This analogue study investigated the relationship between attitude similarity and expertness on perceived trustworthiness of a confederate counselor. Undergraduate students (N=51) who scored in the extreme conservative or liberal range of an attitude survey on controversial topics were randomly matched with a confederate counselor whose introductory biographical sketch depicted him or her as attitudinally similar or dissimilar to the subject as well as either experienced/expert or inexperienced/nonexpert in the field. Following a 10-minute meeting between the counselor and the subject which was similar in content to a clinical intake interview, subjects completed the Counselor Rating Form to assess their perceptions of counselor trustworthiness. A three-way analysis of variance was performed with liberal/conservative, attitude similarity, and expertness as the independent factors and perceived trustworthiness as the dependent measure. No significant main effects or three-way interactions were obtained. A significant two-way interaction effect was demonstrated between liberalism/conservatism and expertness/nonexpertness. Conservative subjects rated the nonexpert counselors significantly higher on trustworthiness than did liberal subjects, while liberal and consevative subjects did not differ in trustworthiness ratings of expert counselors. (NB)