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 Table of Contents  
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Year : 2017  |  Volume : 3  |  Issue : 3  |  Page : 180-185

Effect of 1-month yoga practice on positive-negative affect and attitude toward violence in schoolchildren: A randomized control study


Yoga and Management Department, Swami Vivekananda Yoga Anusandhana Samsthana, Bengaluru, Karnataka, India

Date of Web Publication29-Nov-2017

Correspondence Address:
Dr. Sony Kumari
Swami Vivekananda Yoga Anusandhana Samsthana, No 19, Eknath Bhavan, Gavipuram Circle, Kempegowda Nagar, Bengaluru - 560 019, Karnataka
India
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Source of Support: None, Conflict of Interest: None


DOI: 10.4103/jepr.jepr_69_16

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  Abstract 


BACKGROUND: The children of today are the future of tomorrow; but unfortunately, they are pressurized because of coping with many stressful times. Either way they are influenced to experience negative emotions. Yoga is well known to take one's life to positivity. Introducing yoga which is noncompetitive will prevent children from negative emotions.
AIM: The aim of this study was to assess the effect of 1-month yoga practice on positive-negative affect (PA-NA) and attitude toward violence (ATV) in schoolchildren.
MATERIALS AND METHODS: Sixty boys were selected from St. Tukaram Prathamik Vidyalaya, Pune Corporation school no. 55 and were randomly assigned to control and experimental groups of thirty students each. Participants' age ranged from 12 to 15 years. ATV and PA-NA were assessed using variables ATV and PA-NA schedule (PANAS)-children tests, respectively, before starting yoga intervention. The experimental group underwent yoga practice every day for an hour for 1 month. After 1 month, parameters were repeated.
RESULTS: The yoga group showed significant changes in the mean value. PANAS-PA has increased 10%, PANAS NA and ATV have reduced significantly 34% and 25%, respectively, whereas the control group did not show any significant change in any of their scores.
CONCLUSION: These findings suggest that yoga practice is effective on schoolchildren to increase PA and to reduce NA and ATV as well as yoga is feasible and safe. Hence, inclusion of yoga in school education has the potential to help children.

Keywords: Attitude, positive-negative affect, violence, yoga


How to cite this article:
Kale D, Kumari S. Effect of 1-month yoga practice on positive-negative affect and attitude toward violence in schoolchildren: A randomized control study. Int J Educ Psychol Res 2017;3:180-5

How to cite this URL:
Kale D, Kumari S. Effect of 1-month yoga practice on positive-negative affect and attitude toward violence in schoolchildren: A randomized control study. Int J Educ Psychol Res [serial online] 2017 [cited 2024 Mar 29];3:180-5. Available from: https://www.ijeprjournal.org/text.asp?2017/3/3/180/219427




  Introduction Top


Positive-negative affects

All of us experience different types of feeling such as love, joy, sorrow, and anguish. Sometimes these feelings or experiences are positive and sometimes they are negative. Feelings are emotions which generally have both psychological and cognitive elewments and that influence our behavior.[1]

When emotions are characterized by pleasurable impact, they are known as positive affect (PA), and when emotions are unpleasant, they are known as negative affect (NA).[2]

NA styles are predictors of increased risk for illness and mortality. In contrast, PA style shows lower morbidity and decreased symptoms of pain. PA is also associated with increased longevity among community-dwelling elderly.[3]

Attitude

An attitude is a psychological tendency that is expressed by evaluating a particular entity with some degree of favor or disfavor.[4] Gordon Allport says attitude is the most distinctive and indispensable concept in contemporary social psychology.[5]

According to social psychologists, there are three main components of attitudes: affective (emotional type), behavioral (action oriented type), and cognitive (thinking type).[6] Attitude formation and development are depending on the basis of learning principles.[7] Mere repeated exposure of the individual to a stimulus is a sufficient condition for the enhancement of his attitude toward it.[8]

Violence

“The intentional use of physical force or power threatened or actual, against oneself, another person, or against a group or community, which either results in or has a high likelihood of resulting in injury, death, psychological harm, maldevelopment, or deprivation,” but acknowledges that the inclusion of “the use of power” in its definition expands on the conventional meaning of the word.[9] Based on the idea of human nature, scientists do agree that violence is inherent in humans. Among prehistoric humans, there is archaeological evidence for both contentions of violence and peacefulness as primary characteristics.[10]

Violence can be divided into three broad categories:

  • Self-directed violence: Self-abuse, suicide thoughts, attempted suicide
  • Interpersonal violence: Child abuse, intimate partner violence, rape
  • Collective violence: War, Crimes of hate committed by organized groups, terrorist acts.


