THE IMPACT OF RELIGIOSITY ON DEATH ANXIETY: MEDIATING ROLE OF EMOTIONAL REGULATION AMONG MADRASSAH STUDENTS

Background: Death anxiety, a profound existential concern, can significantly affect emotional well-being. Religiosity, particularly within Islamic contexts, is believed to offer cognitive and emotional frameworks for coping with mortality. Despite increasing global interest, limited research has explored how religiosity influences death anxiety through emotion regulation strategies among madrassah students—a population deeply immersed in religious teachings and often excluded from mainstream psychological research. Objective: This study aimed to examine the relationships among religiosity, emotion regulation (cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression), and death anxiety, and to determine whether emotion regulation mediates the association between religiosity and death anxiety in madrassah students. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted with 250 madrassah students (125 males, 125 females) aged 12–20 years, recruited from five urban centers in Pakistan. Participants completed the Centrality of Religiosity Scale, Emotion Regulation Questionnaire, and Death Anxiety Scale. Descriptive statistics, Pearson correlations, multiple regression, and Hayes’ PROCESS macro (Model 4) with 5,000 bootstrap samples were used to assess direct and indirect effects. Results: Religiosity was significantly negatively correlated with death anxiety (r = –0.38, p < 0.001) and expressive suppression (r = –0.30, p < 0.001), and positively correlated with cognitive reappraisal (r = 0.37, p < 0.001). Regression analysis confirmed religiosity (β = –.27, p < 0.001) and cognitive reappraisal (β = –.23, p < 0.001) as significant negative predictors of death anxiety. Mediation analysis revealed that cognitive reappraisal partially mediated the relationship (95% CI = [–0.18, –0.03]), while expressive suppression did not (95% CI = [–0.09, 0.02]). Females reported significantly higher death anxiety than males (p = 0.02), with no gender or age differences in religiosity or regulation strategies. Conclusion: Religiosity reduces death anxiety in madrassah students primarily through adaptive emotional regulation, especially cognitive reappraisal. Integrating psychoeducational approaches within religious education may enhance emotional resilience in this population.