Abstract
Past studies on calling have primarily focused on the positive aspects of calling, but there have been voices pointing to the potential adverse impact of calling on mental health. This study examined the mediating effect of cognitive emotion regulation strategies, comprising adaptive and maladaptive emotion regulation strategy, to elucidate the two-sided effects of calling on trauma-related mental health. Participants were 268 Air Force pilots in the Republic of Korea who provided self-report data two times at a one-month interval. The results confirmed that calling had positive effects on both adaptive and maladaptive emotion regulation. Additionally, adaptive emotion regulation positively predicted posttraumatic growth, and maladaptive emotion regulation positively predicted posttraumatic stress disorder. Further, the link between calling and posttraumatic growth was partially mediated by adaptive emotion regulation, while that between calling and posttraumatic stress disorder was fully mediated by maladaptive emotion regulation. Hence, this study has empirically verified previous findings pertaining to the two-sided effects of calling on psychological health. Based on these results, we discuss the theoretical implications, practical implications, and some directions for further studies.
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Data Availability
The datasets analyzed during this study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
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This work was supported by the Yonsei University Research Grant of 2021 (R202106041).
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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the university institutional review board (IRB number: 7001988-202104-HR-1125-04), and the participants were informed that this was approved by the Republic of Korea Air Force Headquarters.
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Seol, J.H., Park, Y., Lee, A.R. et al. Calling as a double-edged sword for posttraumatic outcomes among Air Force pilots: The mediating roles of adaptive and maladaptive emotion regulation. Curr Psychol 42, 29880–29892 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-022-03819-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-022-03819-z