Background and aim: Anxiety plays an effective role in the decline of emotional and psychological characteristics. Therefore, the aim of this study was to determine the effectiveness of positive thinking skills teaching on positive and negative meta-emotions and emotional, social and educational adjustment in anxious elementary female students.
Research methods: This study in terms of purpose was practical and in terms of implementation method was quasi-experimental with a pretest and posttest design with a control group. The research population was sixth grade anxious elementary female students who referred to counseling centers of Urmia city in the spring of 2023 year. The study sample was 40 children who were selected by purposeful sampling method and randomly replaced into two groups. The experimental group trained 10 sessions of 90 minutes with positive thinking skills and the control group did not receive any training. The research tools included positive and negative meta-emotions scale (Mitmansgruber et al, 2009), adjustment inventory (Sinha & Singh, 1993) and anxiety inventory (Beck et al, 1988). Research data were analyzed by multivariate analysis of covariance method.
Results: The findings indicated that there was a significant difference between the experimental and control groups in terms of positive and negative meta-emotions and emotional, social and educational adjustment. In the other words positive thinking skills teaching increased positive meta-emotions, decreased negative meta-emotions and improved emotional, social and educational adjustment in anxious elementary female students (P<0.001).
Conclusion: According to the results of this study, planning to use positive thinking skills teaching to increase positive meta-emotions, reduce negative meta-emotions and improve emotional, social and educational adjustment in anxious elementary female students can be useful and effective.