The Effect of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy on the Conflict Resolution Styles of Incompatible Marital Women

Aim: Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) is one of the third‑generation behavioral therapies in which it is attempted to increase the psychological relationship of an individual with his or her thoughts and feelings instead of changing cognition. The purpose of this study was the effectiveness of ACT on conflict resolution styles of incompatible marital women. Methods: This is a semi‑experimental, pretest and posttest design and a 3‑month follow‑up. The statistical population of the study consisted of all incompatible women who referred to counseling centers in Arak in 2018. Therefore, 24 participants were selected by convenience sampling method and randomly assigned to one test groups and one control group of 12 participants for each. Data were collected in the pretest, posttest and follow‑up stages with (the Conflict Resolution Styles Scale or Rahim Organizational Conflict Inventory‑II). The test group received a therapeutic intervention based on ACT for twelve 90‑min sessions, but no therapy was provided for the control group. After the completion of treatment sessions, both groups were subjected to posttest. The data were analyzed using analysis of variance with repeated measures and Bonferroni post‑hoc test. Results: The results showed that there was a statistically significant difference between the posttest scores of the test group compared with that of the control group (P < 0.05), and the difference was suitably sustainable during the time. Conclusion: ACT is considered as an effective intervention in improving conflict resolution styles.