About

Dennis M. Kivlighan is a Professor and the Interim Chair of the Department of Human Development at the University of Maryland. He holds a Ph.D. in Counseling Psychology from Virginia Commonwealth University and a B.S. in Psychology from the College of William and Mary. His research interests focus on process and outcome in counseling and psychotherapy groups, including the therapy relationship aspects such as working alliance, real relationship, and transference-countertransference. He applies dyadic methods and longitudinal analyses to study these areas and has contributed significantly to understanding the therapeutic process. Kivlighan is the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Counseling Psychology and has served as a former editor of Group Dynamics: Theory, Research and Practice. He is a Fellow of several divisions of the American Psychological Association, including the Society of Counseling Psychology, Society of Group Psychology and Group Psychotherapy, and Society for the Advancement of Psychotherapy. His professional accolades include the Arthur Teicher Group Psychologist of the Year award, the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society of Counseling Psychology, and the Lifetime Mentoring Award. Throughout his career, he has published over 165 articles in refereed journals and has been involved in various research projects and grants related to counseling, psychotherapy, and training.

Research topics

• Psychology
• Social psychology
• Clinical psychology
• Psychotherapist
• Medicine
• Psychiatry
• Developmental psychology
• Medical education

Selected publications

• Charles J. Gelso (1941–2025).

  American Psychologist · 2026-04-06

  articleSenior author

  Charlie Gelso (born November 27, 1941, in Pittston, Pennsylvania; died October 7, 2025, in Laurel, Maryland) was a transformative figure in counseling psychology. He was a gifted scholar, teacher, and mentor. Charlie's scholarship centered on the psychotherapy relationship. Another major strand of Charlie's influence was methodology and research training. His widely cited work clarified core research design choices and introduced his popular "bubble hypothesis," the idea that solving one methodological problem invariably creates another. Charlie was one of the first to study the effects of time-limited counseling, developing models and measures that facilitated subsequent research. Charlie Gelso's legacy endures in the journals he helmed, the methodological clarity he modeled, and the many mentees he launched. Above all, he taught that psychotherapy's real relationship-grounded in genuineness and human connection- belongs at the center of the therapy process. It was also at the center of Charlie's personal and professional life, and we are eternally grateful to have had a real relationship with him. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

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• CALL FOR PROPOSALS <i>Small Group Research</i> 2028 REVIEW, THEORY, METHODOLOGY ISSUE

  Small Group Research · 2026-02-01

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Predicting treatment process and outcome using temporal dynamics of supervisory working alliance

  Psychotherapy Research · 2026-03-12

  articleSenior author

  OBJECTIVE: This study examined the temporal dynamics of supervisor- and supervisee-rated supervisory working alliance (SWA) and their relations to treatment process and outcome. METHOD: responsiveness is a negative path, indicating that dyadic SWA perceptions fluctuate around an equilibrium. SWA rupture and repair was operationalized as SWA variability. RESULTS: responsiveness. Clients had higher session evaluation and greater OQ improvement when the supervisory dyads had greater SWA variability. CONCLUSION: Supervisors who maintain a dynamic equilibrium in response to their supervisees' SWA changes may help offer a constructive consultant perspective. SWA variability may reflect in-depth work.

  PublisherDOI

• Therapist trainee experience and client outcome: A within-person analysis of hours of experience, client order, initial client distress, and treatment length.

  Psychotherapy · 2026-01-05

  articleSenior author

  Research does not consistently support the widely held assumption that therapist trainees' skills improve with supervised experience, leading to better client outcomes. The inconsistent findings are limited by methodological constraints. Measures of therapist trainee experience (e.g., training level, years since first client contact) fail to capture clinical experience accurately. Therefore, we operationalized therapist trainees' experience as the total hours of previous client contact under clinical supervision at the time of outcome assessment. We examined how therapist trainees' client contact hours (at the within-person level), client order, initial client distress, and treatment length are associated with client distress in the subsequent week. We used dynamic structural equation modeling to analyze longitudinal data with 1,125 outcome assessments from 192 clients and 45 doctoral-level therapist trainees, collected over 16 years. Therapists received weekly individual supervision and biweekly group supervision. Results indicated that at the within-person level, therapist trainee experience was modestly associated with reduced client distress, particularly for clients with higher initial distress. At the between-person level, therapist trainees' experience had a stronger impact on outcomes in shorter treatment lengths. Findings reveal the complexity of the therapist trainee experience-client outcome relationship and suggest that the effects of therapist trainee experience are contingent on other variables. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

