The Effectiveness of Positive Psychology Education and its Effect on Working Memory and Cognitive Flexibility of Women Graduates of Farhangian University of Tehran

Today, the main task of positivist psychology is to measure, understand and then build capabilities in human beings, create social virtues and ultimately help guide a person towards a better life. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of positive psychology education and its effect on working memory and cognitive flexibility of women graduates of Farhangian University of Tehran.

The type of this experimental study was a pretest-posttest design with a control group. The statistical population included all 138 female graduate teachers in the field of psychology from Farhangian University of Tehran in 2017 and 2018. To select the sample population, 40 teachers who were interested in participating in the study were selected by available sampling method and then randomly divided into two experimental groups (20 people) and control (20 people) and entered. Were studied. Daneman & Carpenter (1980) and Dennis and Vanderwall (2010) Cognitive Flexibility Questionnaire were used to collect data. The experimental group was exposed to 10 sessions of 90-minute psychotherapy training intervention with a positive psychology approach. No training was provided for the control group. Analysis of covariance and Spss24 software were used to analyze the data.

The results showed that positive psychotherapy package training was effective on working memory (P˂0.001). Positive psychotherapy package training was effective on cognitive flexibility (P˂0.001).

Based on the results of this study, it can be concluded that the use of the educational package of positive psychology is an effective way to increase working memory and cognitive flexibility.