Ambivalent sexism, interpersonal relationships and attributional complexity of school counselors in Istanbul

Abstract

Since school counselors became an internal part of the school system, they are responsible for promoting psychological and mental health of their students as well as providing guidance for them. In order to fulfill these responsibilities, school counselors are expected to have empathetic, inclusive, democratic, and egalitarian attitudes. As a repercussion of these required such attitudes, the school counselors are expected to treat every person equally regardless of their gender, race, and lifestyle, and not to discriminate people based on their attributions, and maintain healthy interpersonal relationships within the counseling settings. Thus, the aim of this research is to examine school counselors’ ambivalent sexism in the context of interpersonal relationships and attributional complexity. For this purpose, the relationships between interpersonal relationship dimensions (empathy, approval dependence, trust others, and emotional awareness), ambivalent sexism, and attributional complexity were analyzed. Ambivalent Sexism Inventory, Attributional Complexity Scale, and Scale of Interpersonal Relationship Dimensions were used as instruments. With a sample of 340 school counselors from Istanbul, our findings indicate that ambivalent sexism, interpersonal relationship dimensions, and attributional complexity are correlated with each other on different levels. Furthermore, we found some unexpected results such as a high level of sexism and a low level of empathy accompanied by positive causal relationships between ambivalent sexism and empathy and emotional awareness. In the end, the findings of this study essentially aspire to raise awareness about the issue of sexism among prospective and working school counselors in addition to stressing the need for boosting empathetic attitudes.