Assessing the Implicit Relationships Between Spirituality and Resilience and its impact on Emotional Dysregulation

Abstract

The purpose of this research was to study the complex relations between spirituality, resilience, and emotional dysregulation through a combination of implicit and explicit methods. The Implicit Association Test (IAT) was carried out as an implicit measure in order to determine the implicit associations that exist between spirituality and resilience. Besides, the “Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS)” was applied to detect the “level of emotional dysregulation” that was in the participants. The correlation between implicit and explicit measures revealed a negative correlation between the IAT scores and the DERS scores , r =-.729), p < 0.01 level). This indicates that the tighter the connection between spirituality and resilience, the less emotional dysregulation a person experience. Based on these findings, the implicit spiritual connections could be the key to the creation of the mechanisms for emotion regulation that would finally be the reasons for the positive psychological well-being and resilience. The results of the assessment of the intervention initiatives that are directed at the development of the adaptive coping mechanisms are discussed in this article