The Mediating Role of Emotion Regulation Profiles in the Relationship between Dispositional Mindfulness and Psychological Symptoms

Abstract

Dispositional mindfulness plays a crucial role in predicting psychological symptoms, such as depression, anxiety, and posttraumatic stress (PTS). Prior research has shown that emotion regulation (ER) mediated this association. However, a variable-centred approach was typically used, possibly overlooking the heterogeneity in ER strategies among individuals. Our study therefore employed a person-centred approach to identify distinct ER profiles and investigated the mediating role of ER profiles in the association between dispositional mindfulness and various psychological symptoms. Latent profile analysis and mediation analyses were used to analyse existing cross-sectional data from 759 participants. We identified four distinct ER profiles: Adaptive, Low Adaptive, High Maladaptive, and Severe Maladaptive. As expected, the results showed that higher levels of dispositional mindfulness were associated with lower psychological symptoms. Furthermore, ER profiles partially mediated the relationship between dispositional mindfulness and psychological symptoms, with depression showing significant mediation effects across more ER profile comparisons than anxiety and PTS. By examining individual variations in ER strategies, our study provided new valuable insights into the mechanisms through which dispositional mindfulness influences various psychological symptoms.