Cognitive Flexibility and Communication of Therapeutic Conditions
The importance of a counselor's Accurate Empathy, Non-possessive Warmth, and Genuineness (3) has been validated by outcome research in counseling and therapy (1, 3) but less research has been directed toward the relationship between counselors' ability to show these characteristics and their individual personality attributes. The relevance of one personality dimension, cognitive flexibility, to counseling effectiveness has been demonstrated (2, 4). This study investigated the relationship of cognitive flexibility to ability to communicate the therapeutic conditions of Accurate Empathy, Non-possessive Warmth, and Genu~neness of graduate students in a beginning practicum in the counselor training progran~ at the University of Oregon (N = 45; men, 24; women, 21; Mhro = 28.4 yr.; Range, 2147 ) . The Philosophic-mindedness TesP was used to measure cognitive flexibility. It assesses four basic characteristics of flexible thinking: freedom from psychological rigidity, ability to evaluate ideas apart from the source, ability to see issues as many-sided rather than twosided and to develop a relatively large number of alternative viewpoints, and finally, the ability to maintain a tolerance for tentativeness and ambiguity. Levels of the counselor trainees' Accurate Empathy, Non-possessive Warmth, and Genuineness were obtained by having the Deparunent of Psychology and Rehabilitation Research and Training Center, University of Arkansas rate segments of each S's interview with a coached client. The scales used are described in Truax and Carkhuff (1967). The means and standard deviations were for Accurate Empathy, 3.61 2 .54; for Nonpossessive Warmth, 3.73 -+ .32; for Genuineness, 3.34 & .48. No significant Pearson product-moment correlations were found between Philosophicmindedness and Accurate Empathy (r = -.05) and Genuineness (r = .14) but the r was .37 (fl.06) between Philosophic-mindedness and Noo-possessive Warmth, the latter being def~ned by Carkhuff and Berenson as "the initial suspension of potentially psychonoxious feelings, anirudes and judgments by the 'more knowing' person in all significant interactions with 'less knowing' persons" (p. 28). Presumably, then, therapists with greater cognitive flexibility should be expected to be more able to accept a broader range of client's feelings and experiences without evaluation or judgment. If the small relationship could be replicated with trained professionals, indices of cognitive flexibility might become useful in screening applicants for clinical training programs.