The mediating role of emotional regulation and emotional expression in the relationship between autistic traits and empathy in Saudi students

The aim was to investigate the mediating role of emotional regulation and emotional expression in the relationship between autistic traits and empathy in Saudi students. Participants were undergraduate students at Umm Al-Qura University. A total of 398 questionnaires were sent out, and 260 valid questionnaires were received. Descriptive statistics and correlation analysis were conducted on the variables hypothesized in the study; on this basis, the structural process model modeling method was used to examine the impact of autistic trait empathy after controlling for factors unrelated to age and gender. This study investigated the relationship between empathy, emotional expression, cognitive reappraisal, and autistic traits in Saudi students. A statistical analysis to test the posited hypotheses was undertaken using IBM SPSS Statistics, version 26. Key descriptive statistics were undertaken using the software, making it possible to study the distributions of successive measured variables. The results found that autistic traits can directly and negatively predict empathy, and also through negative emotional expression and cognitive reappraisal can indirectly predict empathy, and can even predict empathy through the chain mediation of negative emotional expression and positive emotional expression to cognitive reappraisal. However, autistic traits did not predict empathy through positive emotional expression.