). He or she would perceive any dissimilar attitudes as

even more dissimilar (i.e., a contrast error).

Reminder: In any case, if a counselor is highly regarded and trustworthy, his or her statements will be better accepted than if the helper has poor credibility.

When counseling a client from a different culture, a common error is made when negative transference

is interpreted as therapeutic resistance.

Counselors who have good listening skills

facilitate therapeutic surrender

Counselors can more easily advise

clients from their own culture

It’s easiest to empathize with

a client who is similar to you.

In cross-cultural counseling, structuring is very important. This concept asserts that counseling is most effective

For reference, In the context of multicultural counseling, structure indicates that the counselor will explain the role of the helper as well as the role of the helpee. This helps ward off embarrassment and further enhances the effectiveness of the counseling process

when the nature and structure of the counseling situation is described during the initial session

A client from another culture will

speak to the counselor differently from the way he or she would when speaking to someone of his or her own background.

An African American client tells a white counselor that the dance she went to last night was “bad,” though she literally means it was good. The counselor’s misunderstanding could best be described as a

connotative error.

Reminder: According to some experts in this field, the three major barriers to intercultural counseling are culture-bound values, class-bound values, and language differences. Connotation applies to the emotional content of a word, which is different from the true or dictionary definition. — semantic differential = tendency for words to convey different connotations

A monolingual U.S. counselor

speaks only English

Reminder: “mono” means “one”

 ________ was a prime factor in the history of multicultural counseling.

The 1954 Supreme Court decision, Brown v. the Board of Education, which outlawed public school segregation

Multicultural counseling promotes

eclecticism

Multicultural counselors often adhere to the emic viewpoint. The word emic

is a “culture-specific” perspective, from the word phonemic meaning sounds in a particular language.

Reminder: can be defined as an insider’s perception of the culture. A researcher or counselor using an emic frame of reference wants to know what somebody participating in the culture thinks. The emic viewpoint emphasizes that each client is an individual with individual differences, while the etic view adheres to the theory that humans are humans—regardless of background and culture—thus, the same theories and techniques can be applied to any client the counselor helps

the “etic” counselor emphasizes the sameness among clients—a universalism perspective—that literally transcends cultural boundaries

A practicum supervisor who says to his or her supervisee “You can deal with your Asian American clients the same as you deal with anybody else” is espousing the

etic viewpoint, derived from the term phonetic referring to sounds that remain the same in any language.

Reminder: “etic,” which sports a “t,” and sounds remarkably similar to “etiquette,” is similar in the sense that when practicing etiquette we practice good manners with all individuals whether they are African American, white, Asian American, and so on. Likewise, counselors who espouse the etic viewpoint will use the same strategies and techniques on virtually any client

The statement “All humans, from all cultures, all races, and all nations, are more alike than different” is based on the

etic viewpoint.

A counselor is confronted with his or her first Native American client. Native Americans (also called American Indians on some exams) are descendants of the original inhabitants of North America. After the initial session, the counselor secures several books which delineate the cultural aspects of Native American life. She discovers that there are over 560 federally recognized tribes in the United States. This counselor most likely believes in the

emic viewpoint.

An Asian American counselor says to an African American client, “If you’re unhappy with the system, get out there and rebel. You can change the system.” This is the ________ viewpoint for coping with the environment.

alloplastic

Reminder: The “autoplastic” view asserts that change comes from the self such as thoughts and behaviors, while the “alloplastic” conceptualization is that the client can cope best by changing or altering external factors in the environment

A young Latino male is the victim of discrimination. His counselor remarks, “I hear what you are saying and I will help you change your thinking so this will not have such a profound impact on you.” In this case the counselor had suggested

an autoplastic method of coping.

You are counseling a client from a different culture. She cannot move her right arm, but has been examined by some of the finest physicians and they cannot find any physical reason for her condition. The irony is that she is there to work on some personal issues but states forthrightly that the total lack of mobility in her arm does not bother her and thus is not an issue to deal with in the counseling sessions. The most likely explanation would be

she has a conversion disorder with la belle indifference.

Reminder: Clients with conversion disorders sometimes display la belle indifference also called belle indifference, meaning they do not seem to be bothered or concerned by their condition

Positive transference is to love or affection, as negative transference is to hostility, and as ambivalent transference is to

uncertainty

Reminder: Ambivalent transference, a term popular in multicultural counseling settings, occurs when the client rapidly shifts his or her emotional attitude toward the counselor based on learning and experiences related to authority figures from the past.

