Mindfulness Training and Emotion Regulation: The Mediating Role of Psychological Resilience

Emotion regulation is a core component of mental health, and mindfulness-based interventions have been proposed to strengthen it in part by cultivating psychological resilience. The present study examined whether psychological resilience mediates the effect of a brief mindfulness training on emotion regulation in young adults. Sixty university students were randomly assigned to a six-week Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction program (n = 31) or to an active six-week Health Enhancement Program control (n = 29). Trait mindfulness, psychological resilience, and the two emotion regulation strategies indexed by the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire–Short Form (cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression) were assessed before and after the intervention. Four hypotheses were tested with mixed-design analyses of variance and two simple mediation models, with condition as the predictor and change in psychological resilience as the mediator. The manipulation check showed that the mindfulness training did not produce a significantly larger increase in trait mindfulness than the active control. Consistent with this, the training did not produce significantly larger gains than the control on psychological resilience, cognitive reappraisal, or expressive suppression. The indirect effect of training on either emotion regulation subscale through change in psychological resilience was not statistically significant. At baseline, psychological resilience was positively correlated with cognitive reappraisal but not with expressive suppression, and trait mindfulness was unrelated to the other variables. The findings provide no evidence that psychological resilience mediated the effect of a short, active-controlled mindfulness training on emotion regulation in healthy young adults; the null pattern was anchored by the absence of a measurable training effect on the mindfulness construct itself and constrains the conclusions that can be drawn.