The effectiveness of acceptance and commitment therapy on cognitive emotion regulation and marital forgiveness of women affected by marital infidelity

The aim of this study was to determine the effectiveness of acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) on cognitive emotion regulation and marital forgiveness of women affected by marital infidelity. The method of the study was semi-experimental with pre-test and post-test with a control group. The statistical population included all women affected by marital infidelity who were referred to counseling centers in Gorgan in the first 9 months of 1399. Using the purposive sampling method, 30 people were selected and randomly divided into experimental (15 people) and control (15 people) groups. The experimental group received acceptance and commitment therapy in 8 sessions of 90 minutes twice a week. The research instruments were the Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (CERQ) of Garnfsky et al (2002) and the Marital Forgiveness Questionnaire (MFQ) of Ray et al. (2001). Data were analyzed by multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA) using SPSS-16 software at a significance level of 0.05. The results showed that by controlling the effect of the pre-test, there is a significant difference at the level of 0/05 between the average of the post-test of the experimental group and the control group in cognitive emotion regulation and marital forgiveness. It can be stated according to the results that acceptance and commitment therapy can be used as an effective intervention to improve marital forgiveness and cognitive emotion regulation in women affected by marital infidelity.