Effects of a Metacognitive Awareness Program on High School Student's Decision-making Styles and Emotion Regulation

This research aimed to investigate the effect of metacognitive awareness on decision-making styles and emotion regulation in female high school students during 2016 in Tabriz, Iran. We conducted a pre- and post-test quasi-experimental research design with a control group. Two classes were selected by cluster sampling method and randomly assigned to experimental (n=19) and control (n=19) groups. A metacognitive awareness intervention program was performed in eight sessions (once a week in 90-minutes) for the experimental group but the control group did not receive any intervention and served as the benchmarking point of the comparison. The Decision Styles Questionnaire (Leykin & DeRubeis, 2010) and Regulation of Emotion Questionnaire (Phillips & Power, 2007) were administered. Data were analyzed by multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA). The result showed a significant decrease in the score of the avoidant, anxious, intuitive, and spontaneous dimensions as well as a significant increase in the score of the dependent dimension of decision-making styles in the experimental group compared with the control group. Moreover, the scores of the dysfunction dimension of emotion regulation decreased significantly in the experimental group, while, the scores of the function dimension increased significantly.