The Relationship between Optimism in the View of Islam, Anxious Thoughts and Meta-cognitive Anxious Thoughts (Meta-anxiety)

The present paper examines the relationship between Islamic optimism, anxious thoughts and meta-cognitive anxious thoughts. To this end, a sample consisting of 110 students of Imam Khomeini Educational and Research Institute, who were selected randomly, completed Well's inventory of anxious thoughts and meta-anxiety (Wells, 1994) and the questionnaire of Islamic optimism. The research findings indicate that there is a significant negative relationship between Islamic optimism and anxious thoughts. There is a significant negative relationship between Islamic optimism, social anxiety, health anxiety and meta-cognitive anxious thoughts (meta-anxiety). Furthermore, there is a significant negative relationship between attention to positive aspects, positive interpretation of events and positive expectation for future and aforementioned variables. The multiple regressions indicate that Islamic optimism predicts the changes related to meta-cognitive thoughts significantly. Finally, the research findings were analyzed from four aspects and its limits and some recommendations were proposed.