Counseling psychologists' perceptions of the occurrence and effects of unrealistic expectations about counseling and psychotherapy among their clients.

Counseling psychologists working in practice settings were surveyed regarding their perceptions of the occurrence and effects of their clients' unrealistic expectations about counseling. A majority perceived some of their clients as having unrealistically high expectations about the need for concreteness; the likelihood of counselor nurturance, directiveness, and empathy; and the probability of a beneficial outcome. Most responded that some of their clients have unrealistically low expectations about the need for immediacy, motivation, openness, and responsibility, and the likelihood of confrontation . Psychologists view most unrealistic expectations as having a detrimental effect on counseling. Exceptions that can have a facilitative effect on counseling are unrealistically high client expectations about the needs to be motivated and open and to assume personal responsibility and unrealistically low expectations for counselor directiveness. The construct of expectation has figured prominently in theory and research in most areas of psychology. Kulpe (cited in Boring, 1950, pp. 401^02) and Titchener (1909) conceptualized expectancies as cognitively mediated predispositions to behave in a particular way in a given situation. Almost by definition, therefore, expectations are important influencers of perceptual processes (Postman, 1951), judgmental processes (Festinger, 1957; Kelly, 1955), learning (Overmeier, 1988; Spence, 1956), and behavior (Bandura, 1986; Kirsch, 1985). Counseling psychologists have theorized that clients' expectations exert an important influence on their decision to enter into and remain in therapy and that their expectations moderate the effectiveness of therapy. Robinson (1950) described counseling as a one-to-one social learning relationship in which clients' expectations are one major determinant of their behavior in counseling. Frank (1959) theorized that clients' prognostic expectations exert a placebo effect on treatment success. Apfelbaum (1958) argued that clients' expectations influence both the effectiveness of communication within therapy and the effectiveness of therapy. Goldstein (1962) and Garfield (1978), respectively, suggested distinctions between prognostic and participant role expectations and between pretreatment expectations and expectations derived from actual counseling experience; all of these expectations have been theorized to influence the counseling process and outcome.