Emotional Regulation and Personality Factors as Predictors of Psychological Flexibility among Lagos State Residents.Emotional Regulation and Personality Factors as Predictors of Psychological Flexibility among Lagos State Residents.

The aim of this study is to examine the emotion regulation and personality factors as predictors of psychological flexibility among residents in Lagos State. A cross-sectional research design, with the aid ofthe survey method, was employed, and a questionnaire was used to collect data from 220 participants. The age of the participants is between 16 years and 50 years, with a mean age of 22.24 and a standard deviation of 6.28. The independent variables are emotion regulation (expressive suppression and cognitive reappraisal) and personality factors (openness, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, extra version), while psychological flexibility served as the dependent variable. The stated hypothesis that emotional regulation and personality factors will significantly predict psychological flexibility was tested using multiple regression. The result of the hypothesis revealed that openness, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, extraversion, suppression, and reappraisal significantly predicted psychological flexibility among residents of Lagos State. It can be further revealed that the predictors accounted for 15.2% variance in the outcome variable. The findings revealed that cognitive reappraisal predicted psychological flexibility whereas expressive suppression has non-significant influence on psychological flexibility. Also, of all the five personality factors, only openness to experience predicted psychological flexibility, while other traits like extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness and neuroticism did not significantly predict psychological flexibility. The findings of the study were discussed and limitation of the study explained.