Effect of optimism training on emotion regulation and psychological well- being in undergraduate students of University of Birjand, in 2014-2015

Positive thinking is a trend to adopt the most hopeful standpoint and cognitive and emotional preparation in persons for prediction and evaluation of life events. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of optimism training on emotion regulation and psychological well–being in undergraduate students.
This study was a semi-experimental research by pre and post exam design with a control group. First, among the students of University of Birjand, 300 students were selected by the simple random sampling and pre-study was carried out . Among 60 students having emotion regulation and standard deviation lower than the society’s mean, 28 people were hold randomly in two groups (14 in examination group and 14 in control group). For the examination group, seven two-hour sessions of positive thinking were done and then the post-exam was conducted. The collection of the data was done using two questionnaires of emotion regulation (Gross & John, 2003) and Ryff scales of Psychological well-being (Ryff, 1995). Neuro-linguistic programing (NLP) methodology was used for optimism training. The SAS software was utilized for data interpretation using analysis of covariance.
The results showed that optimism training affected significantly the main variables of psychological well-being (P=0.011), emotion regulation (P=0.001) and the consequent variables of reappraisal (P=0.001), personal growth (P=0.05), positive relations with others (P=0.045), and self-acceptance (P=0.002). But the consequent variables of suppression, autonomy, environmental, and purpose in life mastery, were not affected (P>0.05) by optimism training.
The results validate the positive effect of optimism training on emotion regulation and psychological well–being in undergraduate students.