Abstract

This study examined how one's adherence to Asian cultural values, personality type and previous counseling experience affect his or her perceptions of counselor emphasis of client expression Ninety-three Korean college students read one of the two counseling scripts in which counselor emphasized expression of the client thoughts or emotions, and they rated the counselor in terms of counselor credibility and their willingness to work with the counselor in the future. It was revealed that those without previous counseling experience perceived the counselor who emphasized expression of the client emotions as more helpful for their own concerns in the future, as compared to the counselor who emphasized expression of the client thoughts. It was also revealed that the higher the degree of their adherence to Asian cultural values, the higher their ratings to the counselor. On the other hand, for those with previous counseling experience, the higher the degree of their adherence to Asian cultural value, the higher their ratings to the counselor who emphasized expression of client emotions, but the lower their ratings to the counselor who emphasized expression of client thoughts. In spite of several limitations such as small sample size and analogue design, the findings of the present study have important suggestions for revising counseling theories on the relationship between Asian cultural values and emotional expression and also for taking within-group differences into consideration in conducting cross-cultural counseling research and providing counseling services to the culturally different.