effectiveness of rational emotive behavioral therapy in academic self-handicapping and academic engagement of students

Background: the fear of failure in students may evoke positive and negative feelings such as pleasure, hope, anxiety, and stress, and they may resort to self-handicapping mechanisms to cope with these feelings. the present study aimed to investigate the effect of rational emotive behavioral therapy (rebt) on academic self-handicapping (ash) and academic engagement in high school students.methods: this was a quasi-experimental study using a pretest-posttest design with a control group. the statistical population consisted of all male high school students in ahvaz, iran, of whom 30 (aged 15-18 years) were selected as the sample through cluster random sampling and randomly assigned into the experimental and control groups (15 students in each group). all participants filled out the academic self-handicapping scale and the academic engagement questionnaire in the pretest. the participants in the experimental group attended 10 sessions of rebt, while the control group received no intervention. at the end of the intervention, all participants took the posttest. the data were statistically analyzed using spss version 25.results: the mean±standard deviation of academic involvement in the post-test of the control group was 54.66±7.17, which was significantly different from the rebt group (78.32±4.13) (p<0.001). moreover, the mean±sd of ash in the control and experimental groups were 93.20±16.40 and 78.00±17.47, respectively, which were statistically significant (p=0.020). there was no significant difference between the research variables in the pre-test and post-test of the control group, while there was a significant difference between the pre-test and post-test of the rebt group in terms of academic engagement and ash in the students (p<0.001).conclusion: rebt was effective in improving students’ ash and academic engagement. therefore, school officials are recommended to provide suitable conditions for the rational-emotive growth of students to improve academic engagement and control ash among them.