Abstract
Compared to clients’ personality and perspectives in psychotherapy (e.g., preferences), less research characterizes mental healthcare providers (i.e., those who have provided direct mental healthcare services). Prior work finds that provider personality configurations are unique relative to other professions, and provider perspectives of clients differ as a function of their own and their client’s personality. The current study expands this literature by utilizing trait and profile-level analyses in a sample of 176 mental healthcare providers (largely US-based). Profile-level findings demonstrated that most providers were high in agreeableness and conscientiousness. When compared to a normative sample, providers demonstrated higher trait-level agreeableness and neuroticism and lower conscientiousness. Providers’ preferences regarding the personality of potential clients were also explored, and these findings indicated that some providers prefer a client with personality traits similar to their own. At the profile level, most providers preferred clients who had (1) high agreeableness and conscientiousness and low neuroticism or (2) average across traits. This preliminary examination can stimulate research regarding the impact of providers’ individual differences on psychotherapy.
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Data Availability
The data accompanying this manuscript can be made available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
Code Availability
Not applicable.
Abbreviations
- Agree/A:
-
Agreeableness
- AIC:
-
Akaike information criteria
- aLMR:
-
Adjusted Lo-Mendell-Rubin
- APA:
-
American psychological association
- BIC:
-
Bayesian information criteria
- BLRT:
-
Bootstrapped likelihood ratio test
- Con/C:
-
Conscientiousness
- d :
-
Cohen’s D, effect size
- Exp:
-
Years of clinical experience
- Ext/E:
-
Extraversion
- LPA:
-
Latent profile analyses
- M :
-
Mean
- Mdn:
-
Median
- Mini-IPIP:
-
Mini-international personality item pool
- NEO-PI-3:
-
NEO-personality inventory-3
- Neur/N:
-
Neuroticism
- Open/O:
-
Openness
- r :
-
Correlation coefficient
- SD:
-
Standard deviation
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We would like to thank Mike Anestis and Randy Arnau for their assistance with this manuscript.
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Both authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection, and analysis were performed by TRR with assistance by JCA. The first draft of the manuscript was written by TRR. JCA: commented on previous versions of the manuscript. Both authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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Rodriguez, T.R., Anestis, J.C. An Initial Examination of Mental Healthcare Providers’ Big 5 Personality and Their Preferences for Clients. Psychol Stud 68, 33–44 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12646-022-00700-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12646-022-00700-8