Personal Epistemology and Preference for Counseling

A 3 × 3 mixed factorial design was used to study the relation between a person's dominant way of knowing (rationalism, metaphorism, or empiricism) and the preference for three counseling approaches (rationalist, constructivist, and behavioral). 92 undergraduate Ss completed the Psycho-Epistemological Profile and subsequently evaluated three audiotaped presentations designed to depict counselors who were introducing their counseling approaches to a new client. Across all analyses and dependent measures, participants significantly preferred the counseling approach hypothesized to represent an epistemological match between participant and approach.