Prevention of Mental Disorders Through Self-efficacy Interventions

Participants in the intervention group will receive a brief (6 sessions of 75-90 min each) cognitive-behavioral intervention. The intervention will be delivered in an online group format (subgroups of 8-12 participants). The courses will be structured according to well-established self-efficacy interventions with proven effectiveness (Bresó et al., 2011; Cieslak et al., 2016; Luszczynska et al., 2007), targeting Bandura's four key sources of self-efficacy (i.e., mastery experience, vicarious experience, verbal persuasion, and physiological/emotional arousal). Each session will consist of a theoretical and a practical part and be structured as follows: opening, discussion of homework (with special emphasis on participants' progress and sharing of experiences), introduction to the topic, practice, answering open questions, closing. The course sessions are accompanied by weekly homework assignments to be completed at home.

Participants in the control group will meet in small groups (8-12 participants per group; 6 sessions, similar to the intervention group). They will receive a brief introduction to well-known psychological experiments and findings (e.g., the Asch experiment, selective attention) and discuss their perspectives on these topics, including personal implications of the experiments. Content related to self-efficacy or cognitive-behavioral interventions will be explicitly avoided. To prevent expectancy effects and other biases, participants will not be informed that they are part of the control group. If suspicions arise, participants will be told that group leaders are not allowed to disclose this. Group sessions will be led by a psychologist. The course materials (workbook, slides, and course instructions) will be shared on OSF.