Speaking to and about patients: predicting therapists' tone of voice.

The tone of voice in which therapists spoke about their alcoholic and/or drugabusing patients was employed to predict the tone of voice in which these same therapists would speak to these same patients. Clips of speech ranging from 10 s to 1 min were content filtered and rated by judges. The results of zero-order correlational analysis, multiple regression, and canonical correlational analysis all showed clearly that predictions of therapists' tone of voice could be made with discriminant as well as predictive validity. Predictions were not only very significant statistically, but of practically meaningful magnitudes. Therapists who spoke about patients in a coldly autocratic way tended to speak to these patients in a coldly professional way. Therapists who spoke about patients in a warm and caring way tended to speak to these patients in a warm and honest tone of voice.