Regulation of positive and negative affect: Associations with stress and resilience in health professions students

Abstract

The study aimed to establish the relationship between affect regulation strategies, perceived stress, and resilience in health professions students. A total of 181 undergraduates participated in the survey. The instruments used were Brief Resilience Scale, Responses to Positive Affect Scale, Emotion Regulation Questionnaire, Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire, Perceived Stress Scale. The analyses indicated that reappraisal performed as a positive predictor of resilience, whereas rumination and dampening - as negative predictors with dampening effect being the strongest. Dampening, rumination, and self-blame predicted perceived stress positively and reappraisal predicted it negatively. Perceived stress fully mediated rumination-resilience relationship. The study show that regulation of negative affect via rumination, self-blame, reappraisal, and down-regulation of positive affect via dampening, but not its up-regulation, were associated with students' perceived stress and resilience. Tendencies to reappraise negatives experiences boosts resilience, but self-blaming, ruminating and suppressing positive ones make students vulnerable to negative appraisals and experience of stress with the latter presenting as the strongest risk factor for their adaptability. Implications of implementing emotion regulation skills in psycho-education to enhance students' resilience are discussed.