Emotion Regulation
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Emotion Regulation
PAREE ZAROLIA, KATERI McRAE, and JAMES J. GROSS
Abstract
Emotion regulation refers to the processes by which we influence which emotions we
have, when we have them, how we experience them, and how we express them. The
study of emotion regulation has become an increasingly popular and fruitful area
of research in the past few decades. In the following chapter, we summarize past
research, highlight current findings, and suggest some potential future directions
for the study of emotion regulation. We review foundational research highlighting
the process model of emotion regulation and research comparing distinct emotion
regulation strategies such as reappraisal and suppression. Then, we highlight new
conceptualizations of emotion regulation that question the assumption that emotion
regulation is inherently adaptive, that examine the effect of culture on emotion regulation, examine the contexts that lead to successful emotion regulation towards a
variety of emotion goals. Finally we discuss promising future directions for the study
of emotion regulation.
INTRODUCTION
Emotions often play helpful roles in our everyday lives by quickly and efficiently guiding our behavior. However, emotions can also mislead us, or
overwhelm us, turning their helpful, adaptive functions into harmful, maladaptive dysfunctions. At such times, it is important to regulate, or change,
our emotions. For the present purpose, we define an emotion as a coordinated
set of changes in experience, behavior, and peripheral physiology occasioned
by an evaluation, or appraisal (Mulligan & Scherer, 2012).
Emotion regulation refers to the processes by which we influence which emotions we have, when we have them, and how we experience them and express
them (Eisenberg, Fabes, Guthrie, & Reiser, 2000; Gross, 1998b, 2013). While
our emotions can be regulated by others or by ourselves, for our purposes,
we will focus on the processes through which an individual changes the
latency, magnitude, or duration of his or her own emotion in behavioral,
experiential, or physiological domains (Gross, 2002). Previous research has
also demonstrated that emotion regulation can change dramatically throughout development (Silvers et al., 2012); therefore, for our purposes, we will
focus on adult emotion regulation to allow for a consistent discussion of the
Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Edited by Robert Scott and Stephen Kosslyn.
© 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ISBN 978-1-118-90077-2.
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most commonly investigated forms of emotion regulation.
We begin by reviewing foundational concepts and findings. Next, we
review research that is propelling the field toward a thorough understanding of the costs and benefits of specific emotion regulation strategies, how
the goal of emotion regulation need not be hedonic, and how broadening
beyond the investigation of explicit emotion regulation is providing a more
expansive view of the field by including other types of regulation. We then
discuss our predictions as to where the field of emotion regulation will be in
the future, and review the challenges that we face in this field.
FOUNDATIONAL CONCEPTS AND FINDINGS
COPING
The notion that one can regulate one’s emotions in several distinct ways was
first explored in the context of stress and coping. This work introduced the
idea that an emotion is not merely a passive response to an encounter with
a stimulus or situation, but rather a combination of a response and how one
chooses to deal with that response (Lazarus, Averill, & Opton, 1970; Lazarus,
Kanner, & Folkman, 1980). Further research built upon such findings by creating a taxonomy to categorize coping strategies and by identifying which
strategies are relatively more or less helpful (Baum, Fleming, & Singer, 1983;
Folkman & Lazarus, 1985). These efforts set the stage for subsequent theories
of emotion regulation and helped guide the first inquiries into the differences
among emotion regulation strategies.
THE PROCESS MODEL OF EMOTION REGULATION
Another important advance in the field of emotion regulation occurred with
the establishment of the process model of emotion regulation (Gross, 1998b,
2014). According to the process model, emotion may be regulated at five
distinct points as an emotional response unfolds: (i) when deciding which
potentially emotional situations to approach or avoid (situation selection);
(ii) when changing aspects of one’s current situation in order to influence
one’s emotions (situation modification); (iii) when directing attention
toward or away from various potentially emotional stimuli (attentional
deployment); (iv) when evaluating emotional stimuli or situations so as to
change one’s emotional response to a particular situation (cognitive change);
and (v) when modifying experiential, physiological, or behavioral responses
directly (response modulation; Gross, 1998b).
