Title: Effects of Psychologists’ Image on the Intention to Seek Help From Psychologists Among Japanese University Students: Moderating Effects of Previous Knowledge About Psychologists and Problem Severity
Stream: General Psychology
Presentation Type: Virtual Poster Presentation
Authors:
Yoshikazu Fukui, Konan University, Japan
Takashi Hori, Konan University, Japan
Abstract:
The intention to seek help from psychologists in Japan is low (Fukui & Hori, 2021a), despite the increasing recognition of the social need for psychologists’ services. Moreover, psychologists’ image is less directly related to the intention to seek help from them (Fukui, 2021). This study examined the moderating effects of previous knowledge about psychologists and problem severity in the effect of psychologists’ image on the intention to seek help from psychologists. Gender was also added as an independent variable because we found significant interaction between gender and subject of the consultation (Fukui & Hori, 2021a). We conducted a questionnaire survey with university students (N = 228). The data partly overlapped with Fukui (2021) and Fukui & Hori (2021a, b, c). We conducted multiple regression analyses with gender, previous knowledge about psychologists, psychologists’ image, problem severity, and the first- and second-order interactions among them as independent variables, and the intention to seek help from psychologists for five problems as the dependent variables. The results indicated that gender, previous knowledge about psychologists, and problem severity (excepts for problems of future career) had significant main effects on the intention to seek help from psychologists about each problem. Moreover, the first-order interaction between gender and problem severity for problems of family relationship and personality and between gender and psychologists’ image for problems of interpersonal relationships were significant. The simple slope tests indicated that the positive effect of problem severity was stronger in men, and the positive effect of psychologists’ image was significant only in men. These results indicated that psychologists’ positive image is related to the increased intention to seek help from them in only men. We, therefore, may need to apply different strategy to encourage the intention to seek help from psychologists between men and women.
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