Preparation of Instructional Package of Cognitive Emotion Regulation based on Counterfactual Thoughts and its Effectiveness on Decision-Making Styles

Counterfactual thinking is a concept in psychology that involves the human tendency to create possible alternatives to life events that have already occurred- something that is contrary to what actually happened. Counterfactual thinking is, as the term suggests "counter to the facts”. These thoughts consist of the "What if?" and "If only..." scenarios that arise when connsidering how things could have turned out differently. Counterfactual thoughts include things that, in the present, could not happened because they depende on events that did not occur in the past. In other words, counterfactual thinking is a cognitive process that considers alternative possibilities for an event or behavior in the past. Counterfactual thinking has adaptive significance for humans as it allows us to learn from past past negative experiences and to avoid negative outcomes in the future. If individuals can consider another outcome based on a different path, they may choose that path in the future to avoid the undesired outcome. The past cannot be changed, but similar situations may occur in the future, thus we view our counterfactual thoughts as learning experiences. For example, if individuals have a poor job interview and thinks about how it might have been more successful if they had responded more confidently, they are more likely to respond more confidently in their next interview. Similarly, when a car accident occurs a driver might think "if only I had pressed the brake faster". The act of contemplating different outcomes can help trigger memories of past events that were successful, enabling individuals to adjust their behaviors in the future. These thoughts assist in understanding the past and predicting future outcomes. Counterfactual thinking begins with a trigger that initiates the thought process and requires significant cognitive effort as the thinker imagines alternate scenarios. This type of thinking tends to have a strong effect on emotions. Research hypotheses: The current study was conducted with the aim of designing an educational package and assessing the effectiveness of the Instructional Package of Cognitive Emotion Regulation based on Counterfactual Thoughts on DecisionMaking Styles. In line with this goal, the following hypotheses were examined: 1. The educational package possesses the necessary validity to influence counterfactual thoughts. 2. The educational package possesses the necessary validity to influence counterfactual thoughts.

In terms of purpose, this study falls under the category of applied research, and in terms of implementation, it is classified as quasi-experimental. The design used in this study was a pre-post-test design with a control group. The Package of Cognitive Emotion Regulation based on Counterfactual Thoughts was considered the independent variable, while Decision-Making Styles served as the dependent variable. The research population comprised all undergraduate students of Yasuj Farhangian University in the academic year 2022-2023. Two separate classes were selected through available sampling and randomly assigned as the experimental group (15 participants) and the control group (15 participants). Both groups were evaluated with a pre-test. Initially, necessary explanations were provided to the members of both groups regarding how to answer the questions, and informed consent was obtained from them. After conducting the pre-test in both groups, the intervention began. The experimental group received the Package of Cognitive Emotion Regulation based on Counterfactual Thoughts program over 12 sessions, with each session lasting 90 minutes. Following the completion of the 12-session intervention, both the experimental and control groups were evaluated with a posttest in the same manner as the pre-test. MANCOVA was used to test the hypothesis regarding the effectiveness of the Instructional Package of Cognitive Emotion Regulation based on Counterfactual Thoughts on the Decision-Making Styles of Yasuj Farhangian University students. Additionally, ANCOVA was employed to determine the effect of the Instructional Package on different Decision-Making Styles (rational style, dependent style, avoidant style, intuitive style, spontaneous style). To test the hypotheses, SPSS-24 software was utilized.

The results of MANCOVA analysis indicated that the instructional package possess suffecient validity. Furthermore, the instructional package could improve the effective rational style and reduce the avoidant and spontaneous styles.

According to the findings of this study, it can be concluded that cognitive emotion-regulation trainning based on counterfactual thoughts can be used to improve decision-making styles of university students.