Examination of Therapeutic Outcome Knowledge for its Impact on Alliance Ratings

Abstract

The therapeutic alliance between a therapist and a client is believed to be one of the most important parts of the recovery process for clients receiving mental health counseling or therapy (Flückiger, 2018). The therapeutic alliance (also known as the working or helping alliance) is defined as the collaborative relationship between the therapist and the client (Greenson, 1965; Ardito 2011). The concept of alliance can be traced back to Freud (1937), but the term was first used by Greenson in 1965. The alliance is composed of three factors: the degree of consensus between client and therapist about the goal of therapy, the degree of consensus between client and therapist about the tasks of therapy, and the bond between them (Bordin 1994; Horvath & Greenberg, 1989). This study we examined the effect of outcome knowledge on the therapeutic alliance by having participants watch a therapy session clip and experimentally manipulating information about the outcome (i.e., positive, negative, or control) to see whether participants rated the alliance differently depending on the information they received. It was hypothesized that the better outcome scenario will yield higher WAI scores from participants, showing that despite seeing the same video, knowledge of outcome would influence the participant’s opinion on their working alliance.