Social responsibility as a mediator variable in the relationship between cognitive distortions and psychological reactance among a sample of female university students

Abstract EN

Background : normal cognitive functioning enables individuals to ensure the accurate functioning of different thought processes including receiving, selecting, transforming, storing and ultimately retrieving the information which assists a person to navigate respond to the world.

although this navigation may be biased by cognitive distortions, these distortions may also be protected by psychological reactance-a tendency to protect personal liberties that are perceived as being forcefully taken away.

in combination, these two phenomena may form a fertile ground for the development of various mental health issues, which highlights the relevance of understanding their relationship.

aim : to determine the relationship between cognitive distortions and psychological reactance while studying the impact of social responsibility as a mediator variable.

method : the study was conducted online in a cross-sectional manner, on 328 female Saudi university students recruited from diverse cultural, economic, social backgrounds, who were on average 21.24 years old.

results : psychological reactance can be predicted by cognitive distortions, and this relationship is partially mediated by social obligation, while individual responsibility and social response were revealed as suppressors.

conclusion : social obligation partially mediated the relationship between cognitive distortions and psychological reactance, however further studies on more representative samples are required before generalizing these results.