Therapists’ honesty, humor styles, playfulness, and creativity as outcome predictors: A retrospective study of the therapist effect

Abstract

Objective: This study examined whether therapists’ honesty, humor style, playfulness, and creativity would retrospectively predict the outcomes of therapies ended five years earlier. Method: In the Jerusalem-Haifa study, 29 therapists treated 70 clients in dynamic psychotherapy for 1 year. The Outcome Questionnaire 45 scores were collected at five time points. Five years later, the therapists were contacted via email and asked to fill out honesty, humor styles, playfulness, and creativity self-report questionnaires. Five were excluded since they had only one client in the study each. The remaining 24 therapists treated 65 clients out of whom 20 therapists with 54 clients completed the questionnaires. Results: Therapists’ Aggressive Humor Style (AHS) was a significant negative predictor of clients’ symptom change over time. The therapists’ honesty scores were positively correlated with symptom change. That is, higher AHS therapists were more effective, while higher honesty therapists were less effective. Conclusions: Therapists’ inferred traits of Honesty–Humility and AHS may influence the effectiveness of their treatments.

Keywords:

• outcome research
• pychoanalytic/psychodynamic therapy
• therapist effect
• aggressive-humor style
• honesy-humility

Acknowledgements

A previous version of this paper was presented at the 47th International Meeting of the Society for Psychotherapy Research (SPR), June 2016, Jerusalem, Israel.