Ppp. Machado et al., Emotion recognition in psychotherapy: Impact of therapist level of experience and emotional awareness, J CLIN PSYC, 55(1), 1999, pp. 39-57
Accurately identifying another person's emotional state is an ability that
may be necessary for a psychotherapist to empathize with a patient and that
may be required for obtaining valid and reliable psychotherapy process rat
ings in research. Accuracy of identifying emotions and of rating emotional
intensity expressed by a patient was studied in a comparison of 36 experien
ced therapists and 36 undergraduate psychology students who intended to bec
ome psychotherapists. Representative segments of a psychotherapy session we
re presented in one of three ways to tease apart the relative importance of
verbal and nonverbal cues in making accurate ratings. Accuracy was judged
against ratings supplied by two experienced and prestigious clinicians base
d on the same therapy sample. Results indicated that although therapists we
re more accurate than nontherapists in identifying emotions, they did not d
iffer in the accuracy of rating emotional intensity. Moreover. accuracy of
ratings was found to be less reliant on verbal cues among psychotherapists
than among nontherapists. Finally. levels of participants' personal awarene
ss of their own emotions had a positive impact on the accuracy of identifyi
ng specific emotions but not on the accuracy of rating their intensity. (C)
1999 John Wiley a Sons, Inc.