Rooyesh-e- Ravanshenasi Journal(RRJ)

This research aimed to compare the effectiveness of mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) and positive psychotherapy on academic optimism of students with social anxiety disorder. The present research method was a type of quasi-experimental study with pre-test, post-test, and a control group design with a two-month follow-up period. The population of this research included all secondary high school male students of Lahijan City in 2024, among whom 52 students were selected by purposive sampling and randomly assigned to two experimental groups and a control group. The research questionnaire was the academic optimism scale (Tschannen‐Moran, 2013) (AOS). Also, for interventions, MBSR and positive psychotherapy were implemented, each with 8 90-minute sessions, once a week, in a group setting. Repeated measures analysis of variance and Bonferroni post hoc test were used to analyze the data. The findings showed that the pre-test scores of academic optimism had a significant difference with the post-test and follow-up scores (P>0.05). Also, there wasn’t a significant difference between the two intervention groups for this variable (P>0.05). Therefore, it can be concluded that the effectiveness of both interventions on the academic optimism of students with social anxiety disorder did not differ significantly.