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• Effectiveness and composition of emotional cultivation groups for Taiwanese youth with emotion regulation difficulties

  Psychotherapy Research · 2026-02-05

  article

  OBJECTIVE: This study examined (a) the effectiveness of emotional cultivation counseling groups (i.e., BEAR groups) for Taiwanese youth with emotion regulation difficulties and (b) whether group composition (i.e., heterogeneity of friendship approach and avoidance goals) is associated with intervention outcomes. METHOD: Conducted in real-world school settings, 232 students referred by teachers or counselors were randomized to either 20 BEAR groups or a waitlist control condition. BEAR groups, delivered in a semi-structured group format, integrated Eastern and Western perspectives on emotional cultivation and regulation to support relational development. Latent variables representing Relational Problem-Solving and Closeness to Others were assessed at pretest and at a three-month follow-up. Intervention effects were analyzed using the complex survey module in Mplus 8 (Muthén & Muthén, 2017), accounting for partial nesting. RESULTS: Compared to controls, BEAR participants showed significantly greater improvements in Relational Problem-Solving but not in Closeness to Others. Moreover, among BEAR participants, greater heterogeneity in pretest Friendship-Approach goals was associated with greater change in Relational Problem-Solving. CONCLUSION: These findings suggest that BEAR groups may represent a promising, culturally grounded intervention for addressing emotional difficulties among Taiwanese youth, and that groups heterogeneous in friendship approach goals may enhance relational outcomes.

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• Cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression dynamics predict changes in distress across psychotherapy: Findings from the PsyCARE study

  Psychotherapy Research · 2026-02-20

  article

  OBJECTIVE: Few studies have examined whether changes in emotion regulation strategies-cognitive reappraisal (CR) and expressive suppression (ES)-serve as change mechanisms across different psychological treatments. Therefore, we tested whether increases in CR and decreases in ES predict subsequent reductions in client distress and whether these processes are specific to Cognitive Behavioral treatments or represent non-specific mechanisms of change. METHOD: Participants were 1,116 adult outpatients (76.8% female; M = 34.2, SD = 10.8) treated by 947 licensed psychotherapists in the Italian PsyCARE study. Clients completed the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (Gross & John, 2003), the Patient Health Questionnaire-9, and the Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7 at baseline, session 12, and 6-month follow-up. Polynomial regression and response surface analysis examined whether changes in CR and ES predicted later changes in distress, adjusting for therapist clustering. RESULTS: Increases in CR and decreases in ES significantly predicted subsequent reductions in client distress. Response surface analysis showed that clients who increased CR and decreased ES by an equal amount exhibited the greatest decreases in distress. These effects were not moderated by treatment type, suggesting that CR and ES are non-specific mechanisms of change. CONCLUSION: The findings suggest that improving CR while reducing ES predicts improved outcomes across treatment approach, supporting emotional regulation as a general transdiagnostic mechanism of change.

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• Moderating effects of attachment anxiety and avoidance on the relationship between working alliance subscales and therapy outcome.

  Journal of Counseling Psychology · 2026-03-19

  articleSenior author

  This study investigated the moderating effects of client attachment anxiety and avoidance on how client-rated working alliance subscales (goal, task, and bond) in one session predicted the client functioning the following week. The sample included 137 clients working with 17 therapists in a university clinic for a total of 5,356 psychodynamic psychotherapy sessions. The client attachment was measured before the first session. Each week, clients rated their overall functioning in the past week as therapy outcome and rated working alliance for each session. Across all sessions, the attachment anxiety level had a significant moderating effect on how agreement on goals in one session predicted client functioning in the following week. For clients with high attachment anxiety, when they perceived high goal agreement in a session, they reported poor functioning the following week. This counterintuitive result has important implications for practice and research: (a) Practitioners should assess and consider client's attachment anxiety levels in the goal-setting process and not simply strive for verbal goal agreement for clients with high attachment anxiety. (b) The goal agreement measurement in the working alliance subscale is limited. The goal-setting theories are reviewed to discuss the "what" (goals) and "how" (to set goals) for goal setting in therapy. No other significant moderating effects were found for attachment anxiety and avoidance on the relationships between working alliance subscales and therapy outcome. The meaning of these nonsignificant results was also discussed within the context of sample characteristics in this study. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

  PublisherDOI

• Heterogeneity of emotional cultivation strategies as a group composition variable among Taiwanese youth.

