Comparison of the Effect of Group Training of Choice-Based Theory Approach and the Transactional Analysis on Psychological Capital among Couples with Marital Conflict

Marital conflict reduces psychological capital, and it has adverse effects on the physical and mental health of the spouses. Previous research has shown the effect of the approach based on choice theory and transactional analysis in reducing marital conflict between spouses.

   The present study aims to compare the effect of the approach based on choice theory and transactional analysis on the psychological capital of couples who have marital conflicts.

This research was conducted by experimental method with pre-test and post-test design and with an unbalanced control group with more than one experimental group. For this purpose, out of all couples with marital conflicts who were referred to counseling centers in the third district of Tehran with at least one year of living together with the available sampling method,30 couples(60 husbands & wives) were selected and randomly substituted into three groups of experimental 1, experimental 2, and control. The data before and after the experiment were gathered by the Psychological Capitals Questionnaire )Luthans, Youssef, & Avolio, 2007(. 

The data analysis with covariance analysis showed that interventions of choice theory and transactional analysis have a significant effect on the components of self-efficacy (P <0.01, F = 10.15) and hope (P <0.01, F = 14.18) and optimism (P <0.01, F = 9.72) psychological capital at the level of 0.01 and resilience (P <0.05, F = 4.78) was significant. But the difference in the effect of the independent variable on any of the components of psychological capital was not significant.

 The results showed that the difference between the effectiveness of both independent variables on the increasing of the components of psychological capital was not significant. Therefore, applying both methods by counselors and psychotherapists to increase the psychological capital of couples involved in marital conflict can be recommended.