How aesthetic education enhances psychological resilience: the mediating role of emotion regulation

Introduction: Aesthetic education is widely assumed to foster students' emotional and psychological development; however, empirical evidence from vocational education contexts remains limited. Drawing on emotion regulation theory, this study examines whether participation in aesthetic education enhances vocational students' psychological resilience through cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression. Methods: Survey data were collected from 412 vocational students in China. Aesthetic education participation, cognitive reappraisal, expressive suppression, and psychological resilience were measured using self-report scales, and the data were analyzed using structural equation modeling. Results: The results indicate that greater participation in aesthetic education significantly predicts higher levels of cognitive reappraisal and lower levels of expressive suppression, which in turn are significantly associated with enhanced psychological resilience. The indirect effects through cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression were both significant, supporting the proposed mediating role of emotion regulation. Discussion: These findings suggest that aesthetic education functions as a non-threatening and experience-based psychological intervention by facilitating adaptive emotion regulation processes. The study highlights the psychological value of aesthetic education in vocational settings and offers practical implications for curriculum design and students' emotional development in skill-oriented educational contexts. Given the cross-sectional design, the findings should be interpreted as evidence of associations rather than causal effects.