The Effects and Sustainability of Creative Drama on Emotion Regulation and Perfectionism in Aggressive Gifted Adolescent Females

Gifted adolescents usually present high performance in creative, intelligent, and academic activities; sometimes, the educational environment cannot provide for their needs, resulting in their increased tendency to aggressive behaviors. Aggression results in biopsychological harm to others. It is caused by problems in cognition, or Emotion Regulation (ER), and perfectionism. ER refers to the process of the regulation of emotions by cognitive strategies with includes positive and negative ER strategies. Perfectionism is a multidimensional structure that includes the extreme belief in achieving high criteria and standards. Perfectionists express unrealistic expectations. These expectations are other– or community–oriented. Therefore, the present study aimed to investigate the effects and sustainability of creative drama on ER and perfectionism in aggressive gifted adolescent females.

This was a quasi–experimental study with pretest–posttest, one–month follow–up, and a control group design. The research population was aggressive gifted adolescent females in talented schools in the second district of Tehran City, Iran, in the academic year of 2019–2020. Considering the inclusion criteria, 30 eligible volunteers were entered into the study by convenience sampling method and randomly assigned to the experimental and control groups (n=15/group). The inclusion criteria included an Intelligent Quotient (IQ) of above 130 based on Stanford–Binet Intelligence Test, i.e., documented in the students’ educational records, obtaining a higher score of 78 in the Aggression Questionnaire (Buss and Perry, 1992), living with the parents, no receipt of psychological services in the last 3 months, and no history of creative drama education. The exclusion criteria included reluctance to participate in the study and absence from more than 2 treatment sessions. The experimental group participated in 12 two–hour group weekly sessions of the creative drama program (3 months); however, the controls received no training. The creative drama program was prepared by researchers based on the Creative Drama in the Classroom and Beyond book (2011). The following questionnaires were applied at the pretest, posttest, and follow–up stages: Aggression Questionnaire (Buss and Perry, 1992), Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (Garnefski et al., 2001), and Tehran Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale (Besharat, 2008). The obtained data were analyzed by descriptive and inferential statistics in SPSS at a significance level of 0.05. At the descriptive level, the indicators of mean, standard deviation, frequency, and percentage were used. At the inferential level, the Chi–squared test, repeated–measures Analysis of Variance (ANOVA), and Bonferroni post hoc test were employed.

The current research results revealed the significant effect of the group on positive ER strategies (p=0.021) and negative ER strategies (p=0.019), as well as self–centered (p=0.033), other–centered (p=0.002), and community–oriented perfectionisms (p=0.002). The effect of time and the effect of time*group was significant on positive ER strategies (p<0.001) and negative ER strategies (p<0.001), as well as self–centered (p<0.001), other–centered (p<0.001), and community–oriented perfectionisms (p<0.001). Additionally, there was a significant difference between the mean scores of pretest, posttest, and follow–up concerning positive ER strategies (p<0.001) and negative ER strategies (p<0.001), as well as self–centered (p<0.001), other–centered (p<0.001), and community–oriented perfectionisms (p<0.001). However, there was no significant difference between the mean posttest and follow–up scores respecting positive ER strategies (p=1.000) and negative ER strategies (p=1.000), as well as self–centered (p=1.000), other–centered (p=1.000), and community–oriented perfectionisms (p=1.000).

The current study results indicated the effectiveness and sustainability of creative drama on improving ER and perfectionism among aggressive gifted adolescent females. Thus, counselors and psychologists can use the creative drama method along with other approaches to improve psychological characteristics in adolescent females.