More concretely, situation selection allows an individual to opt in or out of
a situation that he or she anticipates would cause a particular emotion. For
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example, if one is scared of the dentist, one might avoid making an appointment despite a toothache. Situation modification allows that individual to
modify a situation to regulate one’s emotional response. In this case, one
might select a dentist adept at handling fearful patients. Attentional deployment allows the individual to select which aspects of the situation he or she is
focusing on, some of which may be more or less emotionally evocative than
others. One commonly used form of attentional deployment is distraction,
which involves directing attention away from emotional aspects of a stimulus or situation. Using this strategy, the fearful patient could focus on the
soothing music playing in the dentist’s office or on the picture of the smiling
people above the chair. Cognitive change refers to altering the thoughts that
lead to an emotion. One commonly used form of cognitive change is cognitive reappraisal, which involves reevaluating the meaning of an emotional
event in a way that changes the subsequent emotion. In the dentist example,
the patient could use cognitive reappraisal to tell oneself that the procedure
is for the best in the long term and that they will feel much healthier after
the visit. Finally, response modulation refers to attempts to directly influence
emotional responses once they are fully elicited. One commonly used form
of response modulation is expressive suppression, which involves trying to
prevent any facial or bodily expressions of emotion. In this case, the upset
patient could suppress one’s urge to cringe or shudder when faced with the
dentist’s tools.
COMPARING EMOTION REGULATION STRATEGIES
Subsequent research on emotion regulation largely has focused on comparing the properties of these strategies—most commonly, distraction (a form
of attention deployment), reappraisal (a form of cognitive change), and suppression (a form of response modulation; Gross & Levenson, 1997; McRae
et al., 2010; Ochsner, Silvers, & Buhle, 2012). The majority of these studies
have examined the immediate effects of explicitly cued emotion regulation;
that is, these studies have examined what happens when participants in
laboratory studies are instructed to use one or another form of emotion
regulation.
Studies examining distraction have revealed that reallocating attention to
the less distressing aspects of an emotional stimulus—or to another stimulus
all together—does decrease the intensity of the emotion (Craske, Street,
Jayaraman, & Barlow, 1991; Thiruchselvam, Hajcak, & Gross, 2012; Urry,
2010). Reappraisal, or reinterpreting the meaning of the emotional stimulus
to decrease its impact, has also been repeatedly shown to decrease the intensity of unwanted emotions, even more so than distraction (Gross, 1998a,
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2014; McRae et al., 2010; Ochsner et al., 2004; Ray et al., 2005). Finally, expressive suppression has been shown to decrease the experience of positive
emotion, but not negative emotion, and to have paradoxical effects on emotion intensity such that bodily responding, as measured by the sympathetic
nervous system, increases (Gross, 1998a; Gross & Levenson, 1997).
As a supplement to these experimental effects, correlational studies of
self-reported reappraisal use have positive relationships with adaptive,
healthy outcomes such as well-being and positive affect, while self-reported
use of suppression is associated with less adaptive, unhealthy outcomes,
such as depressive symptoms and negative affect (Gross & John, 2003).
Therefore, reviews and meta-analyses of these findings typically conclude
that reappraisal should be considered a relatively adaptive strategy, followed by distraction, and finally suppression (Gross, 2014; Webb, Miles, &
Sheeran, 2012).
CURRENT CONCEPTUALIZATIONS OF EMOTION REGULATION
As we have seen, foundational work has identified the adaptive value of
some emotion regulation strategies (such as reappraisal) as greater than others (such as distraction or suppression). However, this early work did not
address factors that moderate the helpfulness of any given strategy. In addition, much of this work was focused on the goal of decreasing a negative emotional response. Finally, the vast majority of these studies investigated the use
of a conscious, explicit instruction to regulate. In recent years, research on
emotion regulation has expanded, revealing emotion regulation to be influenced by changes in context, not always increasing-positive or decreasing
negative emotion, and inclusive of processes that are not necessarily under
conscious control.
EMOTION REGULATION STRATEGIES ARE NOT INHERENTLY ADAPTIVE OR MALADAPTIVE
While foundational research established certain emotion regulation strategies as generally more adaptive, or helpful, than others (for a review, see
Webb et al., 2012), recent research has demonstrated that any one emotion
regulation strategy is not inherently adaptive or maladaptive. The adaptive
value of using any strategy is defined by two measures. The first measure is
how well someone succeeds in changing his or her emotions in a particular
context. The second one has to do with the consequences of emotion regulation. Different strategies often have side effects, impacting the cognitive or
social functioning of the person regulating, which may also be different in
different situations, or contexts.
