Evaluating the Effectiveness of Mindfulness on Cognitive Regulation of Emotion, Wisdom, Rational Thinking, and Social Adjustment Among the Female Aggressive Teenagers

Being aggressive among teenagers is one of the most important problems that the scientists of this millennium have to face. Aggression could affect the cognitive regulation of emotion, wisdom, rational thinking, and social adjustment. So we should find a treatment that increases these variables in aggressive students. Different methods have been used to treat aggression. However, the failure of traditional cognitive–behavioral methods, highlights the need to examine new cognitive–behavioral approaches for treating aggression. In recent years, mindfulness in the scientific community has attracted much attention and as a moment–by–moment awareness of the experience gained from purposeful attention, it is defined as the acceptance without judgment of existing experiences. So, this study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of mindfulness on the cognitive regulation of emotion, wisdom, rational thinking and social adjustment among aggressive teenagers.

The method of the present study was quasi–experimental with a pretest–posttest design with a control group. The independent variable of the research was mindfulness treatment. The dependent variables were as follows: wisdom, rational thinking, social adjustment, and the cognitive regulation of emotion among the aggressive girls. The study’s statistical population comprised secondary female high school students in District 4 Education, Tabriz City, Iran, in the 2018–2019 academic year. Among the girls' schools in the mentioned region, two schools were selected by random cluster method. Among these, 100 students with the necessary criteria in the Aggression Questionnaire (Buss & Perry, 1992) (score greater than 94) from two schools were screened. In the following, 30 interested school girls were selected voluntarily, referring to Kazemi Zahrani and Behnampour's article (2020), and were placed in two groups of 15 people, the mindfulness group and the control group. One group was the control group and no intervention was performed for them. The inclusion criteria were as follows: similar cultural and economic characteristics, obtaining a higher than average score in the Aggression Questionnaire (Buss & Perry, 1992), being 16–17 years old, having characteristics and criteria of aggression, obtaining written consent from parents, and not receiving any mindfulness training. The inclusion characteristics and criteria of aggression were as follows: aggression on average twice a week for at least three months, destroying or damaging property without considering their value, inability to control aggression, and confusion or disorder in psychological and social functions. The exclusion criteria were not answering the questions of the questionnaires in the pretest and posttest (for the experimental and control groups) and not attending more than two therapy sessions. In the experimental group, Williams' mindfulness treatment package (2010) and necessary training and techniques were presented in six 1.5–2 hours sessions, one session per week. Before and after the treatment, we used the Fundamental Values Scale (Jason et al., 2002), Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (Garnefski & Kraaij, 2006), Rational Thinking Questionnaire (Kember et al., 2000), and Social Skill Questionnaire (Matson et al., 1983) in both groups. Data analysis was done with the help of SPSS version 24 software. The mean and standard deviation of the research variables were calculated in the pretest and posttest. Univariate analysis of covariance was used to check the effectiveness of treatment in each variable. The significance level of statistical tests was 0.05.

The results of ANCOVA showed that mindfulness treatment in the experimental group compared to the control group increased the adaptive strategies of cognitive regulation of emotion (p<0.001), decreased the non–adaptive strategies of cognitive regulation of emotion (p<0.001) and also increased wisdom (p=0.002), social adjustment (p=0.010), and rational thinking (p<0.001) became aggressive in aggressive adolescent girls.

According to the finding , mindfulness treatment effectively improves cognitive regulation of emotion, wisdom, rational thinking, and social adjustment. So, this method can be recommended for counselors, especially school counselors, as an effective method for aggressive teenagers.