The research, published in the journal Discover Psychology, was conducted by a team at the Escuela de Psicología of the Universidad Peruana Unión in Tarapoto, Peru. Lead author Alexandra Asto-Janampa and colleagues, including corresponding author Calixto Tapullima-Mori, set out to answer a question that had not previously been examined empirically: if unfinished business is associated with a diminished sense of meaning in life, what regulatory mechanisms might explain part of that association? Their focus fell on cognitive emotion regulation strategies, the conscious mental tactics people deploy to manage the emotional impact of stressful or negative events.

Cognitive emotion regulation strategies are typically divided into two broad families. Adaptive strategies include putting situations into perspective, positive reappraisal, positive refocusing, refocusing on planning, and acceptance—mental moves that reframe or reorganize a stressful experience in ways that tend to protect psychological well-being. Maladaptive strategies, by contrast, include self-blame, other-blame, rumination or focusing on thoughts and feelings, and catastrophizing, all of which are generally associated with poorer emotional outcomes. The Peruvian team wanted to know which of these two families, if either, acts as the hidden pathway connecting unresolved past experiences to a person’s sense of meaning.

To investigate, the researchers carried out a cross-sectional explanatory study with an associative strategy, recruiting 617 university students in the San Martín Region of the Peruvian Amazon. Participants had a mean age of 22.1 years with a standard deviation of 3.6, and 54.0 percent were women. Recruitment used convenience sampling with a snowball component, in which initial participants helped identify others eligible for the study. The study received ethics approval from the Research Ethics Committee of the Universidad Peruana Unión under Resolution No. 0421-T-2025/UPeU-FCS-CF and was conducted in accordance with the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki. Informed consent was obtained electronically before questionnaires were administered, participation was voluntary, anonymous and unremunerated, and all participants were of legal age.

On the analytical side, the team used structural equation modeling with a maximum likelihood robust estimator, a technique that allows researchers to test networks of relationships among latent psychological constructs while guarding against deviations from normality in the data. To probe indirect pathways, they ran mediation analyses built on 5,000 bias-corrected bootstrap resamples, a resampling procedure that generates confidence intervals for indirect effects without relying on assumptions that those effects follow a normal distribution. An indirect effect is considered statistically significant when its 95 percent confidence interval does not cross zero. Both of the structural models tested in the study showed acceptable fit to the data.

The headline finding concerns the adaptive strategies, and it is anything but straightforward. Students who reported more unfinished business also reported greater use of adaptive cognitive emotion regulation strategies, and those strategies in turn were positively associated with meaning in life. The indirect pathway through adaptive strategies was positive and significant, with a standardized coefficient of 0.087 and a 95 percent confidence interval running from 0.055 to 0.126. Yet the direct association between unfinished business and meaning in life was negative, at −0.202, and the total association was also negative, at −0.115. In other words, the indirect effect and the direct effect pointed in opposite directions.

That sign reversal is what methodologists call an inconsistent mediation, or a suppression pattern, and the authors are careful to stress that it is not the ordinary partial mediation familiar from most psychology papers. In a classic partial mediation, the indirect pathway carries the same sign as the direct effect and simply accounts for a portion of it. Here, the adaptive strategies appear to work against the direct negative association, offsetting part of the damage that unfinished business does to perceived meaning. The total effect of −0.115 is smaller in magnitude than the direct effect of −0.202 precisely because the positive indirect effect of 0.087 is subtracting from it. The practical implication is striking: without the mobilization of adaptive regulation, the association between unresolved experiences and diminished meaning would have been substantially stronger.

The story for maladaptive strategies is different. The indirect association through the maladaptive family was small and not statistically significant, with a coefficient of 0.026 and a 95 percent confidence interval spanning from −0.027 to 0.078, a range that includes zero. Whatever role rumination, self-blame, or catastrophizing play in the lives of these students, the data did not support the idea that they form a measurable bridge between unfinished business and meaning in life. The suppression effect, in this sample, belongs entirely to the adaptive side of the regulatory ledger.