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Recent work has shown that both the success and the consequences of
many strategies are very different in different contexts, or change when the
properties of the emotion to be regulated are changed, and that this is different for different regulatory processes. As an example of the trade-off between
emotion regulation goals and consequences, suppression is known to have
surprising effects on negative emotion, such that attempting to suppress the
expression of a negative emotion leads to increases in bodily signals that
correspond to negative emotion (Butler et al., 2003; Goldin, McRae, Ramel,
& Gross, 2008; Gross, 1998a, 1998b). Thus, when the goal is to decrease the
intensity of your negative emotion (e.g., when trying not to display anguish
when going through a painful medical procedure), expressive suppression is
typically an unhelpful choice. However, if you are in a strict social situation
that requires expressive suppression (e.g., suppressing a laugh at a funeral)
the social benefits of expressive suppression could outweigh the internal
costs of an increase in autonomic activation and emotional intensity.
Effects of Cultural Context. Understanding the conditions in which a given
emotion regulation strategy should be considered adaptive or maladaptive
has been a central focus of recent research. One example of this work
has begun to explore the impact of cultural context on the consequences
of suppression. For example, the increased bodily responding associated
with suppression is not as strong in individuals who hold Asian values
(Mauss & Butler, 2010). Furthermore, studies have demonstrated that an
individual who subscribes to an Asian value system will suffer fewer or
none of the negative social consequences of suppression as compared to
individuals who hold an European-American value system (Butler, Lee, &
Gross, 2007).
Effects of timing. In addition to focusing on the consequences of emotion
regulation, recent research has also examined when a given strategy will be
most successful in achieving its emotional goal. Reappraisal, for example,
is most successful when it is enacted early on as an emotion unfolds. If
started too late, the strategy can be fairly ineffective, possibly because it
becomes more difficult to manipulate your thoughts about what caused your
emotion after a negative response is already underway (Goldin et al., 2008;
Sheppes & Gross, 2011). For example, if one receives a negative evaluation
at work, telling oneself that this is an opportunity for growth (reappraisal)
might assist in decreasing feelings of sadness or frustration early in the
emotion generation process. On the other hand, distraction might result in
more successful down-regulation of negative emotion later in the emotion
generation process (Dan-Glauser & Gross, 2011; Sheppes & Meiran, 2008).
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In the negative work evaluation example, after one is feeling full blown
sadness or anger, reframing might seem futile and unrealistic; in this case,
distraction might be more helpful.
Effects of emotion. Finally, how successfully an emotion is regulated may
depend on specific properties of the emotion to be regulated. For example,
reappraisal is more successful than distraction when used on low-intensity
emotions, like mild irritation, but distraction is more successful than reappraisal when used on high-intensity emotions, like extreme anger (Sheppes
& Gross, 2011). This finding speaks to the common practice of telling
oneself that the blood in a gory movie is “just ketchup” (reappraisal of a
low intensity emotion), but looking away when a terrifying beast appears
on the screen (distraction during a high intensity emotion). In addition,
there is evidence that reappraisal is more successful when used on negative
emotions that are elicited conceptually, with stories, from the top-down,
compared with those that are elicited perceptually, with pictures, from
the bottom-up (McRae, Misra, Prasad, Pereira, & Gross, 2012). Specifically,
when emotions are generated using perceptual stimuli such as pictures of
emotional faces, cognitive reappraisal is less effective than when emotions
are generated using conceptual stimuli such as a brief vignette describing a
terrible situation.
EMOTION REGULATION GOALS ARE NOT ALWAYS HEDONIC
One great appeal of research on emotion regulation is that it can provide
insights that might be helpful to those with mood and anxiety disorders. By
and large, these disorders are often characterized by a surplus of negative
affect and/or a paucity of positive affect (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual
of Mental Disorders, 2000). Therefore, many laboratory studies of emotion
regulation focus on emotion regulation when it is used to pursue hedonic
goals—to decrease negative affect and/or increase positive affect. While
understanding these processes is important, recent work has highlighted
the fact that in everyday life, we sometimes pursue emotional goals that are
not entirely hedonic, in that they do not minimize negativity or maximize
positivity.
A burgeoning area of research is that on instrumental emotion regulation,
which explores how strategies are used to up- or down-regulate an emotion
for a specific purpose and what adaptive emotion regulation means in this
new context (Hackenbracht & Tamir, 2010; Tamir, Mitchell, & Gross, 2008).
This research demonstrates that while individuals often select hedonic
regulation goals, they will also sometimes choose nonhedonic regulation
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goals. For example, individuals may choose to increase the unpleasant
emotion of anger when preparing for a confrontation or evoke sadness
when seeking help (Ford & Tamir, 2012; Hackenbracht & Tamir, 2010; Tamir
et al., 2008). Examining instances in which emotion regulation is used to
achieve nonhedonic goals has led to findings that suggest that different
emotional goals can lead to emotion-congruent memory biases during
later recall of appraisals (Holland, Tamir, & Kensinger, 2010) and that
seeking nonhedonic goals may be more effortful than seeking their hedonic
counterparts (e.g., trying to make oneself sad is harder than trying to
make oneself happy) (Riediger, Wrzus, Schmiedek, Wagner, & Lindenberger,
2011).
