The Mediating Role of Resilience in the Relationship between Spiritual Intelligence and Anxiety Caused by Corona Crisis in Students and University Graduates: A Descriptive Study

Spiritual intelligence can help to increase people's resilience in confronting anxiety caused by viral diseases outbreak such as COVID-19. Therefore, the present study was conducted with the aim of identifying the relationship between spiritual intelligence and anxiety caused by coronavirus as a traumatic global crisis with the mediation of resilience.

The present research is one of the descriptive studies with correlation method. The statistical population of this research was all university students and graduates living in Tehran during peak of outbreak and epidemic of Omicron strain of coronavirus in 2021, from which 442 people were selected by convenience sampling. The tools used in this research included King's Spiritual Intelligence Questionnaire (2008), Connor and Davidson's Resilience Questionnaire (2003), Alipour et al.'s Corona Disease Anxiety Scale (2020). The data were analyzed by structural equations modeling.

According to the results of the present research, the direct effect of spiritual intelligence on resilience (β=0.930, p<0.001), resilience on corona anxiety (β=-0.528, p=0.020) and also indirect effect of spiritual intelligence on corona anxiety were confirmed by the mediation of resilience variable (β=-0.491, p=0.021) at the significance level of 0.05.

The results of the present study showed that spiritual intelligence is one of the factors affecting resilience and coronavirus anxiety; therefore, it is recommended to use this concept in educational workshops and psychotherapy guidelines in order to increase people's resilience and deal with the anxiety caused by this virus and even other infectious diseases that may spread and cause anxiety in future, like COVID-19.