The authors interpret this pattern as suggesting that adaptive cognitive emotion regulation may operate as a compensatory resource, one that is mobilized in response to unresolved experiences rather than being a simple conduit through which those experiences exert their influence. On this reading, encountering unfinished business does not merely erode meaning; it also triggers a regulatory response. Students who respond by reappraising, accepting, planning, and putting things into perspective recover part of the ground that unresolved experiences would otherwise claim. Those who lack or fail to deploy such strategies may bear the full weight of the direct negative association. The finding resonates with a broader theme in emotion science: regulation is not only a trait-like capacity but also a dynamic process recruited by adversity itself.

As with any cross-sectional study, the design captures associations at a single point in time, so the direction of the pathways cannot be established with certainty, and the convenience sampling with a snowball component means the sample may not represent all young adults in the region. Still, the study is the first to examine these regulatory mechanisms empirically in this population, and its suppression finding carries a genuinely hopeful message for university communities in the Peruvian Amazon and beyond. Unfinished business, the data suggest, exacts a real toll on how much meaning students find in their lives, but the human capacity for adaptive cognitive regulation is not a bystander to that process—it is an active counterweight. Interventions that strengthen reappraisal, acceptance, and planning skills may help young adults convert unresolved past experiences from silent burdens into catalysts for reflection, closing a few of the open loops that otherwise keep meaning out of reach.

Subject of Research: Cognitive emotion regulation strategies as a suppressive mediator between unfinished business and meaning in life among Peruvian university students

Article Title: Cognitive emotion regulation strategies in the association between unfinished business and meaning in life among Peruvian university students: an inconsistent (suppression) mediation model

Article References: Asto-Janampa, A., Algarate-Rubio, P. N., Tafur-Becerra, Y. A., Mayta-Llanos, J., & Tapullima-Mori, C. (2026). Cognitive emotion regulation strategies in the association between unfinished business and meaning in life among Peruvian university students: an inconsistent (suppression) mediation model. Discover Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44202-026-00890-6

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s44202-026-00890-6

Keywords: unfinished business, cognitive emotion regulation, meaning in life, suppression effect, mediation analysis, university students, Peruvian Amazon, structural equation modeling, adaptive strategies, maladaptive strategies, psychology, San Martín Region

The children represented in the sample carried diagnoses that span the landscape of neurodevelopmental disorders: developmental delay, autism spectrum disorder, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, and intellectual disabilities. These conditions, which emerge early in development and affect communication, learning, self-regulation, and daily functioning, are well known to place elevated demands on caregivers. Previous meta-analytic work has consistently shown that parents of children with autism spectrum disorder report higher parenting stress than parents of typically developing children, and that this stress is linked to child behavioral problems, parental burnout, and even marital dissatisfaction. What has been less clear is how the broader family environment—cohesion, adaptability, functioning, and the emotional setting of the home—interacts with individual parenting experiences such as stress, self-efficacy, and parenting style.

To untangle those relationships, the researchers administered a battery of validated instruments through an online questionnaire. Parenting stress was measured with the Parenting Stress Index-Short Form, a widely used tool originally developed by Richard Abidin that captures parental distress, parent-child dysfunctional interaction, and difficult child characteristics. Parenting competence was assessed with the Parenting Sense of Competence Scale, which taps both satisfaction and efficacy. The Parental Bonding Instrument probed parents’ own recollections of care and overprotection from their caregivers, while the Family Adaptation Partnership Growth Affection Resolve Questionnaire, based on the Family APGAR concept proposed by Smilkstein in 1978, measured perceived family functioning. Finally, the Family Closeness and Adaptability Scale, grounded in Olson’s circumplex model of marital and family systems, evaluated cohesion and flexibility within the household.

The statistical architecture of the study was deliberately layered. The team began with descriptive statistics and correlation analyses, then moved to hierarchical multiple regression, a technique that allows researchers to enter blocks of predictor variables in sequence and observe how each block changes the explanatory power of the model. Crucially, they checked for multicollinearity—the statistical problem that arises when predictor variables overlap so heavily that their individual contributions become indistinguishable—using variance inflation factors. Across all models, VIF values remained below 2.5, well under the conventional threshold of concern, which means the reported coefficients can be interpreted with reasonable confidence as distinct contributions rather than artifacts of redundancy.

