The moderating role of cognitive emotion regulation strategies in relation between perfectionism dimensions and mental health indices

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the moderating role of cognitive emotion regulation strategies on the relationship between perfectionism dimensions and mental health indices. A total of 510 individuals (381 men, 126 women) participated in the study. Participants were asked to complete the Mental Health Inventory-28 (Veit & Ware, 1983), Tehran Multiple Perfectionism Scale (Besharat, 2007), and Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (Garnefski & Kraaij, 2006). Pearson Correlation Coefficient and Hierarchical Linear Regression were used to analyze the data. The result showed that perfectionism in all dimensions (self-oriented, other-oriented, socially-prescribed) had a significant negative association with mental well-being and a significant positive association with mental distress (p<0.01). In addition to this, adaptive emotion regulation strategies had a significant positive association with mental well-being and a significant negative association with mental distress but for maladaptive emotion regulation strategies, this relation was reversed (p<0.01). Results also revealed that the relationship between dimensions of perfectionism with mental health indices was merely moderated by maladaptive emotion regulation strategies (p<0.05). According to the findings of this study, it can be concluded that the relationship between perfectionism dimensions and mental health indices is not a simple linear one, but this relationship can be moderated by other variables such as maladaptive cognitive emotion regulation strategies.