Cognitive Emotional Regulations and Psychological Well-Being of Military Persons: Role of Emotional Intelligence and Psychological Distress

Abstract

Military officers deployed for combat operations are routinely subjected to traumatic situations, and those returning from the operations have shown elevated incidences of post-traumatic stress. The present study was aimed at investing utilization of adaptive and maladaptive cognitive emotion regulations among the military persons having traumatic experience and how the selection of emotion regulation impacts their psychological well-being along with the mediating role of emotional intelligence and the underlying role of psychological distress. The research design was based on a quantitative approach with survey research by utilizing self-reported measures. Data was collected from 310 military officers between the ages 23 years to 49 years (M= 1.84, SD= .79) through purposive sampling. Findings revealed that adaptive emotion regulation has a significant positive relationship with psychological well-being whereas maladaptive emotion regulation has a significant negative relationship with psychological well-being. Adaptive cognitive emotions positively predicted psychological well-being. Emotional intelligence partially mediated the relationship between adaptive and maladaptive cognitive emotions whereas psychological distress moderated the relationship between maladaptive cognitive emotions and psychological well-being. Moreover, married military officers used more adaptive cognitive emotion strategies and high psychological well-being as compared to unmarried military officers. The findings of the current study highlighted the impact of adaptive and maladaptive cognitive emotion regulations and will help the military trainers as well as therapists to design such intervention that encourages the military officers to use their emotional intelligence and adaptive coping strategies to cope with their stresses. Keywords: Cognitive Emotion Regulation, Emotional Intelligence, Psychological Well Being, Psychological Distress