  Journal of Counseling Psychology · 2026-04-13

  article

  This study examined the role of group composition in an emotional cultivation intervention (i.e., BEAR group: Belief reframing, Emotional consequence awareness, Action control, and Regulating emotion flexibly through culturally appropriate strategies), a manualized group counseling and psychotherapy model developed for Taiwanese youth's emotion regulation difficulties. Guided by the Eastern philosophical principle of the "unity of knowing and acting" (Y. Wang, 1527/2006), BEAR groups integrate understanding emotion connotations (knowing) and cultivating emotion strategies (acting) as interdependent mechanisms of change. Participants were 638 Taiwanese youth across 109 BEAR groups. Group composition was assessed using the group-level mean and standard deviation of group member understanding emotion connotations and cultivating emotion strategies, the theorized change mechanisms in BEAR groups, as well as internalizing and externalizing behavioral problems, which served as nonmechanistic variables. Outcomes included depression, social support, and school adjustment. Greater heterogeneity in cultivating emotion strategies predicted greater decreases in depression and increases in social support. Contrary to our hypothesis, lower heterogeneity (i.e., greater homogeneity) in internalizing problems was associated with larger decreases in depression. These findings underscore the value of grounding composition decisions in change mechanisms rather than symptom indicators. The results provide practical implications for group leaders in forming effective BEAR groups and suggest that cultivating emotion strategies heterogeneity may enhance intrapersonal and interpersonal adjustment. More broadly, this study demonstrates how a culturally grounded, evidence-based intervention in Taiwan informs group counseling and psychotherapy research and practice across cultural contexts. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

  PublisherDOI

• CALL FOR PROPOSALS <i>Small Group Research</i> 2027 REVIEW, THEORY, METHODOLOGY ISSUE

  Small Group Research · 2025-01-13

  articleOpen access
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Leader and group effects for outcomes in emotional cultivation groups for youth.

  Journal of Counseling Psychology · 2025-06-02

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Group leaders typically lead only one group; consequently, leader and group effects are often confounded in group counseling research. Therefore, we do not know the relative importance of leaders and groups in promoting group member outcome. We address this limitation by identifying the sizes of leader and group effects in a large sample of emotional cultivation groups for Taiwanese youth, where group leaders led multiple groups. Data from 1,495 participants (56.2% boys and 43.8% girls) from 255 emotional cultivation groups were analyzed. A four-level hierarchical model (time of assessment nested within group members, who were nested within groups, that were nested within group leaders) was used to partition the data. Results indicated significant improvement from pretest to follow-up in 20 out of 21 outcomes assessed. The suppression aspect of Emotion Regulation Questionnaire did not change significantly between pretest and follow-up. Average leader and group intraclass correlations were 0.07 and 0.06, respectively, collectively explaining 13% of the variance in group member outcomes. A cluster analysis, using leader and group intraclass correlations, identified a two-cluster solution: Flexible Cognitive, Emotional, and Relational Strategies (33% of outcomes) and School, Social, and Emotional Adjustment (66.67% of outcomes). In the Flexible Cognitive, Emotional, and Relational Strategies cluster, both leader and group effects were significant, with the group effect three times larger than the leader effect. In the School, Social, and Emotional Adjustment cluster, both effects were also significant, but the leader effect was five times greater. Both the group that a child/youth belongs to and the group's leader influence improvement to an equal extent. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

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Frequent coauthors

• Clara E. Hill

  University of Maryland, College Park

  49 shared

• Charles J. Gelso

  University of Maryland, College Park

  20 shared

• Gianluca Lo Coco

  Marconi University

  19 shared

• Michael J. Patton

  University of Alabama at Birmingham

  17 shared

• Jill D. Paquin

  Chatham University

  16 shared

• Joseph R. Miles

  University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

  15 shared

• Salvatore Gullo

  University of Palermo

  14 shared

• Karen D. Multon

  Pearson (United States)

  14 shared

Education

• MS & PhD/Counseling psychology, Psychology

  Virginia Commonwealth University

  1982

• BS/Psychology

  College of William and Mary

  1975

Awards & honors

• Arthur Teicher Group Psychologist of the Year (2013)
• Lifetime Achievement Award (2012) from the Society of Counse…
• Lifetime Mentoring Award (2009) from the Society of Counseli…
• Fulbright Teaching/Research Fellowship (2015), University of…