The word personalism in the context of multicultural counseling means

all people must adjust to environmental and geological demands.

Reminder: Personalism implies that the counselor will make the best progress if he or she sees the client primarily as a person who has learned a set of survival skills rather than as a diseased patient

A client whose counselor pushes the alloplastic viewpoint may believe his counselor is simply

attacking the system

Good multicultural counselors are

flexible

Reminder: Every brand of therapy has its merits and its disadvantages: It is therefore best if the multicultural counselor remains flexible.

A client remarks, “Hey, I’m African American and it’s nearly impossible to hide it.” This is illustrative of the fact that

race is not the same as ethnicity

Experts in the field of multicultural counseling feel that the counselor’s training

should be broad and interdisciplinary.

Doing cross-cultural counseling

makes counselors increasingly aware of cultural differences

Floyd Henry Allport created the concept of social facilitation. According to this theory, an individual who is given the task of memorizing a list of numbers will

perform better if he or she is part of a group

In social psychology, the sleeper effect asserts that

after a period of time, one forgets the communicator but remembers the message.

Reminder: the sleeper effect asserts that when you are attempting to change someone’s opinion the change may not occur immediately after the verbal exchange; when a counselor provides guidance to a client a delay may occur before the client accepts the message. The communication may have more impact after some time has passed.

In 1908, books by ________ helped to introduce social psychology in America.

McDougall and Ross

________ is associated with obedience and authority.

Stanley Milgram, a noted psychologist,

Milgram discovered that normal people would administer seemingly fatal electric shocks to others when instructions to do so were given by a person perceived as

an authority figure

The tendency to affiliate with others

is highest in firstborns and only children.

Reminder: Research done by Stanley Schachter

A client tells his counselor that he has a choice of entering one of two prestigious PhD counseling programs. Kurt Lewin would call this an

approach–approach conflict.

Reminder: in the approach-approach format, the individual is presented with two equally attractive options simultaneously

When a person has two negative alternatives, it is called an

avoidance–avoidance conflict.

Reminder: conflict in which both choices are undesirable

A male client tells his counselor that he is attracted to “a gorgeous woman who is violent and chemically dependent.” This creates an

approach–avoidance conflict.

Reminder: approach–avoidance conflict presents a positive factor (a woman he finds attractive) with a negative factor (she is a substance abuser prone to violent behavior) — toughest type of conflict

According to Charles Osgood and Percy Tannenbaum’s congruity theory, a client will accept suggestions more readily if

the client likes the counselor.

— Balance theory

An adept multicultural counselor

usually supports the salad bowl model of diversity

which says people are mixed together, but like lettuce and tomatoes in a salad, they retain their unique cultural identity

A classic experiment in social psychology was conducted by the social psychologist Muzafer Sherif et al. at a boys’ summer camp near Robbers’ Cave, Oklahoma. The important finding in this study was that

a cooperative, or so-called superordinate, goal attained only by working in a joint manner, can bring two hostile groups together, thus reducing competition and enhancing cooperation.

this study set up two distinct groups of 11-year-old boys who were hostile toward each other. The study concluded that the most effective way to reduce hostility between groups was to give them an alternative, a superordinate goal, which required a joint effort and could not be accomplished by a single group

Sex-role stereotyping would imply that

a male counselor would rate a female client’s emotional status differently than he would a male client’s AND female clients are treated the same as male clients

Reminder: According to studies, male and female counselors can display prejudice toward women.

The statement “whites are better than African Americans” illustrates

racism

In terms of research related to affiliation

all of the above

Reminder: Researchers in the field of counseling are somewhat critical of most psychosocial experiments since the experimental situations are often artificial and the studies lack external validity, which is the ability to help understand behavior outside the experimental setting

Six persons attend a counseling group. After the group, five members praise the merits of a group activity assigned by the group leader. The sixth person, who has heard the opinion of the other five people, felt the activity was useless and boring. According to studies on social behavior, about one third of the time the sixth individual would most likely tell the other five that

he too felt the group activity was very helpful.

Reminder: This question is illustrative of an Asch situation. Experiments by Solomon Asch and Muzafer Sherif would predict that the person would most likely “sell out” and agree with the other five.

The client who would most likely engage in introspection would be a

52-year-old, single, African American male school administrator.

Reminder: The key to this question is to focus on social class rather than acculturation (i.e., integrating one’s own cultural beliefs and behaviors with the dominant culture), minority status, or sex

A Japanese client who was reluctant to look you in the eye during her counseling session would most likely be displaying

normal behavior within the context of her culture.