Emotion regulation moderates the impact of state anxiety on psychological well-being in Turkish population during the COVID-19 pandemic

ABSTRACT

The current study aimed to examine the extent to which the relationship between state anxiety and psychological well-being was moderated by emotion regulation strategies (cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression) during the COVID-19 outbreak. The data set included 520 participants from Turkish university students (282 females, 238 males) aged 18 to 25 (M_age = 21,04 years, SD = 1,59). The study was conducted utilizing a web-based cross-sectional research design. The self-reported questionnaires were administered to the participants via Google Forms with a socio-demographic information sheet. The snowball sampling strategy was employed. The findings showed significant relationships among state anxiety, emotion regulation strategies, and psychological well-being. More importantly, emotion regulation strategies moderated the relationship between state anxiety and psychological well-being. The negative relationship between state anxiety and psychological well-being appeared to increase if individuals utilized low levels of cognitive reappraisal and high levels of expressive suppression.

KEYWORDS:

• State anxiety
• cognitive reappraisal
• expressive suppression
• psychological well-being
• the COVID-19 pandemic

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.