Abstract:
The purpose of the current study was twofold: i) to assess the direct, and indirect
associations between religious coping, cognitive emotion regulation strategies and mental well being, and ii) to examine whether physical health status moderates the mediated associations
between religious coping, cognitive emotion regulation strategies and mental well-being. For this
purpose, religious coping was assessed from positive religious coping and negative religious
coping; and two selective emotion regulation strategies, Positive reappraisal and Self-blaming,
were assessed in the current study. A sample of 200 young adults, ranging in age from 19-36
years (M age= 21.43, SD= 2.96; Men = 82, Women = 116) was selected through an online
survey to assess the study objectives. Convenient sampling strategy was used to approach
participants and collect data. The Warwick–Edinburgh Mental Well-being Scale (Tennant et al.,
2007), Brief RCOPE (Pargament et al., 2011) and Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire
(Garnefski & Kraaij, 2007) were used to assess the mental well-being, level of religious coping,
and the use of cognitive emotion regulation respectively. Pearson product-moment correlation
and moderated mediation analysis were used to test study hypotheses. The findings of the study
revealed that only positive religious coping was positively correlated with one cognitive emotion
regulation strategy, positive reappraisal, and mental well-being. Findings from mediation
analysis indicated that positive reappraisal significantly mediated the link between positive
religious coping and mental well-being. Finally, physical health status moderated the mediated
association between positive religious coping, positive reappraisal, and mental well-being. More
specifically, the mediated link was stronger for participants who reported good physical health
status compared to those who reported poor physical health. Limitations, implications and future
directions of the current study were also discussed.
