Cognitive Emotion Regulation Explains the Religious Coping- Mental-well-being Link during COVID-19 in Young Adults

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.