Behavioral Emotion Regulation and resilience in students: The mediating role of cognitive flexibility

The aim of the present study was to investigate the mediating role of cognitive flexibility in the relationship between Behavioral Emotion Regulation and students' resilience. The research method was descriptive-correlational and structural equation modeling. The statistical population included all undergraduate students at Kharazmi University in the academic year 2022–2023, from which 301 people were selected as samples using multi-stage cluster sampling. In order to collect data, the Academic Resilience Questionnaire (Connor and Davidson, 2003), Cognitive Flexibility (CFI, Dennis and Vander Wal, 2010), and Behavioral Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (BERQ, Garnefski and Kraaij, 2019) were used. The results showed that the proposed model had a good fit. Also, the direct effect of behavioral emotion regulation on resilience and cognitive flexibility was significant (p < 0.01), and the direct effect of cognitive flexibility on resilience was also significant (p < 0.01). Other results also showed that cognitive flexibility had a mediating role between behavioral emotion regulation and resilience (p < 0.01). In summary, it can be concluded that behavioral emotion regulation directly and indirectly affects students' resilience through the mediating role of cognitive flexibility.