Effectiveness of Emotional Self-Regulation Training on Social Competence and Emotional Expressiveness in Male Students with Evidence of Bullying

The present study was conducted to determine the effectiveness of emotional self-regulation training on social competence and emotional expressiveness in male students with signs of bullying. It was an experimental study with pretest, posttest, control group, and two-month follow-up period. The statistical population of the study included male students with signs of bullying in the first secondary school of Yasouj during the academic year 2018-2019. The research sample included 40 students with signs of bullying, who were selected through multistage random sampling and randomly divided into an experimental group and a control group (each group consisted of 20 students). The research instruments included questionnaires on Illinois Bullying Scale (IBS), Social Competence (SCQ), and Emotional Expressiveness (EEQ). The pretest was administered to both groups before the intervention began. Then, the experimental group received emotional self-regulation training for nine weeks, while the control group received no intervention. After the intervention, 4 students in the experimental group and 3 students in the control group fell. At the end of the intervention, a posttest was administered in both groups, and two months after the posttest, the follow-up test was also administered. The data of the study were analyzed by repeated measures ANOVA using SPSS23 software. The results showed that the emotional self-regulation training had a significant effect on social skills and emotional expressiveness in male students with signs of bullying. Thus, this intervention was able to increase the social competence and emotional expression of male students with signs of bullying. The findings of the present study suggest that emotional self-regulation training can be used as an efficient method to improve social competence and emotional expression in male students with signs of bullying by using techniques such as anger control skills, emotional awareness training, increasing positive emotions, and recognizing emotions.