The Relationship Between Cognitive Flexibility and Self-Compassion with Sleep Quality: The Mediating Role of Emotion Regulation

The quality of sleep is a crucial aspect of clinical health, and poor sleep quality is becoming more prevalent among individuals, particularly students. Therefore, this study was conducted to investigate the relationship between cognitive flexibility and self-compassion with sleep quality among students, taking into account the mediating role of emotion regulation.

This research is a descriptive correlational study. The statistical population for this study included all students at Guilan University. For this purpose, a sample of 384 people was selected using a non-random sampling method. In order to collect data, a researcher-made demographic questionnaire was used along with Pittsburgh Boyce et al.'s sleep quality questionnaire (1989), Neff's self-compassion questionnaire (2003), Dennis and Vander Wall's cognitive flexibility questionnaire (2010), and Gross and John's emotion regulation questionnaire (2003). Data analysis was conducted using the Pearson correlation method and path analysis with SPSS-27 and Amos-24 software. 

The analysis revealed a significant relationship among the three variables of cognitive flexibility, self-compassion, and emotion regulation, particularly with the sleep quality re-evaluation subscale (p<0.05). Additionally, a significant relationship exists between the two independent variables of cognitive flexibility and self-compassion with reappraisal. Furthermore, the relationship between cognitive flexibility and suppression was found to be significant (p<0.05). Furthermore, there was no significant relationship between sleep quality and repression, and no significant relationship was found between self-compassion and repression (p>0.05). The variables of cognitive flexibility, self-compassion, and reappraisal could account for 14 percent of the variance in sleep quality.

The research results indicate that emotion regulation, particularly the reappraisal subscale, mediates the connection between cognitive flexibility and self-compassion with sleep quality. Therefore, leveraging emotion regulation abilities, especially the reappraisal subscale, can be an effective therapeutic approach to enhance the sleep quality of students.