The correlational results were dramatic. Parenting stress was negatively associated with parenting style at r = –0.626, with family functioning at r = –0.831, and with family setting at r = –0.792, all statistically significant at the p < 0.01 level. In plain terms, parents who described their families as functioning well and their home environments as supportive reported substantially less stress, while those describing harsher or less adaptive parenting styles reported more. Correlation coefficients of this magnitude, particularly the –0.831 linking stress and family functioning, indicate relationships strong enough that the two constructs are nearly tracking the same underlying experience of household well-being.

The hierarchical regression analyses sharpened the picture further. When entered as predictors, parenting style showed significant negative coefficients ranging from β = –0.159 to –0.157 (p < 0.001), while family functioning (β = –0.746, p < 0.001) and family setting (β = –0.733, p < 0.001) emerged as even more powerful negative predictors of parenting stress. The size of these family-level coefficients dwarfed the contribution of parenting style, reinforcing the study’s central message: the systemic properties of the family—how well members communicate, adapt to change, and support one another—carry more statistical weight in explaining stress than the individual manner in which parents discipline and interact with their children.

Perhaps the most intriguing finding, and the one most likely to spark debate among developmental scientists, is a statistical phenomenon known as a suppression effect. Parenting efficacy—the confidence a parent feels in their own ability to manage caregiving demands—did not behave as a straightforward predictor in the initial models. Only after the researchers accounted for the family-level variables did parenting efficacy emerge as a significant positive predictor of parenting stress, with coefficients ranging from β = 0.097 to 0.182 (p < 0.01). In suppression, the relationship between two variables is masked or even reversed until a third variable is controlled. Here, the implication is that the association between a parent’s sense of competence and their stress cannot be understood in isolation; it is entangled with the broader family context in ways that simple bivariate analyses would completely obscure.

This suppression finding carries real conceptual weight. A large body of prior research, including systematic reviews by Albanese and colleagues and Fang and colleagues, has portrayed parental self-efficacy as a protective factor associated with better parent and child well-being. Studies of parents of children with autism in China have similarly positioned self-efficacy as a mediator between child symptom severity and parental stress. The new results do not overturn that literature, but they complicate it: whether efficacy appears protective, irrelevant, or even paradoxically associated with stress may depend on which other family variables are held constant. For clinicians, the practical takeaway is that boosting a parent’s confidence without addressing family functioning may yield fragile or unpredictable gains, whereas interventions that strengthen cohesion, adaptability, and communication could shift the entire emotional economy of the household.

The study’s design, however, imposes important limits on interpretation. As a cross-sectional survey using convenience sampling, it captures a single moment in time and a self-selected group of parents, which means the direction of causality remains unknown. Does a well-functioning family reduce parenting stress, or do less stressed parents create better-functioning families? The authors themselves are explicit on this point, calling for longitudinal studies to clarify the temporal and directional relationships among these factors. Transactional models of development, notably articulated by Arnold Sameroff, would predict exactly the kind of bidirectional feedback the cross-sectional data cannot disentangle: children shape parents, parents shape families, and families shape the stress that parents carry back into their interactions with their children.

Even with those caveats, the research lands at a moment of growing global attention to caregiver burden in neurodevelopmental disorders. From studies of autism caregiving in Ghana to path analyses of maternal burnout in Poland and care-burden research in Mongolia, an international literature is converging on the conclusion that family-level variables—functioning, cohesion, adaptability, and social support—are central to caregiver well-being. The Chinese study adds rigorous quantitative texture to that consensus, showing effect sizes that are unusually large for psychosocial research and a methodological caution about suppression effects that other teams would do well to heed. For the millions of families navigating life with a child whose brain develops along a different trajectory, the message is both sobering and hopeful: the weight of parenting stress is not carried by parents alone, and the family as a whole may be the most powerful lever available for lifting it.

Subject of Research: Associations between family dynamics and parenting experiences among parents of children with neurodevelopmental disorders

Article Title: Parenting Experience and Family Dynamics Among Parents of Children With Neurodevelopmental Disorders: A Cross-Sectional Study

Article References: Parenting Experience and Family Dynamics Among Parents of Children With Neurodevelopmental Disorders: A Cross-Sectional Study. (n.d.). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-026-07502-1

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s10803-026-07502-1

Keywords: neurodevelopmental disorders, parenting stress, family functioning, parenting efficacy, autism spectrum disorder, ADHD, parenting style, family cohesion, cross-sectional study, caregiver burden, hierarchical regression, suppression effect