The Effectiveness of Mindfulness Group Training on Empathy and Resilience in Psychology Students
Keywords:
Mindfulness Group Training, Empathy, Resilience, Psychology StudentsAbstract
Objective: Improving and promoting empathy and resilience in students, especially in psychology students is of great importance. As a result, this research was conducted with the aim of determine the effectiveness of mindfulness group training on empathy and resilience in psychology students.
Methodology: The present study was applied in terms of purpose and quasi-experimental with a pre-test and post-test design with experimental and control groups in terms of implementation method. The research population was psychology students of Tabaran Institute of Higher Education in the 2023-2024 academic years. The sample of this study was 40 students who were selected after reviewing the inclusion criteria with using a simple random sampling method and randomly were assigned into two equal groups. The experimental group trained 8 sessions of 90 minute with the mindfulness training protocol of Gallant et al. (2016) and the control group did not receive any intervention. The data of this research were collected with the empathy scale of Jolliffe and Farrington (2006) and resilience scale of Connor and Davidson (2003) and analyzed with tests of chi-square and univariate analysis of covariance in SPSS version 27.
Findings: The findings showed that there was no significant difference in gender and age between the psychology students of the experimental and control groups (P>0.05). Also, mindfulness group training significantly increased empathy and resilience in psychology students in the experimental group in compared to the control group (P<0.001).
Conclusion: According to the results of the present research, counselors, psychologists and therapists can use the mindfulness group training method along with other effective training methods to increase empathy and resilience.
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