This study examined whether adaptive cognitive emotion regulation strategies mediate the relationship between forgiveness and health-related quality of life in a sample of 350 Spanish people aged 55 years and older. Positive refocusing and positive reappraisal strategies partially mediated the relation between forgiveness and mental health. Thus, focusing on planning partially mediated the relation between forgiveness and physical health. Our findings contribute to an emerging understanding of the underlying coping process between forgiveness and health outcomes and might provide preliminary insight for potential intervention for increasing quality of life via the promotion of forgiveness and adaptive coping in the elderly.
Keywords: cognitive emotion regulation strategies; coping; elderly; forgiveness; quality of life.
© The Author(s) 2015.