Emotion regulation and psychological wellbeing in university students: anxiety, depression, stress, and life satisfaction

Emotion regulation is relevant to psychological adjustment among university students, particularly in contexts characterized by academic pressure and increasing demands for autonomy. This cross-sectional study examined associations between cognitive reappraisal, expressive suppression, depression, anxiety, stress, and life satisfaction in 106 undergraduate students enrolled in a Social Education degree at a public university in Andalusia, Spain. Participants completed the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire, the Satisfaction With Life Scale, and the Depression Anxiety Stress Scales-21. Internal consistency was high across the six study dimensions (Cronbach's α =.846–.921; McDonald's ω =.848–.921). Life satisfaction was negatively correlated with depression, anxiety, and stress, and the three distress dimensions were positively interrelated. In gender-adjusted hierarchical regressions, emotion-regulation scores explained additional variance in anxiety and stress, but not in depression or life satisfaction. Several associations were opposite to the directions commonly reported in the literature: cognitive reappraisal was positively associated with anxiety, whereas expressive suppression was negatively associated with anxiety and stress. The item-level structural model produced mixed fit evidence: RMSEA, CFI, and TLI/NNFI were favorable, but SRMR, GFI, AGFI, NFI, and RFI indicated important limitations. Because indirect effects were not estimated and the data were cross-sectional, the model does not demonstrate mediation or causal pathways. The findings should therefore be regarded as sample-specific associations requiring replication and a complete scoring audit.