Resilience, emotion regulation, and interpreting learning engagement: cognitive reappraisal as a mediator rather than expressive suppression

Abstract

Drawing on positive psychology concepts, this cross-sectional study investigates associations among resilience, emotion regulation (specifically cognitive reappraisal [CR] and expressive suppression [ES]), and interpreting learning engagement. A total of 306 interpreting learners from five universities in China completed validated questionnaires. A theoretically specified associative mediation model treated resilience as a relatively distal adaptive resource, CR and ES as more proximal emotion regulation processes, and engagement as the learning correlate. The structural model was estimated with the DWLS estimator with Bollen-Stine bootstrapping (1,000 resamples) to examine indirect effects and confidence intervals. The findings indicated that resilience and CR were positively associated with and could predict interpreting learning engagement across all four dimensions (adjusted R2 ranged from 10.7 to 16.8%). In the specified model, CR partially mediated the link between resilience and interpreting learning engagement (proportion mediated ranged from 25.6 to 50%), whereas ES exhibited neither a significant correlation with resilience and engagement nor a mediating role in this relationship. These results highlight CR as an adaptive emotion regulation strategy relevant to engagement in the cognitively and emotionally demanding context of interpreter training. However, because all variables were measured concurrently, the predictive and mediation results should be interpreted statistically rather than causally. Longitudinal and experimental studies are needed to establish temporal direction and evaluate CR-focused pedagogical practices.