Hubungan Antara Regulasi Emosi dengan Escapism dalam Menonton Drama Pendek China pada Mahasiswa
FEBI FEBRITA TRIANA, Student ID: 2230306027, Thesis Title: “THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN EMOTION REGULATION AND ESCAPISM IN WATCHING CHINESE SHORT DRAMAS AMONG UNIVERSITY STUDENt”. Department of Islamic Psychology, Faculty of Ushuluddin, Adab, and Dakwah, Mahmud Yunus Batusangkar State Islamic University, (2026), 80 page. Chinese short dramas have become a popular digital entertainment Chinese short-form dramas have become a popular digital entertainment phenomenon among university students, characterized by short durations, fast-paced storylines, and cliffhangers that encourage continuous consumption. This phenomenon raises concerns about the tendency toward escapism, namely the use of viewing activities as a means of escaping from life pressures, which is assumed to be associated with individuals’ emotion regulation abilities. This study aims to examine the relationship between emotion regulation and escapism in watching Chinese short-form dramas among university students. This study employed a quantitative approach with a correlational research design, involving 101 respondents from a population of 6,943 active students at UIN Mahmud Yunus Batusangkar, selected using purposive sampling. Data were collected through the Indonesian version of the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (ERQ) (Cronbach’s alpha α = 0.951 for cognitive reappraisal and α = 0.790 for expressive suppression) and a modified escapism scale based on the Escapism Motivation Scale (EMS) (Cronbach’s alpha α = 0.831 for self-expansion and α = 0.914 for self-suppression), administered online using Google Forms. The data were then analyzed using the non-parametric Spearman’s rho correlation test, as the emotion regulation data were found to be non-normally distributed based on the Kolmogorov–Smirnov test (p = 0.041). The results showed that the majority of students were in the moderate category of emotion regulation (66.3%) and the moderate category of escapism (71.3%). Hypothesis testing indicated that there was no significant relationship between emotion regulation and escapism in watching Chinese short-form dramas (rho = 0.019; p = 0.851; p > 0.05), with a contribution to the variance of only 0.04%. Therefore, the alternative hypothesis (Ha) was rejected and the null hypothesis (H0) was accepted. Additional analyses revealed significant intra-variable correlations, namely between cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression (rho = 0.361; p 0.001), and between self-expansion and self-suppression (rho = 0.375; p 0.001). These findings indicate that escapism in watching Chinese short-form dramas cannot be adequately explained by emotion regulation alone and may be more strongly influenced by other factors, such as academic stress, loneliness, and the structural characteristics of the media itself.