MOVING BEYOND EXPLICIT EMOTION REGULATION
Many important instances of emotion regulation are explicit, conscious,
and effortful in that individuals are aware that they are trying to change
their emotions. However, there are also instances of emotion regulation that
are less clearly a deliberate modification of an emotional experience. For
example, there has been an increasing amount of attention paid to implicit
emotion regulation.
Implicit emotion regulation includes process such as affective labeling (e.g.,
indicating whether someone is expressing sadness or anger), emotional conflict adaptation (i.e., more successful regulation after an instance in which
you have just regulated another emotional response), habitual emotion regulation (e.g., one’s automatic regulation of a reaction to an emotional event),
and priming of emotion regulatory goals and evaluations (e.g., subtly imbedding the goal of changing how you feel about something by changing the
way you think about it to encourage reappraisal) (Gyurak, Gross, & Etkin,
2011). Engaging in these types of regulation typically involves less effort than
explicit emotion regulation, and each type can occur with varying degrees
of conscious control. While they all conceptually fall under the umbrella of
implicit emotion regulation, how each type of regulation changes an emotion may be distinct. Affective labeling, or naming the emotion present in an
emotional stimulus, is often a deliberate process but is considered incidental in that it does not involve a deliberate attempt to change one’s emotional
response (Lieberman et al., 2007). Similarly, emotional conflict adaptation, or
the incidental regulation that arises immediately after control processes have
been activated is also not deliberate in nature, and recent research reveals that
the mechanisms through which each type of implicit regulation modulates
a response are distinct (Etkin & Schatzberg, 2011). The relative automaticity of each implicit regulation strategy affords an opportunity to achieve the
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results of emotion regulation without many of the cognitive costs, making
this an area of research that is attracting growing attention.
In addition to examining implicit emotion regulation, subfields examining
other types of self-control, or self-regulation, have begun to see how their
areas of focus relate to emotion and emotion regulation. For example, recent
research has demonstrated that positive affect can reenergize individuals
after they have exerted effort during a self-regulation task (Ren, Hu, Zhang,
& Huang, 2010). Traditional models of self-regulation have also historically
spoken about the negative subjective experiences associated with depleted
self-regulation resources (i.e., the fatigue or inability to complete a second
regulation task after completing a first) (Baumeister, Muraven, & Tice,
2000) but only recently have studies begun to examine how modifying that
emotional response can influence depleted self-regulation resources. In one
case, self-affirmations (e.g., I am strong) replenished depleted self-regulation
resources (Schmeichel & Vohs, 2009) and while self-affirmation may not be
a distinct emotion regulation strategy as defined by traditional models, it
is easy to see how developing and repeating positive self-statements could
fall under the category of reappraisal. Such findings subtly suggest that
self-regulation and emotion-regulation can be viewed as similar and complimentary processes, and theoretical discussions of the overlap between
these two important fields have begun to emerge (Holodynski, Seeger,
Kortas-Hartmann, & Wörmann, 2013).
FUTURE DIRECTIONS OF EMOTION REGULATION RESEARCH
Recent research has set the stage to begin answering some complex but essential questions about the adaptiveness of emotion regulation, the importance
of nonhedonic emotion regulation, and how a broader definition of emotion regulation—to include implicit emotion regulation and other regulatory
processes—relates to foundational work on emotion regulation. In the following section, we outline ways in which we predict each subarea of emotion
regulation research will grow, and how this growth will contribute to our
basic understanding of emotion regulation and its applications.
UNDERSTANDING ADAPTIVE AND MALADAPTIVE EMOTION REGULATION
Flexible matching of strategy to context, timing, and emotion. We predict that
future research will extend the work being done on the dynamic helpfulness
or unhelpfulness of specific emotion regulation strategies given the context,
the individual, and the properties of the regulated emotion. This work can
also be extended to understand the precise mechanisms through which
variation in all three of these impact emotion regulations. For example, while
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previous research has established that suppression holds more negative
social consequences for individuals holding European values as compared to
those holding Asian values (Mauss, Butler, Roberts, & Chu, 2010), why this
discrepancy occurs is less understood. Are the negative social consequences
suffered by individuals holding European values purely the result of
violated cultural norms (e.g., you should be emotionally responsive to what
I’m saying) or does the act of suppression lead to other cognitive or social
deficits in European-value individuals (e.g., such as memory inhibition or
lack of empathy in the suppressor) that others in the social group pick up on
and dislike?
