The purpose of this research was to determine the precounseling effects of reputational cues on high school students 1 preferences for counselors and perceptions of the counselor's credibility and interpersonal attractiveness. In two separate but similar experiments, 485 students each saw one of seven experimental conditions presented on videotape. On three videotapes, high school students delivered positive, neutral, or negative reputational cues about a male or a female counselor. Three additional videotapes contained the same positive, neutral, or negative reputational cues and the counselor in a brief counseling session. One videotape featured only the counseling session. Students' preferences for and perceptions of the counselors were significantly different from each other in the positive, neutral, and negative reputational cue conditions. The addition of the counseling session following negative reputational cues resulted in much more positive preferences for and perceptions of the counselors. Reputational cues functioned as an important precounseling variable in that the cues strongly influenced students' preferences and perceptions prior to counseling.

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