An Initial Examination of Mental Healthcare Providers’ Big 5 Personality and Their Preferences for Clients

Compared to clients’ personality and perspectives in psychotherapy (e.g., preferences), less research characterizes mental healthcare providers (i.e., those who have provided direct mental healthcare services). Prior work finds that provider personality configurations are unique relative to other professions, and provider perspectives of clients differ as a function of their own and their client’s personality. The current study expands this literature by utilizing trait and profile-level analyses in a sample of 176 mental healthcare providers (largely US-based). Profile-level findings demonstrated that most providers were high in agreeableness and conscientiousness. When compared to a normative sample, providers demonstrated higher trait-level agreeableness and neuroticism and lower conscientiousness. Providers’ preferences regarding the personality of potential clients were also explored, and these findings indicated that some providers prefer a client with personality traits similar to their own. At the profile level, most providers preferred clients who had (1) high agreeableness and conscientiousness and low neuroticism or (2) average across traits. This preliminary examination can stimulate research regarding the impact of providers’ individual differences on psychotherapy.