Generalized anxiety disorder is one of the most common disorders that has affected many people. The way of analyzing and interpreting the events, tolerating or not the ambiguous situation, and metacognitive beliefs can predict generalized anxiety disorder. The purpose of this research was to investigate the role of metacognitive beliefs, ambiguity tolerance, and emotional processing in predicting generalized anxiety disorder in nurses. The current research was descriptive and correlational. In this study, 155 people were selected as the final sample of the research using the available sampling method. The data collection tools were emotional processing questionnaires, ambiguity tolerance, metacognitive beliefs, and anxiety symptoms. Data were analyzed through multivariate regression and Pearson's correlation coefficient. Statistical findings showed that metacognitive beliefs, ambiguity tolerance, and emotional processing together explain 63.2% of the variance of generalized anxiety disorder. In addition, the findings showed that all three variables have a significant contribution to predicting generalized anxiety disorder (p < 0.05), so metacognitive beliefs, ambiguity tolerance, and cognitive processing positively predict generalized anxiety disorder. According to the findings, metacognitive beliefs, ambiguity tolerance, and emotional processing play a role in causing generalized anxiety disorder. Accordingly, changing the type of emotional processing, increasing the ability to tolerate ambiguity, and changing faulty metacognitive beliefs, helped to reduce generalized anxiety disorder.
