Psychological inflexibility mediates the relationship between fear of negative evaluation and psychological vulnerability

Erol Uğur; Çınar Kaya; Ahmet Tanhan

doi:10.1007/s12144-020-01074-8

Psychological inflexibility mediates the relationship between fear of negative evaluation and psychological vulnerability

Curr Psychol. 2021;40(9):4265-4277. doi: 10.1007/s12144-020-01074-8. Epub 2020 Sep 23.

Authors

Erol Uğur¹, Çınar Kaya², Ahmet Tanhan^{3

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Affiliations

¹ Psychological Counseling and Guidance at the Department of Educational Sciences, Sakarya University, Hendek Campus, 54300 Sakarya, Turkey.
² Psychological Counseling and Guidance at the Faculty of Education, Kütahya Dumlupınar University, 43100 Kütahya, Turkey.
³ Economic and Social Research Center - ESAM, Ankara, Turkey.
⁴ Department of Counseling, The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Greensboro, NC USA.
⁵ Department of Counseling, Adiyaman University, Adiyaman, Turkey.
⁶ Institute for Muslim Mental Health, Belleville, MI USA.

Abstract

College students worldwide and in Turkey face many biopsychosocial spiritual and economic issues, in part due to developmental and contextual factors. Understanding these issues and their relationship with psychological inflexibility, which is the central concept to the Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), is an unexplored gap in the literature. Therefore, the aim of the present study is to examine the mediating and moderating roles of Psychological Inflexibility (PI) in the relationship between Fear of Negative Evaluation (FNE) and Psychological Vulnerability (PV), and to set an empirical ground for developing evidence-based research and practices based on ACT. The study group consisted of 389 undergraduate students studying in various departments of a mid-sized urban state university. Regression-based mediation and moderation testing procedures revealed that PI partially mediates the relationship between FNE and PV. Moderating role of PI on the same relationship was not verified. The present findings are deemed to be useful for understanding the relationships of these constructs and developing future mental health research and interventions to address biopsychosocial spiritual issues and enhance wellbeing especially from an ACT perspective.

Keywords: Acceptance and commitment therapy; College students; Counseling; Fear of negative evaluation; Mental health; Psychological inflexibility; Psychological vulnerability.