The Effectiveness of Teaching the Components of Moral Intelligence on Self-Control and Scientific Optimism in First Secondary School Students

Ethical standards play an essential role in all different fields in a way that it seems that it can be effective in improving cognitive, behavioral and communication performance, so this research aims to determine the effectiveness of teaching the components of moral intelligence on self-control and scientific optimism in first secondary school students.

The research method was semi-experimental with a pre-test-post-test design with a control group. The statistical population of the research was formed by all 441 male students of the first secondary school of the ninth grade from 5 public schools in Babol city in December of the academic year 2023. A number of 30 people were selected by simple random sampling based on the research entry criteria and randomly replaced in two groups of 15 people, experimental and control. Two questionnaires including Tangney et al.'s self-control questionnaire (2004) and Tschannen‐Moran et al.'s (2013) scientific optimism questionnaire and Borba et al.'s (2005) moral intelligence component training program were used. The data was analyzed using multivariate covariance analysis.

From the findings, it can be concluded that teaching the components of moral intelligence was effective on self-control (P=0.01 and 69.739) and scientific optimism (P=0.01 and 104.096) in first high school students at the level of 0.01.

According to the results of the research, it is suggested that school counselors use moral intelligence component training to increase self-control and scientific optimism.