The Mediating Role of Mindfulness in the Relationship between Resilience and Proactive Coping with Cognitive Reappraisal among Female Adolescents

The experience of adolescence, with its dramatic changes in various aspects of a teenager’s life, presents demands that, in the absence of certain psychological qualities, can make a safe and less-damaged transition from those confrontations challenging. According to available evidence, one of the most critical psychological qualities specifying a teenager’s chosen lifestyle is emotional regulation. Various researchers have endeavored in different ways and by developing diverse conceptual models to emphasize the role of factors affecting the emotional regulation style of adolescents (Sabzi & Shokri, in press). In this study, the researcher aims to analyze the difference in the regulation style focused on positive reappraisal by emphasizing the informational power of psychological resilience constructs and coping strategies with stressful experiences, and also by referring to the mediating role of the psychological quality of mindfulness. The development of this conceptual model, with the collection of targeted constructs for the systematic study of emotional regulation style focused on cognitive reappraisal, is necessary for at least two reasons. First, the simultaneous emphasis on these conceptual domains in the form of a hypothesized model, based on theoretical and empirical foundations, is a novel approach. Therefore, the researcher assumes that the present study, with its innovative aggregation of selected concepts, is of undeniable importance in expanding the informational boundaries in the field of studies of emotional regulation styles in adolescents. Second, the logic of the conceptual community and the emphasis on the interpretative capacities of mindfulness play an important role in strengthening the content of preventive psychoeducational interventions for adolescents. Therefore, the results of the present research are crucial in the development of training programs for emotional regulation in adolescents. In the present study, the researcher sought to test the proposed mediation model of mindfulness in relation to resilience and coping strategies with cognitive reappraisal based on the conceptual positions derived from the coping process theory. In general, this theory emphasizes that the difference in the multiple consequences of facing stressful experiences, such as the difference in the processing styles of the motivating events, can be explained through the difference in the reserve of coping resources.

In this correlational study, the research population included female students of the first secondary school in the 11th district of Tehran in the academic year of 2021-2022. A total of 486 female adolescents, who were selected by the available sampling method, responded to the Adolescent Resilience Scale (ARS), the Adolescent and Adult Mindfulness Scale (AAMS), the Cognitive Reappraisal Scale (CRS), and the Proactive Coping Scale (PCS). Structural equation modelling was used to assess the mediating effect of mindfulness on the relationship between resilience and coping strategies with cognitive reappraisal among female adolescents. After collecting the data, the AMOS-18 statistical package was used to analyze them using the statistical method of structural equation modelling.

Initially, the data were checked for normality, outliers, and multicollinearity. Univariate outliers were examined via Z-score values in SPSS, revealing no abnormal or outside the range of predictable values. Furthermore, data were screened for instances of multicollinearity via analysis of tolerance (TOL) and variance inflation factor (VIF). Multicollinearity was not present as all TOL indices were >0.10 and all VIF measures were <3. Results indicated that for female students, the completely mediated model of mindfulness on the relationship between resilience and coping strategies with cognitive reappraisal among female adolescents exhibited a good fit to the data. Moreover, all of the regression weights in the hypothesized model were statistically significant, and the model’s predictors accounted for 52% of the variance in mindfulness and 60% of the variance in cognitive reappraisal.

According to the available empirical evidence, adolescence is a stage in a person’s life in which teenagers, upon entering this period and subsequently facing the inevitability of confronting challenging demands arising from being in different situations, exhibit distinct levels of resilient encounters. In other words, the period of adolescence and its coincidence with the accumulation of changes in various psychological and physical fields, and of course, the requirement to respond adaptively to such experiences, at this point, is considered an important developmental task (Chen, 2021). A review of various studies shows that educational researchers have always strived to include in their research priorities, in addition to understanding how teenagers respond to developmental tasks, a methodical examination of how they encounter motivating experiences in academic progress situations (Santos, Simoes, Cefai, Freitas, & Arriaga, 2021). According to the available evidence, adolescence is the period of facing a wide range of demands in different fields of personal and social life of the teenager. The quality of pursuing developmental tasks in this period of human life is understood in the context of the psychological qualities of adolescents (Chen, 2021). Based on the conceptual positions of the coping process theory (Lazarus, 2006), the quality of people’s evaluation in the face of surrounding motivating experiences is understood by referring to some of their psychological qualities such as psychological resilience and coping strategies with stressful experiences (Santos et al., 2021). According to the available evidence, one of the determinants of cognitive interpretations is resilient encounters. In this section, it is assumed that part of the difference in meaning creation for peripheral experiences can be understood through psychological resilience. In addition, people’s ways of coping with stressful experiences are also effective in using empowering interpretations or disempowering interpretations dimensions of cognitive interpretations (Hambour et al. 2018). A review of the research background shows that most of the researchers interested in the intellectual possibilities of the coping process theory have tried to study the positions of this theory by using each of the two causal methodologies of mediation and moderation. In sum, these findings of the present study, in line with the conceptual positions of coping process theory, show that predicting the preferred method of cognitive confrontation with peripheral demands through the functional characteristics of resilience variables and active confrontation in the context of information makes sense for other concepts such as mindfulness. In other words, in accordance with the realistic approach of coping process theory, the comprehensibility of different forms of people’s confrontations with surrounding stressful situations finds meaning in the informational context of a complex network of relationships between different interrelated constructs.