Violent acts can be physical, sexual, psychological, or emotional.[9] Main factors those are responsible for violence are demographic characteristics (age, education, income), genetics, brain lesions, personality disorders, substance abuse, and a history of experiencing, witnessing, or engaging in violent behavior.[11] Another reason of growing violence is media and thus is making great impact on the lives of children. Some scholars had claimed that media violence may increase aggression.[12]

Domestic violence and various other rising issues are taking the childhood away from children; it is making them slave of negative emotion. How children negotiate and make sense of living with domestic violence is still under-research.[13] Children are facing increased pressure to succeed in examination at increasingly earlier ages because of introduction of new curriculum and increased targets for schools.[14] The study done to evaluate preventive program says that boys placed more importance on and were less satisfied with their muscles; girls were less satisfied with their weight and the importance of weight increased with increasing age. Children with a large body mass index were less satisfied with their weight. Boys in the intervention group showed reduced levels of NA over time. The study suggests that further research is needed to develop prevention and intervention programs to lower the effects of body dissatisfaction and NA among children.[15]

One of the main reasons of attitude toward violence (ATV) in schoolchildren is constant social behavioral patterns, these behavioral patterns later turn into habits. Study done in the past suggested that witnessing community violence has an effect on children's aggressive behavior through both the imitation of violence and development of associated cognitions as children get older.[16]

Yoga

Yoga is holistic system of mind body practices for mental and physical health involving multiple components such as physical postures to promote strength and flexibility, breathing exercises to enhance respiratory functioning, deep relaxation techniques to cultivate the ability to release tension and stress mentally and physiologically and meditation to enhance awareness and improve attention and emotional regulation skills.[17]

The study done using PA and NA schedule (PANAS) as a variable and yoga (asanas, Pranayama, relaxation, mantra chanting) as an intervention and duration of 1 week showed positive results, 312 sets of pre- and post-data were analyzed. There was an increase in PA of PANAS by 13% and other PA (OPA) by 17%. The NA reduced by 47% and ONA by 48% This study had concluded that it is feasible and safe to conduct a weeklong yoga camp in an urban setting, and integrated yoga practices can reduce the NA and increase the PA within 1 week.[18]

Introduction of yoga at the school level helps children to learn the ethics and thus refrain from indulging in risk behavior, association with bad company, etc., which are the causes for violence. This also helps in better emotional control with an added advantage of improved concentration power, memory power, and enhancement in academic performances.[19]

Yoga students maintained or improved and usual students showed decrease in primary outcomes. Total mood disturbance improved in yoga students and worsened in controls as did profile of mood states – short-form tension-anxiety subscale. Although PA remained unchanged in both, NA significantly worsened in controls while improving in yoga students.[20]

Study done using the stress-handling program as an intervention has been investigated by means of a test/control group design with 48 pupils of the fifth grade. Feelings of helplessness and aggression were clearly reduced.[21]

A study revealed positive changes in randomized control trial, done on 173 subjects between 17 and 62 years using intervention of yoga 6 days a week for 8 weeks, to find out the effect of yoga on Gunas and self-esteem in normal healthy volunteers. There was a significant decrease in verbal aggressiveness in the with the nonsignificant increase in the other group.[22]

Recent study aimed to assess the effectiveness of a universal yoga-based social-emotional wellness promotion program, Transformative Life Skills, on indicators of adolescent emotional distress, prosocial behavior, and attitudes toward violence in a high-risk sample. Participants included 49 students attending an alternative education school in an urban innercity school district. Results indicated that students demonstrated significant reductions in anxiety, depression, and global psychological distress. Significant reductions in rumination, intrusive thoughts, physical arousal, and emotional arousal were reported as well. They were significantly less likely to endorse revenge-motivation orientations in response to interpersonal transgressions and reported overall less hostility.[23]

Another recent study by Reddy done in randomized control design based on short-term yoga practices showed significant changes in cognitive function in schoolchildren, but there was no significant change in their ATV.[24]

The aim of the present study was to assess the effect of 1-month yoga practices on PA, NA, and ATV in schoolchildren.


  Materials and Methods Top


For this study, 60 boys were selected from the Sant Tukaram Prathamik Vidyalaya, Pune Corporations school no.-55, with the help of random sampling technique and two different groups, i.e., controlled group and experimental group of thirty students each was formed. The inclusion criteria were the age group of 12–15 years and who have no mental and physical illness. Signed informed consent was obtained from all participants before the practice started. The study was done in randomized control pre- and post-design. PANAS for children (PANAS-C) and ATV variables were used. Data were analyzed using SPSS version 21.(IBM Corporation).

Positive and negative affect schedule - children

The 29-item PANAS consists of a single word indicating PA or NA. These words describe different feeling and emotions. Children have to choose the word about how they felt last week. The items are rated on a five-point scale with responses: 1 = very slightly, 2 = little, 3 = moderately, 4 = quiet, 5 = extremely. All 29 questions were intermixed in the questionnaire. They were carefully isolated for obtaining the individual scores of PA and NA. From these 29 items, no. 1, 4, 5, 8, 9, 12, 14, 17, 18, 19, 21, 24, 27, and 29 were PA and no. 2, 3, 6, 7, 10, 11, 13, 15, 16, 20, 22, 23, 25, 26, and 28 were NA.

