The Efficacy of Teaching Positive Thinking Skills with Emphasis on Religious Teachings on Students' Psychological Capital and Well-being

In their paper, the authors have conducted this research in order to examine the efficacy of positive thinking education with emphasis on religious teachings on students' psychological capital and psychological well-being. The studied project is a semi-experimental pretest-posttest design with control group. The statistical population consisted of all third-grade male students of second course of secondary schools in Khoy city during the academic year 1400-1401. In order to select subjects, using cluster sampling method, forty participants were randomly selected and assigned to the experimental group (twenty participants) and control group (twenty participants). The pre-test was performed for both groups. A positive thinking intervention program based on religious teachings was conducted for the experimental group consisting of ten priods of 90 minute sessions. At the end of the training course, a post-test was conducted. For data collection, a psychological capital questionnaire (Lutatz, Yousef and Oliva, 2007) and a psychological well-being questionnaire (Reif, 1989) were used. The research data was examined using covariance analysis method. The results of data analysis revealed that positive thinking training based on religious teachings helped increase the psychological capital and psychological well-being of students, and the participants in the experimental group had significantly higher psychological capital and psychological well-being scores in the posttest phase (p < 0.05). In general, the findings confirm the usefulness and efficacy of positive thinking education based on religious teachings in enhancing students' psychological capital and psychological well-being.