The Impact of Spiritual Intelligence on Students' Positive Thinking (Case Study: Ferdowsi University of Mashhad)

  1- With the advancement of new technology and industry and their related problems, disorders and mental illnesses such as physical problems have increased dramatically, and since the mental health of students is very important, it is essential that the psychological issues of this massive group be addressed. In this regard, psychologists in recent years have attached great importance to the strategic roles that people’s coping styles play in the physical and mental health. Coping styles are the cognitive and behavioral skills that a person employs in order to control overwhelming internal and external welfare needs. One of the styles that have been extended recently is the spiritual and religious coping styles. Spiritual intelligence is one of the concepts that has been proposed and developed in the light of the interest of psychologists in the field of spirituality, and incorporates the spirituality and intelligence structures into a new structure.
Conscious use of spiritual intelligence in a person's life can lead to increased relationship with self, others and the bigger world. Spiritual intelligence is the foundation of individual’s beliefs that affects his/her performance and increases his/her flexibility in the face of problems. In order to fertilize the students’ intelligence, the examination of the relationship between positive thinking and intelligence can be critical, and the spiritual intelligence is not an exception because the spiritual intelligence has the ability to modulate and even remove the effects of mental stresses and feelings of emptiness in students. Hence, with regard to the expanded role of spiritual intelligence in human life and according to the fact that students in each nation construct and develop their future and that their mental health is important, this study aimed to investigate the impacts of spiritual intelligence on positive thinking among the students in Ferdowsi University of Mashhad (FUM).
2- THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
Spiritual intelligence consists of two components: understanding and communicating with the origin of the universe and spiritual life (existence). Understanding and communicating with the origin of the universe means believing in the fact that we human beings are spiritual entities and that the physical life in this world is temporary. Thus, such people understand and believe the superior spiritual being (i.e., the God) and recognize their place in the presence of the God. Spiritual life, as the other component of spiritual intelligence, means that people with high spiritual intelligence have the capacity to devote a part of their daily activities to spiritual practices, which helps understanding ethic issues in their lives. Positive thinking refers to the positive orientation (desired outcome) in interpretations of past and current events and positive expectations of the future in the fields of individual assessment of their abilities to communicate with others, with the God (superior) and with the entire universe (nature). Positive thinking causes people to better develop their skills and to establish constructive interactions with their environment. Considering the purposes of this study, assumptions are as follows:The primary hypothesis: Spiritual intelligence has impact on the positive thinking of FUM students.
The secondary hypothesis 1: Understanding and communicating with the origin of the universe has impact on the positive thinking of FUM students.
The secondary hypothesis 2: The spiritual life has impact on the positive thinking of FUM students.
3- This study is a descriptive-survey study and was done in 2015 in the Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences at Ferdowsi University of Mashhad. The study population included all students (i.e., 1965 individuals) in this faculty who had been studying political sciences, law, accounting, management and economics, in all the three bachelor, master and doctoral programs (in the second semester of 2015-2016). 4- In order to examine the research hypotheses, the results of the multiple regression analysis showed that positive thinking affects the spiritual intelligence, thus, the main hypothesis of this study was confirmed. Additionally, the hypothesis of the impacts of the spiritual life on the positive thinking was confirmed, but the impacts of the understanding and communicating with the origin of the universe (as the other component of spiritual intelligence) on the students’ positive thinking was not confirmed. Although in this study there is a significant relationship between the component of communication with the origin of the universe and positive thinking (according to Pearson’s correlation coefficient), this hypothesis has not been confirmed. These findings clearly indicate that the intervention of the spiritual intelligence increases the positive thinking.
5- CONCLUSIONS and SUGGESTIONS
In general, according to the results obtained in this study, spiritual intelligence is a good predictor for positive thinking among students of Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, and according to these results, we can conclude that people will interpret the life events optimistically based on the spiritual life and enjoyment of spiritual communication and learning the religious teachings. In addition, taking advantage of human virtues and interpretive experiences that reinforce positive emotions, they will become more patient about unpleasant events and deal with problems more logically, resulting in a deep feeling of relaxation.
One of the limitations of this study is that the samples (students) are cross-sectional and specific. Therefore, the results of the study are generalizable only to this population. Hence, more research in this area and in other samples from different classes of the society is recommended. It also recommended that researchers who are interested in the subject of this research study the impacts of spiritual intelligence and positive thinking in other areas such as prevention of depression, anxiety, mental health improvement, academic achievement and coping with stress in students. It is also recommended that training the positive thinking skills and optimism as well as spirituality be done as a regular and compiled program in the form of workshops and training courses for students in order to strengthen and promote feelings of happiness, self-esteem, and enabling people