Psychological courage and subsequent flourishing: Two-wave evidence for a reappraisal pathway

Psychological courage (PC) is theorized to promote adaptive functioning, yet its mechanism is underspecified. This brief report presents two-wave longitudinal (residual-change) parallel mediation results addressing whether PC at T1 relates to later flourishing via cognitive reappraisal rather than expressive suppression. Adults from a Polish online panel completed two waves approximately 13 weeks apart (Wave 1 N = 702; Wave 2 N = 557; Mage = 41.51, SD = 12.76; 50.1% women). Residualized change in flourishing (T2 regressed on T1) served as the outcome in a parallel mediation. PC predicted higher cognitive reappraisal and lower expressive suppression; cognitive reappraisal predicted increases in flourishing, whereas expressive suppression did not predict increases. The indirect effect via cognitive reappraisal was significant; the expressive suppression indirect effect was not. Findings provide a temporally ordered account of how PC relates to flourishing, while acknowledging that a two-wave, self-report design remains associational.