A systematic review on the relationship between psychological resilience, cognitive emotion regulation strategies, and climate anxiety

The increasing prevalence of climate anxiety and its associations with mental health disorders have encouraged the scientific community to explore how individuals may effectively cope with this complex phenomenon. While existing research has primarily centered on behavioral strategies, much less is known about the role of traits and strategies that may help individuals mentally cope with adversity. Hence, the present preregistered review (PROSPERO: CRD42024574449) investigated the relationship between climate anxiety, psychological resilience, and cognitive emotion regulation (CER) strategies. We attempted to identify quantitative studies with observational designs that report novel results pertaining to associations of interest. To do so, we searched Scopus, Web of Science, EBSCOhost, ProQuest, and MEDLINE for published papers and theses, along with PsyArxiv, SocArXiv, and medRxiv for preprints. Additionally, we searched the reference lists of all eligible studies and assessed the quality of articles using the Survey Studies in Psychology checklist. In the end, 13 articles that contained 15 relevant studies and 97 relevant findings met our eligibility criteria. The results showed that psychological resilience was consistently negatively associated with climate anxiety, whereas the results were rather mixed for adaptive and maladaptive CER strategies. An additional identified construct, psychological adaptation to climate change - a blend of different (mal)adaptive CER strategies - was positively associated with climate anxiety. Despite limitations, such as the small number of studies and relatively low cohesion between them, our review highlights psychological resilience as a protective factor and the complexity of the relationship between CER strategies and climate anxiety.