Attitude toward violence

ATV test is an aggressive behavioral test for the assessment of violence attitude. It contains simple questions which are most related to behavioral attitude of schoolchildren. The ATV test contains of 6 questions, each question having 5 options indicating level of the subjects in the recent past and present, from higher to lower. We gave the reverse score, i.e., 5 to 1 except 2nd and 5th questions.

Intervention

Experimental group underwent 1-month yoga intervention daily 1 h (60 min) (except Sunday and national holiday) in the afternoon session of the school, i.e., 04:30 PM – 05:30 PM. Practices such as surya-namaskar (sun-salutation), Yogasanas (physical postures), Pranayama (breathing techniques), mantra chanting, Shudhhikriyas (cleansing processes), and relaxation techniques were included in the intervention [Table 1].
Table 1: Intervention

Click here to view



  Results Top


Data were not normally distributed, so we have conducted Wilcoxon signed-rank test (within group). Here, yoga group shows significant changes in mean value PANAS-PA has increased from 46.00 to 50.06 (10%), PANAS-NA has reduced significantly from 40.8 to 27.0 (34%) (P < 01), and ATV has reduced from 17.5 to 13.1 (25%) (P < 0.01) [Table 2] Wilcoxon signed-rank test (within group).
Table 2: Wilcoxon signed rank test (within group)

Click here to view


Control group shows significant result in PANAS-PA mean value which has reduced from 49.8 to 45.7 (8%) (P < 0.05), no changes were found in PANAS-NA, and mean value of ATV has reduced from 17.1 to 16.7 (2%), which is not significant.

We conducted Mann–Whitney test (between group), result showed a significant change in post-PANAS-PA (P < 0.05), highly significant change in post-ATV (P < 0.01), and no significant change in PANAS-NA (P < 0.001) [Table 3] Mann–Whitney test (between group).
Table 3: Mann–Whitney test (between group)

Click here to view


We can see the results of change in mean value of pre- and post-PA, pre- and post-NA, and pre- and post-ATV in experimental (yoga) group and Control group in [Graph 1] Change in mean values (Experimental Group) and [Graph 2] Change in mean values (Control Group).



As above tables and graphs shown, there is positive impact of yoga practice on experiment group, i.e., significant increase in PA, significant reduction in ATV, and reduction in NA.

The data were further analyzed particularly for the students who have worst preassessment scores. The results are shown in [Table 4] Data of extreme Values.
Table 4: Data of extreme values

Click here to view


Result of yoga group also shows significant positive changes in students (n = 10) who shown lowest score of PANAS-PA in preassessment show 44% increase in postassessment score, students (n = 10) who shown highest score of PANAS-NA and ATV in preassessment show 35% and 43% reduction in postassessment score, respectively.

The mechanism behind the positive results could be yoga is the means of balancing and harmonizing body, mind, and emotions. Previous study showed significant reductions in anxiety, depression, and global psychological distress and also significant reductions in rumination, intrusive thoughts, physical arousal, and emotional arousal were reported. Students were being significantly less likely to endorse revenge-motivation orientations in response to interpersonal transgressions and reported overall less hostility than did students in the comparison condition after following universal yoga-based social-emotional wellness promotion program.[23] There is another study done using PANAS as a variable and yoga as an intervention and duration was 1 week showed positive results, 312 sets of pre- post-data were analyzed. There was an increase in PA of PANAS by 13% and OPA by 17%. The NA reduced by 47% and ONA by 48%. This study had concluded that it is feasible and safe to conduct a weeklong yoga camp in an urban setting, and integrated yoga practices can reduce the NA and increase the PA within 1 week.[18]

Purpose of the present study was to assess the effect of 1 month yoga practice on PA NA and ATV in schoolchildren. It was observed from the results that there is significant difference in the experimental group and control group regarding to all test items. Experimental group showed increase in PANAS-PA (10%) and reduction in PANAS-NA (34%) and ATV (25%). This indicates that yoga practice had positive effect on experimental group.


  Conclusion Top


In conclusion, the study, a randomized control design using two variables, PANAS-C and ATV, showed significant results. Specifically, in the yoga group, participants experienced a 10% increase in PA as well as a significant drop in both NA and ATV, a 34% decrease and 25% decrease, respectively. This study has demonstrated that a regular yoga practice for schoolchildren can increase their positive outlook as well as decrease the frequency and strength of negative emotions and violent feelings. This means that students feel more positive and are better able to manage stressors as they arise, they will be beneficiated with this activity in many ways. The results of this study suggest that the inclusion of such a program in schools could dramatically improve the mental and physical well-being of students, especially for those students from underprivileged area. Moreover, this program is inexpensive to implement as it requires minimal equipment and makes use of existing infrastructure, making it financially feasible for schools to offer. The same study should be replicated in higher secondary school.

Financial support and sponsorship

Nil.

Conflicts of interest

There are no conflicts of interest.



 
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    Tables

  [Table 1], [Table 2], [Table 3], [Table 4]


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