The Effect of Attributional Retraining Program on Achievement Emotions and Academic Engagement Among University Students

The purpose of this study was to examine the effectiveness of attributional retraining program on students’ positive and negative achievement emotions and academic engagement. In this pretest-posttest nonequivalent-group design with follow up stage, 41 undergraduate students at Shahid Beheshti University in experimental and control groups responded to the Academic Emotion Questionnaire-Revised (AEQ-R, Abdollahpour, 1394) and the Academic Engagement Inventory (AEI, Salmela-Aro & Upadaya, 2012). The experimental group received seven resilience training sessions (Two hours a session). The results of multivariate covariance analysis indicated that attributional retraining program was effective in increasing positive class-related, learning-related and test-related emotion scales and components of the academic engagement consisted on energy, dedication and absorption and in decreasing negative class-related, learning-related and test-related emotion scales in short term and long term. These findings suggest that attributional retraining program by increasing empowering interpretations, management of emotional experiences and enrichment of interpersonal relationships skills could result in mental immunization in university students when they exposure to stressful situations.