Background: Immature behaviors, including impulsivity and lack of control lead to personal and social pathologies, such as addiction. Methods: This meta-analysis study aimed to evaluate the effect of impulsivity on addition and addictive tendencies. This comprehensive interdisciplinary quantitative meta-analysis integrated the research findings regarding the effect of impulsivity on addiction and addictive tendencies based on secondary data. A checklist was developed for collecting data based on the article title, author specifications, publication year, setting, research type, hypothesis, data collection instrument, statistical population, sample size, significance level, and probability value to avoid bias in the study selection protocol. Results: The results of studies were divided into nine databases to calculate the effect size, and finally, 11 studies were analyzed. The descriptive data analysis and effect size calculation were performed in the Comprehensive Meta-Analysis Software (CMA) version 2.0. Based on the fixed-effects model, 0.153 of the studies contributed significantly to the actual fixed effect sizes. The difference in effect sizes was due to sampling error. The random-effects model (0.202) suggested the independence of the studies (P < 0.001) with moderate robustness. Conclusions: According to the results, the behavioral construct of impulsivity significantly and positively affected addictive behaviors and tendencies. Therefore, the mediating effect of impulsivity, promote resilience, and train protective strategies for individuals prone to addiction should be controlled to improve mental health quality and develop social, communication, and life skills.

Background and aims: Cognitive emotion regulation strategies enhance students’ ability to handle emotional and stressful situations and lead to resilient behavior and suitable behavioral performance. The present study aimed to investigate the association of addiction tendency with distress tolerance, self-differentiation, and emotion regulation difficulties mediated by resilience in university students. Methods: This was a descriptive-correlational study using structural equation modeling (SEM). Cluster sampling was used to enroll 314 individuals among all students at the Islamic Azad University of Tehran in the academic year 2020-2021. The research instruments included the Shorter PROMIS Questionnaire (SPQ), the Distress Tolerance Scale-Short Form (DTS-SF), the Self-Other Differentiation Scale (SODS), the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (ERQ), and Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC). Data were analyzed by the SEM method using SPSS-26 and SmartPLS. Results: The results showed that distress tolerance (β=0.25, P<0.001) and emotion regulation difficulties (β=0.35, P<0.001) had a significant direct association with resilience. In addition, distress tolerance (β=0.14, P<0.001), self-differentiation (β=0.25, P<0.001), emotion regulation difficulties (β=0.27, P<0.001), and resilience (β=0.22, P<0.001) had a significant direct relationship with addictive tendencies. Moreover, resilience mediated the association of distress tolerance and emotion regulation difficulties with addictive tendencies in college students. Conclusion: The proposed model had the desired fitting based on the results. It is a great step toward understanding factors associated with addiction tendencies in university students. Furthermore, it is an appropriate model, according to which various programs can be developed and designed to prevent addiction tendencies among university students.