Predicting Post-Traumatic Growth based on Attachment Styles and Cognitive Emotion Regulation in Iranian immigrant girls

Abstract

Aim: The present study aimed to investigate the role of cognitive emotion regulation strategies and attachment styles in predicting post-traumatic growth. Method: the research was descriptive-correlational, and the population consisted of Iranian immigrant female students who were studying in a university outside of Iran in 2021. To this end, 145 Iranian female immigrant students were selected using the snowball sampling method to fill out the questionnaires of Tedeschi and Calhoun’s post-traumatic growth (1996), Hazen and Shaver attachment styles questionnaire (1993), and the Garnefski and Kraaij’s cognitive emotion regulation strategies (2006) via the links sent to them. The data were analyzed by SPSS 24 software, Pearson regression and correlation test. Result: The results showed that the variables of avoidant attachment style and adaptive emotion regulation strategies are significant predictors of post-traumatic growth. According to the beta values, the predicting power of avoidance attachment style and adaptive emotion regulation strategies showed a direct relationship with intensities (beta coefficients) of 0.23 and 0.24 and the ambivalent/anxious attachment style is a negative predictor of post-traumatic growth; however, non-adaptive emotion regulation strategies and secure attachment style were not good predictors of post-traumatic growth.  Conclusion: according to findings, the variables of avoidant attachment style and adaptive emotion regulation strategies were direct significant predictors of post-traumatic growth and can provide the grounds for such a growth; moreover, the variable of ambivalent/anxious attachment style was directly the negative predictors of post-traumatic growth and could prevent this type of growth.