The questions were The assessment of attitudes toward diversity among counselor trainees has relied on self-report measures. Implicit measures might offer a valuable addition to self-report because they assess biased attitudes indirectly, do not rely on conscious introspection, and often demonstrate bias that contradicts self-reported attitudes. A sample (N 105) of counselor trainees was assessed with measures of implicit bias toward African Americans and lesbians and gay men and a measure of self-reported multicultural competency. Implicit bias was present among counselor trainees despite high self-reported multicultural competency. In addition, self-reported multicultural competency varied by training level, but implicit bias did not. The results suggest that implicit bias can add to the understanding, assessment, and training of multicultural counselor competency.

Where do you stand?

Some people are explicitly racist, sexist, classist, and/or homophobic and don't care. However, implicit bias will influence one's ability to remain objective. Implicit bias refers to subconscious attitudes or stereotypes that we hold but are not generally aware of. Your explicit belief might be that everyone is equal, but you may find yourself reacting inconsistently, as illustrated by the examples below.

 Do you ever find yourself having reactions you're not proud of? For example:

• Reflexively laughing at an offensive joke.
• Thinking, "That overweight person shouldn't be eating that giant dessert."
• Adjusting your posture or walking speed when you walk past a young male of a different race at night.
• Treating male and female children differently.
• Having a discomfort reaction to gay men displaying signs of affection, or to people who are transgender.

Counselor self-awareness is a general term that refers to being able to understand how personal beliefs and experiences affect how a counselor reacts and responds in a counseling session. Personal biases can influence a counselor's ability to provide high-quality services to couples. Counselors regularly need to examine their own issues and hone their counseling skills to prevent their personal biases from interfering with their counseling sessions. This understanding is crucial for providing the highest quality of services to couples.

1.   What are some examples of personal issues that may influence how you interact with your clients?

1.   How can you prevent these issues from negatively influencing your counseling sessions?

 

 

I would like to have feedbacks on each comments please . 4-5 sentences each number should be fine.

 

1.I think one of the personal issues that might influence how I interact with clients could be difficulty understanding things I have not experienced. For example, I am a white cisgender female and will never know what it is like to be anything else. I plan to prevent that from negatively influencing my sessions by addressing issues of multicultural differences early on in sessions, as our text suggests (Ivey et al. 359). I also believe I will need to try and be very understanding and respectful of differences in sexuality that I am not familiar with. I am not referring to the more straight forward examples of homosexuality and heterosexuality, I have no objections to or trouble understanding those concepts, but I sometimes struggle to wrap my head around concepts like asexuality, demisexuality, and polyamory.

Luckily I have a diverse group of friends and some of them fall into those categories and are willing to talk to me about aspects I do not understand and help make me aware of my relevant implicit biases. (For example, I did not realize you can be both polyamorous and asexual, I assumed those were mutually exclusive.) On the other hand, I think I will need to be aware when working with clients to not try and use them to help me understand their culture unless they are willing to share. In other words, even though I find other views very interesting, I need to remember and respect that not everyone wants to spend all their time educating others about what their life is like!

For the IAT assessment, I chose to take one about religion. I view myself as agnostic and I like to think I view all religions as equally valid. I was curious to see if the assessment confirmed that, and it did. I showed no automatic preference between Islam and Judaism, at least. That was helpful because it allows me to focus on other aspects I know I need to work on, like the ones I mentioned above, but it is also important for me to remember that religion will play a much larger part in some of my clients' lives than it does in my own. 

 

 

2. It doesn't really bother me to speak about this online in class but these aren't things I'd discuss outside of with my best friend.

Do you ever find yourself having reactions you're not proud of? For example:

• Reflexively laughing at an offensive joke. -- Yes
• Thinking, "That overweight person shouldn't be eating that giant dessert."-- Yes
• Adjusting your posture or walking speed when you walk past a young male of a different race at night.--I am very aware of my surroundings gender and race don't bother me
• Treating male and female children differently.-- no
• Having a discomfort reaction to gay men displaying signs of affection, or to people who are transgender. --no but I don't like for my children to see it.

Counselor self-awareness is a general term that refers to being able to understand how personal beliefs and experiences affect how a counselor reacts and responds in a counseling session. Personal biases can influence a counselor's ability to provide high-quality services to couples. Counselors regularly need to examine their own issues and hone their counseling skills to prevent their personal biases from interfering with their counseling sessions. This understanding is crucial for providing the highest quality of services to couples.

1.   What are some examples of personal issues that may influence how you interact with your clients?

I was kidnapped at age 11(escaped after about 30 minutes of him driving around), sexually assaulted twice (not when kidnapped), been divorced, been a single parent, served in the military, suffer from anxiety and depression

1.   How can you prevent these issues from negatively influencing your counseling sessions? I would need to remember my issues aren't their issues and there is no reason to mix them.

My IAT test was about shaved and unshaved women . Apparently I like shaved more because I shave regularly.

 

3. After this lesson, I do notice some reactions that I am not proud of. When I see a child misbehaving in public I become bothersome. I don't know if it has anything to do with the way I was raised but whenever this occurs I expect the parent of the child to take some form of action. At times I am filled with questions such as; how often does it happens?, what is the reasoning for the parent to allow it to happen?, am I the only individual around with these thoughts and feelings?, etc. I have had conversations with other adults and some believe that some parents are afraid of child protective services. Being that I work for an agency pertaining that nature I somewhat understand being that I have ran across some cases that I personally would consider unfound. However, I have a friend that spoils her child to the max! I try not to give my personal input but I do ask questions hoping to make her realize the danger of such actions. There are moments when the subject of race is involved. In my opinion, discipline does is not determined by race.

I took an IAT assessment on race however, I dont feel like I could accurately complete the assessment because most of the questions were against my race. Examples of questions from the assessment are:

Black people should not push themselves where they are not wanted.

Most Black people wont receive support from welfare could get along without it if they tried.

I would not mind if a Black person who had a similar economic background as mine joined my close family by marriage.

Black people living here teach their children values and skills different from those required to be successful in this country.