Therapists' Implicit Bias towards Chinese International Students

Abstract

This study examined therapists’ implicit biases toward Chinese international students, including therapists’ unfavorable perception, tendency to pathologize their struggles less than those of others, attribution of issues, and report of their own training sufficiency to work with Chinese international students. One-way ANOVA analyses indicated that therapists perceived Chinese international students more favorable and as experiencing higher symptom severity compared to White American students. The results also suggested that therapists may perceive Chinese international students’ struggles as more attributable to external factors compared to those of White American students. In addition, the results showed that therapists did not perceive their multicultural training as insufficient to work with Chinese international students relative to training to work with American students. Using a variety of outcome measures, this study indicates that therapists do not perceive Chinese international students and Chinese American students differently. The implications of these findings and areas of further research in the field of counseling and implicit bias are discussed.

Keywords: implicit bias, therapist, Chinese, international student