An Exploration of Client Experiences in a Combination of Individual and Family Counseling

Researchers explored client meaningful experiences in a combination of individual and family counseling in this constructivist phenomenological study. The sample consisted of seven participants (three families) who ranged in age from 10 to 51. Participant racial/ethnic identities included two White, two biracial, and two Black. Participant gender identities included five females and two males. Two interviews per client family (one interview following an individual counseling session and another following a family counseling session) revealed the following themes: (a) understanding self and others, with subthemes gaining understanding and acceptance of self, better understanding of each other and how to be with each other, and learning coping skills; (b) setting and working toward goals; (c) processing issues in session, with subthemes counseling is not always what we want, but is maybe what we need, and tension of family versus individual counseling; (d) the counselor; and (e) play.

Black Intragroup Empathic Responding to Police Interracial Violence: Effects of Victim Stereotypicality and Blacks’ Racial Identification

Despite the public outrage in response to police violence against unarmed Black men, work on the psychological dynamics of reactions to these incidents is relatively rare. The present research examined whether empathy for a Black male victim of White police interracial violence would vary as a function of victim stereotypicality (stereotypic/counterstereotypic) and Black participant racial identity. In Study 1, 140 Black participants were recruited from Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk). As hypothesized, Black participants low in racial identification reported less empathy for the stereotypical relative to the counterstereotypical victim. Those high in racial identification showed relatively high levels of empathy regardless of the characteristics of the Black victim. Study 2 replicated these effects with 263 Black MTurk participants. This research highlights the value of considering individual differences in the Black observers (racial identification) and the characteristics of Black victims to better understand the psychological processes involved in intragroup responses to police violence.