Investigating the Relationship Between Cognitive Emotion Regulation Strategies and Psychological Well-being of University Students in Ilam City, Iran Through Positive and Negative Affect

A positive approach to mental health, which has spread widely in the last century, has led to the emergence of concepts such as psychological well–being, excitement, and mental health. Psychologists and researchers in this field have always considered Well–being in scientific and academic environments. Identifying the factors affecting the psychological well–being of students is important because young people are a large part of society and are in an age situation that may cause a lot of stress in various aspects of life. Therefore, if they do not have good psychological well–being, these stresses and stressors will have devastating effects on their lives. Accordingly, by reviewing the research conducted on the factors affecting psychological well–being, the present study investigated the relationship between cognitive strategies for emotion regulation and psychological well–being of students in Ilam City, Iran through positive and negative affects.

The present study was a correlational analysis based on structural equation modeling. The study’s statistical population comprised all students of Ilam universities who were studying in these universities in the academic year of 2019–2020. Of them, 350 students were selected by multi–stage cluster sampling. The inclusion criteria were as follows: age range from 18 to 40 years, being a student and providing informed consent in research. The exclusion criterion was failure to complete the questionnaires. The tools used in this study to evaluate the variables were the Psychological Well–Being Scale (Ryff, 2002), The Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (Garnefski et al., 2001), and the Positive and Negative Affect Scale (Watson et al., 1988). For data analysis, descriptive statistics indicators (mean, standard deviation) and inferential statistics (skewness and kurtosis values, the Kolmogorov–Smirnov test, structural equation modeling) were performed using SPSS version 25 and AMOS version 20 software at a significance level of 0.05.

The results showed that the direct effect coefficients of an adaptive strategy to positive affect (p<0.001, β=0.391), negative affect (p<0.001, β=–0.290), and psychological well–being (p<0.001, β=0.489), and direct effect coefficients of non–adaptive strategy to positive affect (p<0.001, β=–0.280), negative affect (p<0.001, β=0.220), and psychological well–being (p<0.001, β=–0.295) were significant. The coefficients of the direct effect of positive affect on psychological well–being (p<0.001, β=0.320) and negative affect on psychological well–being (p<0.001, β=–0.285) were also significant. Mediation relationship analysis also showed that the indirect effect coefficients of indirect adaptive strategies of emotion regulation on students' psychological well–being through positive affect (p<0.001, β=0.125) and through negative affect (p<0.001, β=0.08) were significant. Also, the coefficients of the indirect effect of standard non–adaptive strategies of emotion regulation on students' psychological well–being through positive affect (p<0.001, β=–0.09) and through negative affect (p<0.001 β=–0.062) were significant. The goodness of fit indicators showed the good fit of the studied conceptual model (χ2/dƒ=1.938, GFI=0.919, AGFI=0.911, RMSEA=0.062, NFI=0.915, CFI=0.960, IFI=0.918, TLI=0.927).

These results indicate that positive and negative affects mediated the relationship between cognitive strategies of emotion regulation and students' psychological well–being. Based on these findings, cognitive emotion regulation strategies can affect the psychological well–being of students by affecting the formation of positive and negative affects.