Stereotypic views of medical educators toward students with a history of psychological counseling.

Abstract

Research has demonstrated that attitudes toward persons who seek psychological counseling are complex. Both favorable and unfavorable characteristics have been attributed to such individuals. However, generalizability of findings to real world circumstances is limited because conclusions have typically been based on studies using college undergraduates in the role of decision makers. The purpose of our study was to determine the extent to which a history of psychological counseling influenced actual decision makers' perceptions of applicants seeking admission to graduate medical training programs. Five hundred twenty-three training directors in six medical specialties (pediatrics, internal medicine, family medicine, psychiatry, obstetrics and gynecology, and surgery) rated a hypothetical male or female applicant's personal characteristics and indicated whether they would invite the applicant for an interview and accept him or her into the training program. A 2 x 2 x 6 (gender, counseling history, medical specialty) multivariate analysis of variance on 19 dependent variables indicated that residency directors formed a negative stereotype toward applicants with a history of psychological counseling. Subsequent stepwise multiple regression analyses indicated that this stereotype mediated the directors' personnel decisions. Implications of these findings are discussed.

A test of the domain-specific acculturation strategy hypothesis.

“…After combining different grammatical forms of the same word (Fehr, 1988), 160 characteristics remained, including characteristics that align with those previously documented by past research on perceptions of mental illness and professional psychological help seeking (e.g., dependent, emotional, helpless, indecisive, lonely, weak; P. T. King, Newton, Osterlund, & Baber, 1973;Oppenheimer & Miller, 1988;Ryan, Robinson, & Hausmann, 2001;Sibicky & Dovidio, 1986). Participants generated a mean of 7.23 (SD = 2.43) characteristics.…”

Avoidance of Counseling: Psychological Factors That Inhibit Seeking Help

“…This may be because the public in general tends to provide negative descriptions of individuals who experience mental illness (Crisp, Gelder, Rix, Meltzer, & Rowlands, 2000). A history of having sought outpatient mental health services can lead others to have more negative perceptions of the individual (Dovidio, Fishbane, & Sibicky, 1985), including being labeled more awkward, cold, defensive, dependent, insecure, sad, and unsociable (Sibicky & Dovidio, 1986); to view that individual as less in control of her or his emotions (Oppenheimer & Miller, 1988); and to describe the individual as weak or disturbed (King, Newton, Osterlund, & Baber, 1973). Some researchers have also found that being labeled a "former mental hospital patient" led to greater social rejection than was true for someone with no such label (Link, Cullen, Frank, & Wozniak, 1987).…”

Development of the Help-Seeker Stereotype Scale.

“…Oppenheimer and Miller (1988) reported that a sample of 523 training directors of graduate medical training programs tended to perceive students who received psychological counseling as less competent, less reliable, less of a leader, more dependent, more indecisive, and more emotional when compared with students who had not sought help. Sibicky and Dovidio (1986) recruited 136 undergraduates for an experiment in which participants were asked to rate a conversational partner (whom they were told had been recruited either from among students seeking psychological therapy or from students in an introductory psychology course, the independent variable) on 38 bipolar scales (e.g., shy-bold, friendlyunfriendly).…”