Do family therapists' family ideologies affect their impressions of families?

The impact of patients' and family therapists' own family values on judgments about a help-seeking family was investigated via a clinical analogue. Fifty family-oriented clinicians were classified as either traditional or nontraditional in their beliefs about the family. Clinical judgments were rendered of a hypothetical family in which the parents' verbalizations were suggestive of either traditional or nontraditional family values. Little diagnostic value-bias was detected, thereby failing to establish the operation of political bias in the family treatment setting.