Cultural rupture-resolution: the role of cultural comfort, cultural humility and cultural opportunities

Decades of research underscore the importance of multicultural competence in psychotherapy. However, less is known about how therapists respond to cultural ruptures and how multicultural processes are reflected in these moments. Previous literature suggests that responding to cultural ruptures may involve using relational repair strategies while attuning to cultural processes, but few studies have examined this empirically. The present study addresses this gap by examining associations between rupture and repair variables and MCO variables within the context of video-simulated cultural ruptures. A total of 88 therapists-in-training viewed cultural rupture video vignettes, and their responses were subsequently rated for both MCO process variables and rupture and repair strategies. Findings indicate that expressive repair strategies (i.e. repair–exploration and repair–acknowledgement) were positively associated with cultural humility and cultural opportunities, whereas task-oriented repair strategies were not associated with MCO variables. Cultural comfort was not significantly related to repair strategy use. In addition, responses varied across vignettes, with different videos eliciting distinct patterns of MCO and repair processes. These findings suggest that therapist responses to cultural ruptures may reflect context-dependent configurations of relational and multicultural processes. Implications for multicultural training and clinical practice are discussed, and directions for future research are proposed.