Document Type : Research Article

Authors

• Reyhaneh Tabesh ¹
• Fariborz Sedighi arfaee ²

¹ M.A of educational psychology, Department of Psychology, Faculty of Humanities, Kashan University, Kashan, Iran.

² Associate Professor, Department of psychology, Faculty of Humanities, University of kashan, Kashan, Iran.

Abstract

Introduction
At the same time as the rapid growth of technology and the ever-increasing human progress, and considering that the roles and responsibilities of adulthood have expanded and become more complex and teenagers need advanced abilities and skills to enter adulthood, emerging adulthood theory has been proposed to explain these social and economic developments of the late 20th century. One of the main features of this developmental period is the nature of discovery, experimentation and gaining experience. It is a period in which people focus on personal growth and develop the qualities necessary for self-sufficiency, accept new roles and responsibilities, and learn the social skills necessary to assume those roles. Due to the difficulties of this developmental period, qualities such as agency should be considered an important psychological resource. Also, perfectionism, as a tendency to set very high standards in performance along with extreme self-evaluation critically, can be harmful in the path of self-sufficiency and achieving goals, especially in this developmental period. On the other hand, since emerging adulthood is associated with exploration, stress, ambiguity, and the lack of a specific role, one's emotions also fluctuate during this period. In this regard, and considering the features of the emerging adulthood period and the importance of the structures mentioned in this period, increasing the capabilities of people and helping them to successfully transition to adulthood is of particular importance. In the meantime, education based on the logotherapy approach is one of the types of education that can affect a wide range of lives. Therefore, the main goal of the research is to investigate the effectiveness of education based on the logotherapy approach on the


sense of agency, positive affect, and perfectionism in emerging adults.
 
Method
It was a quasi-experimental study with a pretest, post-test, control group, and two-month follow-up period design. The statistical population included all undergraduate students of Isfahan University in the academic year 2020-2021, of which 30 people were selected by the available sampling method and randomly assigned to two experimental (15 people) and control (15 people) groups. The data collection tools included the human agency scale (consisting of three components of purposefulness, futurism, and general self-efficacy), Hewitt and Flett's perfectionism questionnaire (1991) and Watson et al.'s positive affect scale (1988). The people in the experimental group were trained based on the logotherapy approach (Hutzel, 2002) during 10- to 60-minute sessions. Data analysis was also performed using the method of analysis of variance with repeated measurements.
 
Results
The obtained results showed that the average scores of the feeling of agency and positive affect in the experimental group compared to the control group increased significantly in the post-test stage, and the average scores of perfectionism decreased significantly (P≤0.01). Also, the results indicated the permanence of the training effect for the constructs of a sense of agency and perfectionism over time.
 
Discussion
The results of this research showed that education about discovering meaning in life can affect different aspects of life, including the sense of agency, perfectionism, and positive emotions. Using the results of this research, effective measures can be taken regarding the development of different skills in teenagers and especially emerging adults.

Keywords

• Emerging adulthood
• Feeling of agency
• logotherapy
• perfectionism
• positive affect