a cross-cultural study of the relationship of emotional self-regulation with phobia in iranian and indian students

Objective: the purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship of emotion selfregulationwith phobia in students of the university of sistan and baluchestan, iran, anduniversity of delhi, india.methods: we used a cross-sectional design for this study. in this study, 686 students (400students of the university of sistan and baluchestan and 286 students of university of delhi ofindia) were selected via convenience sampling method. data collection tools were miller andbrown’s emotional self-regulation questionnaire and marks and mathews phobia questionnaire.this study was analyzed by the use of pearson’s correlation coefficient as well as stepwiseregression. spss version 21 was used for measuring the variables.results: the results of this study in students of delhi university indicated that subscales ofsearching for options and assessing the plan’s effectiveness are negatively correlated with aphobia of blood/injection/physical damage, and the subscale of formulating a plan is negativelycorrelated with social phobia. according to regression analysis, data showed that the subscalesearching for options (beta=-0.21) was the best predictors of phobia of blood/injection/physicaldamage, and alone accounted for 4% of the variance. also, the subscale of formulating aplan (beta=-0.146) was the best predictors of social phobia and alone accounted for 2.1% ofthe variance. compared to the students of the university of delhi, the results of students ofuniversity of sistan and baluchestan showed that the subscale of evaluating the informationand comparing it to norms and assessing the plan’s effectiveness is positively correlatedwith a phobia of blood/injection/physical damage, and the total score of phobia. accordingto regression analysis, data demonstrated that the subscales of evaluating the informationand comparing it to norms (beta=0.147) and assessing the plan’s effectiveness were the bestpredictors of phobia of blood/injection/physical damage, and together accounted for 4.6% ofthe variance. in addition, the subscale of assessing the plan’s effectiveness (beta=0.113) wasthe best predictors of total phobia score and alone accounted for 1.3% of the variance.conclusion: therefore, we concluded that culture and society play effective roles in theform of response and expressing emotions. depending on the culture of each country, bothemotional regulation and phobia are different among the members of that society.