Cognitive Flexibility as the Mediator between Unemployment Anxiety and Psychological Wellbeing among University Students with Disabilities

Abstract

Many previous studies confirm that anxious individuals usually express lower wellbeing. Additionally, being anxious usually undermines cognitive performance and prevents development of new ways of achieving desired levels of wellbeing, by reducing cognitive flexibility. This makes cognitive flexibility a possible mediator for the negative relationship between anxiety and wellbeing. Objectives: This study tests if cognitive flexibility serves as a mediator between anxiety and psychological wellbeing, with a special focus on the unemployment anxiety experienced by individuals with disabilities. Methods: Research assistants collected the data from 155 Saudi individuals with different disabilities (71 men and 84 women) between February and May 2019. The data was collected by questionnaires (Unemployment Anxiety Questionnaire, Ryff’s Psychological Wellbeing Scale, Cognitive Flexibility Inventory), and analyzed in R. After checking for and obtaining valid factor structures, path analyses were conducted to obtain the results. Results: The applied path analyses have shown that cognitive flexibility serves as a partial mediator between unemployment anxiety and psychological wellbeing.. Conclusion: Cognitive flexibility partially mediates the relationship between unemployment anxiety and wellbeing. However, the failure to replicate the factor structures of the applied questionnaires provides both valuable insight into potential cultural differences and highlights the need to replicate the study with the use of more culturally adapted and validated measures.