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

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

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.

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

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

Social learning theorists

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.

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

The three factors which enhance interpersonal attraction are:

close proximity, physical attraction, similar beliefs.

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.

________ helped to popularize the multicultural counseling movement.

The civil rights movement

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.

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

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

Mores are beliefs and social customs

regarding the rightness or wrongness of behavior.

 ________ 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

Early vocalization in infants

is nearly identical in all cultures around the globe

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

how an individual felt toward other ethnic groups

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.

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.

Ethnocentrism

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

All of these statements are ethnocentric except

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

Ethnocentrism

promotes a sense of patriotism and national sovereignty.

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

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.

Balance theory postulates

a move from cognitive inconsistency to consistency.

a tendency to achieve a balanced cognitive state.

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.

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

In terms of diagnosis,

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

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.

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

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

helps them work it out on their own.

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

all of the above

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.

Overall, Rogerian person-centered counseling

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

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

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

African American male

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).

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

uncertainty

The word personalism in the context of multicultural counseling means

all people must adjust to environmental and geological demands.

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

attacking the system

Good multicultural counselors are

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.

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.

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.

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

avoidance–avoidance conflict.

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.

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.

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

The statement “whites are better than African Americans” illustrates

racism

In terms of research related to affiliation

all of the above

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.

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

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

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.