the ineffectiveness of anger management on increasing prosociality: an experimental study on iranian female high school students

Objective: the causal relationship of antisocial and prosocial tendencies has been in doubt, despite the existing negative correlation. this study addresses this issue by examining the effectiveness of anger management on aggression as an antisocial variable and some prosocial variables including prosocial behaviors, empathy and moral identity.methods: from a sample of 146 female high school students in tangestan (iran), 40 students with higher aggression were randomly assigned to the experimental and control groups. participants were asked to complete questionnaires on mentioned variables as pretest, posttest, and 1-month follow up. ten sessions of cbt-based anger management were administered to the experimental group.results: the findings indicated the effectiveness of the intervention on decreasing the aggression level. however, the intervention could not change prosocial variables.conclusions: this study showed that decreasing aggression itself is not the cause of increasing prosociality. it seems that to increase prosocial tendencies, other interventions -in addition to anger management- are required.