Abstract

In higher education, enhancing positive experiences for university students is a top priority. Savoring interventions have been extensively researched to help individuals in experiencing and amplifying specific positive emotions (PEs) within this educational context. The objective of this study is to investigate the overall impact of savoring interventions on PEs of university students. It also aims to determine the effectiveness of different categories of savoring interventions in achieving the desired outcomes. A comprehensive search was performed across multiple databases. A total of 14 studies were included in this study. The findings indicate that a variety of savoring interventions had significant and positive effects on students' PEs, with a combined effect size of 0.706 (p < 0.001). Specifically, past-focused savoring interventions demonstrated the highest mean effect size (ES = 0.748, p < 0.001) compared to present-focused (ES = 0.700, p = 0.05) and future-focused (ES = 0.735, p < 0.001) interventions. The findings demonstrate a noteworthy positive effect of savoring interventions on PEs in university students. Moreover, the results suggest that past-focused savoring interventions are more effective in enhancing PEs among university students compared to both present and future-focused interventions.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.