Abstract:

The present study aimed to examine whether a Gestalt-based Intervention Program “Gestalt Personal Development Group” could enhance the awareness levels, emotional intelligence and life satisfaction of undergraduate students. The objectives of “Gestalt Personal Development Group” are to increased awareness of the present, including both intrapersonal and interpersonal awareness. The program involved 10 sessions and employed mindfulness practices as gestalt meditative experiment. A pretest-posttest control group experiment design was used and 208 undergraduate students aged between 18 and 22 years participated in this study. One hundred and forty eight (148) of the participants followed the intervention program whereas sixty (60) of them constitute the control group. The Mindful Attention Awareness Scale, MAAS (Brown & Ryan, 2003), Wong & Law- Emotional Intelligence Scales – WLEIS (Wong & Law, 2002; Kafetsios & Zampetakis, 2008) and Satisfaction With Life Scale ((Diener, Emmons, Larsen, & Griffin, 1985) were used to assess the students' awareness level as well as their emotional intelligence and life’s satisfaction. The pretest-posttest scores of intervention group showed statistically significant difference whereas the control group's scores pretest-posttest scores did not indicate statistically significantly changes. The results revealed that the “Gestalt Personal Development Group” contributed to the improvement of awareness levels and promoted participants’ subjective well-being.

Keywords:

Mindfulness, Personal Development, Counselling Group, Emotional Intelligence, Life Satisfaction.