Marianne Welmers

Chapter 3 68 Lopes et al., 2003; Schaffhuser et al., 2014). In a recent study clients were asked to report on their ideal therapists’ personality, and they particularly valued low neuroticism and high conscientiousness (Russell et al., 2020). Conscientiousness refers to being targeted, organized, ambitious, disciplined, and trustworthy (Hoekstra & De Fruyt, 2014), which positively impacts job performance (Barrick & Mount, 1991; Lado, & Alonso, 2017). The review by Ackerman and Hilsenroth (2003) indicated that therapists’ trustworthiness was associated with stronger alliances, which supports the hypothesis that therapists’ conscientiousness may positively impact the alliance. However, a recent study on personal style and personality dimensions of therapists providing individual, group or family therapy found that conscientiousness negatively impacted therapists’ emotional closeness with their clients, possibly hampering the building of a strong alliance (Casari et al., 2019). The remaining three domains of the Big Five Model all represent traits likely to positively impact the alliance. Extraverted individuals enjoy social interaction and tend to be warm (Hoekstra & De Fruyt, 2014), showing higher perceived quality of social relationships (Lopes et al., 2003). Agreeableness refers to being empathic, trusting, sincere, and caring (Hoekstra & De Fruyt, 2014), and is associated with having less conflicts in social relationships (Assendorpf & Wilpers, 1998). Finally, when therapists are more open to experience , they are more flexible, curious, and open to differing values of other people (Hoekstra & De Fruyt, 2014). This may help clients feel more accepted, which in turn can strengthen the therapeutic bond. Chapman et al. (2009) used the Five Factor Personality (FFP) model to investigate the association between individual psychotherapy trainees’ personality and alliance in a sample of 34 trainees and 64 clients. They found that three of the FFP domains were associated with the alliance. Highly neurotic therapist trainees received better alliance reports of their clients, but reported on poorer alliances themselves. Highly agreeable trainees also reported poorer alliances, but this was not the case in client reports. Finally, higher levels of o penness of trainees were associated with less positive client-reports of the alliance. Chapman and others explained these somewhat surprising findings by the low levels of neuroticism and high levels of openness and agreeableness in their trainee sample as compared to national norms. Consequently, lower neuroticism and higher agreeableness and openness represented extreme levels of these traits, which may particularly explain their negative effect on the alliance. In the light of these findings, it is interesting to mention a study by Delgadillo et al. (2020), which showed that anxious and depressed clients individually treated by more agreeable and open psychologists had poorer treatment outcomes. Notably, therapists’ means on these dimensions were exceeding national norms.