Comparing the Effectiveness of Forgiveness Therapy and Mindfulness Training on Improving Forgiveness among High School Students

The aim of the present study was to compare the effect of forgiveness therapy and mindfulness training on improvement of forgiveness in secondary school students. The research design was a semi-experimental design with pretest, posttest and a control group. The statistical population of this study consisted of all tenth and eleventh grade students of high school of Tehran during 2018-2019. Six classes were chosen using random cluster sampling and randomly assigned based on the classroom groups into three groups. The first experimental group (forgiveness therapy) consisted of 38 participants, the second experimental group (mindfulness training) consisted of 37 individuals and the control group consisted of 40 participants. The research instrument included The Heartland Forgiveness Tendency Scale. The experimental groups were trained based on forgiveness therapy or mindfulness training, but control group had no intervention. After that, posttest and follow-up after one month and half was performed. Multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA), and Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) were used to analyze the data. The results showed that there was a significant difference between the experimental groups and the control group in terms of forgiveness and its subscales in the post-test and follow-up stages. Also, mindfulness training had a greater effect on the improvement of forgiveness in the long term.(p001/0 >) .According to the results of this study, it can be concluded that mindfulness training helps to improve students' forgiveness in the long term more than forgiveness therapy(p001/0 >) , and also its effectiveness is more lasting.