Therapist homophobia, client sexual orientation, and source of client HIV infection as predictors of therapist reactions to clients with HIV

Four hundred twenty-five psychologists received vignettes depicting a male client who was either gay or heterosexual and whose source of HIV infection was sexual contact, a blood transfusion, intravenous drug use, or unspecif ied. Respondents' homophobia and reactions to the client in the vignette we re measured. Canonical correlation analyses revealed that therapist attribu tions of client responsibility for problem cause were predicted by the sour ce of HIV infection and therapist homophobia. In addition, therapists respo nded with less empathy, attributed less responsibility to the client for so lving his problems, assessed the client's functioning to be worse, and were less willing to work with the client when the client's source of HIV infec tion was other than drugs, when the client was gay, and when therapists wer e more homophobic.