The Relationship Between Clients’ Perceptions of Therapists’ Cultural Comfort and Clients’ Hope

Cultural comfort, a component of multicultural orientation (MCO), remains underexplored in relation to client variables such as hope. A culturally comfortable therapist could help clients feel hopeful about reaching therapeutic goals. Being comfortable when discussing culture in treatment could help a client feel more agency and see paths to change with regard to all aspects of their identity. Therefore, we examined the relationship between cultural comfort and hope through two studies. In study 1 ( N = 45), we found cultural comfort to positively predict clients’ hope over the course of psychotherapy, and in Study 2, we found that this relationship held with a sample of Black clients ( N = 147) even when controlling for related MCO variables. These findings speak to the value of cultural comfort as a correlate of client hope. We contextualize these findings in the extant literature with specific attention to integrating multicultural and positive psychological perspectives.