Relationship Between Parental Psychological Control and University Students’ Subjective Vitality: The Mediating Role of Cognitive Emotion Regulation

One criteria of well-being is subjective vitality. To know the predicting factors of subjective vitality as one of the main indicator of health and motivation is very critical. The purpose of this study was to investigate the causal relationship between parental psychological control and students' subjective vitality with the mediating role of cognitive emotion regulation strategies. Participant consisted of 346 Shiraz University undergraduate students who selected by cluster random sampling, and completed the Soenens et al.'s dependency-oriented and achievement-oriented psychological control scale, Garnefski & Kraaij’s cognitive emotion regulation questionnaire, and Ryan & Frederick’s subjective-vitality scale. The findings showed that psychological control of parents negatively affected subjective vitality and adaptive cognitive emotion regulation strategies. The effect of parental psychological control on maladaptive strategies was positive and statistically significant. Maladaptive strategies showed negative effects on subjective vitality, and adaptive strategies had positive effects on subjective vitality. The Bootstrap test confirmed the mediating role of cognitive emotion regulation in the relationship between parental psychological control and subjective vitality. According to this research findings, it can be concluded that decrease of parental psychological control leads to children's more use of adaptive strategies and thereby leads to a promotion of children’s subjective vitality.