The Comparison of the Effectiveness of Fredrickson’s Positive Thinking with Dweck’s Mindset Program on the Copying Styles of Gifted Students with Test Anxiety

The present study aimed to compare the effectiveness of Fredrickson’s positive thinking with Dweck’s mindset program on the copying styles of gifted students.

This is a quasi-experimental with pretest-posttest with control group. The population of the study consisted of all 450 gifted female students in the ninth-grade of Isfahan City, Iran. After screening the students using the Test Anxiety Inventory (TAI), a sample of 45 students, who obtained higher scores, were selected and then randomly divided into two experimental groups, one for Fredrickson’s positive thinking (n=15) and one for Dweck’s mindset program (n=15) and one control group (n=15). Each of the experimental groups received eight sessions of intervention, while no intervention was given to the control group. All participants completed the Ways of Coping Questionnaire at pre-/post-test. Data were analyzed using the MANCOVA and SPSS-22 software’s.

The findings indicated that both of the experimental groups were equally effected in terms of emotion-focused, problem-focused and avoidant coping styles than the control group, and the effects were maintained at follow-up.

Using the Dweck’s mindset program and Fredrickson’s positive thinking, we can improve the copying styles of students, which in turn, can increase progress of students. Furthermore, there was no significant difference between the effectiveness of Fredrickson’s positive thinking and Dweck’s mindset program.