Why Are Self‐Disclosing Counselors Attractive?

Despite much evidence that counselor self‐disclosure tends to be favorably received by clients, it is unclear which component is more influential: the act of revealing personal information or the information itself, especially when it implies client‐counselor similarity. Based on the social influence model, we contrasted, in a quasicounseling analogue, (a) counselors who disclosed personal material that was similar to the client's problem, (b) counselors who disclosed problematic but irrelevant information, (c) counselors who disclosed nothing, and (d) counselors whose similarity to the client was revealed by someone else. Results show no differential effects on participants' perceptions of the counselor, but postresearch structured interviews indicated that both the disclosures and the similarity information had a considerable impact on participants' experience as clients during the counseling session.