No abstract

To clarify the role of cognitive bias in manuscript review, designated more and less politically liberal area specialists and nonspecialists were sent either of two versions of a brief empirical report contrasting student political activists' and nonactivists' psychological well‐being. The forms were identical, except that all references to activists and to nonactivists in the results and discussion sections were interchanged. The referees, led to think that they were participating in a study of the usefulness of a closed‐ended manuscript evaluation procedure, were asked to rate the article's publishability and the degree to which specific criteria for scientific quality were met. The main results confirmed the expectation that publication verdicts handed down about a paper containing information of social import are sometimes biased by a reviewer's political orientation. However, the results were largely null regarding the susceptibility to value‐intrusion of scholarly inferences anchored to discrete criteria. Ego involvement is implicated as a mediator of biasing effects in the editorial process.

This study tested the predictive utility of a Client X Modality interactive model for group psychotherapy outcome. Twenty-six mildly distressed college student clients were assigned randomly to a nondirective or to one of three directive groups, all led by the same therapist. Belief in personal internal-external control was the individual-difference predictor, and a multivariable personality battery provided the indexes of psychosocial adjustment. As hypothesized, more internally oriented persons were more therapeutically responsive ito the nondirective than to the directive approach, whereas the reverse tended to be the case among those more externally oriented.* The second author. 5 The nondireotive mode was intended to be leadership sharing and group facilitative but not necessarily Rogerian. That comparable levels of the client-centered conditions (Relationship Inventory; Barrett-Lennard, 1969) were perceived by members of the nondirective and directive groups supports this point.

This study was done to clarify the role of political bias in clinical evaluation. Seventy-one professional counselors were given bogus clinical protocols varying only in the student testee's sex and political inclination. The subjects, led to believe that they were participating in a survey aimed at generating normative data, were asked to infer the psychological status of the testee. The less (but not the more) liberal examiners attributed significantly greater psychological maladjustment to the left politically active female client than to her male counterpart. The finding is interpreted as bolstering the position of Szasz and others that conventional ideologies are strengthened by certain moral-political consequences of mental health practice. In so doing, it underscores the potential contribution of an empirical social psychology of clinical practice.

The desirability of continuing education and training for school counselors is well recognized (Ohlsen, 1969). According to the Commission on Guidance in American Schools (Wrenn, 1962), the school counselor should "consider professional updating a continuous process . , . and . . . attempt to understand himself better through counseling or other professional help [pp. 180-181]." The recurrent upheavals within the youth culture in the ensuing decade underscore the relevance of the Commission's charge.Consistent with this view, O'Hara (1968) pointed out the responsibility of counseling educators to cooperate with school officials in providing postgraduate on-the-job monitoring of former students: "That counseling educators should know what their graduates are doing and provide them with opportunities for further professional growth is obvious [p. 213]." Gust (1969) believes that on-site supervision of the counselor's care-giving activities could ultimately bolster the profession's public image by enhancing the quality of services delivered.However, in-service supervision or training is more frequently preached than practiced and rarely evaluated when it has been implemented. Controlled experimental investigations of its impact are essentially nonexistent, which is unfortunate from an applied as well as a scientific perspective. Financially beleaguered administrators can hardly be faulted for being reluctant to subsidize a new spending adventure whose effective-1 This report is based on data collected as part of an in-service training program for secondary school counselors funded to the second author by the New York State Bureau of Guidance and sponsored by the Capital District Personnel and Guidance Association of Albany. First and second authorship was determined by a coin toss.Requests for reprints should be sent to Stephen I.