In addition to cultural context, recent research has demonstrated that across
contexts (e.g., academic vs. social situations, emotional intensity, and type
of emotion) what most predicts mental health is the flexible use of adaptive emotion regulation strategies (Aldao & Nolen-Hoeksema, 2012). Understanding why some people are able to enact emotion regulation strategies
more flexibly than others could lead to important interventions to assist those
who currently do not benefit from emotion regulation. Future research will be
required to uncover the precise mechanisms that lead to contextual changes
in the consequences of emotion regulation, which will result in a more precisely defined landscape of when the use of different strategies is relatively
adaptive and maladaptive.
When successful emotion regulation is maladaptive. While recent research has
begun to outline the conditions under which reappraisal is more or less successful, future research might begin to explore instances when even highly
successful reappraisal may not be the most adaptive regulation choice. In
other words, are there times when successful emotion regulation and adaptive action represent two competing goals? For example, are there contexts
in which the ability to successfully down-regulate negative emotion might
cause peers to resent the regulator, or view him or her as less authentic or
genuine, or as an out-group member? Examination of this unique type of context, one in which service of a regulatory goal runs counter to larger goals,
would provide another defining feature when considering when, whether,
and how to regulate emotion.
Managing the cognitive demands of emotion regulation. In addition to social
costs, recent research has provided evidence of the cognitive costs of emotion regulation (Burns & Friedman, 2012; Jamieson, Mendes, Blackstock, &
Schmader, 2010). Just as helpful emotion regulation might involve a balance
between social goals and individual emotional goals, helpful emotion
regulation may also be supremely sensitive to cognitive context (i.e., the
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individual’s cognitive resources at the time of reappraisal). Knowing the
specific cognitive demands that are created by the combination of emotion
regulation strategy and context will be crucial for defining adaptive emotion regulation. For example, not all reappraisals are created equal, and
examining how a challenge to the reality of the situation (i.e., an “it’s not
real” reappraisal) differs from a change in future consequences (i.e., “things
will get better with time”) may shed light on the subtle ways in which
specific reappraisals move the individual toward his or her emotional goal
(McRae, Misra, et al., 2012). It is possible that the engagement of cognitive
resources in order to use one strategy is distinct from another, such that
a change in future consequences reappraisal requires greater prefrontally
mediated cognitive control (i.e., cognitive control that is characterized by
greater activation in prefrontal areas associated with effortful processing)
than a challenge to reality strategy but may also create more activation in
ventral striatum areas (areas involved in reward processing and positive
affect), leading to greater subjective positive affect. Depending on the degree
to which an individual has prefrontal resources available, he or she might
choose a challenge to reality strategy to conserve cognitive resources, or a
change in future consequences reappraisal to maximize their movement
toward their emotional goal. In contrast to reappraisal, distraction is a
process that requires relatively few cognitive resources and is preferable
when the stimulus will not be encountered again (Thiruchselvam, Blechert,
Sheppes, Rydstrom, & Gross, 2011) but because it involves disengaging
with the event that caused the emotion, it is not beneficial as a long-term
strategy. For example, if faced with a scary image, looking away might be
an adaptive and efficient choice; however, if that scary image is on your
company’s letterhead, then perhaps reframing it so you do not have an
emotional response every time you encounter it would be more beneficial.
Understanding the specific costs of each emotion regulation strategy will
help determine which strategy to select given the social and cognitive
demands of a particular context, allowing an individual to make the most
adaptive choice possible.
CHARACTERISTICS OF NONHEDONIC EMOTION REGULATION
An extension of work examining nonhedonic uses of emotion regulation will
flesh out the differences between emotion regulation that targets short-term
hedonic goals and regulation that does not. Previous research suggests that
pursuit of nonhedonic goals might be more cognitively taxing that pursuit
of hedonic goals (Riediger et al., 2011) and understanding why this is the
case will provide important insight into the evolutionary benefits of hedonic states and the mechanisms behind emotion regulation. For example, is
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it more difficult to pursue nonhedonic goals (e.g., making yourself angry
before playing an aggressive sport) purely because the individual is going
against the grain of powerful pleasure-seeking? What are the long-term consequences of exerting effort to oppose these processes? For example, could
chronically pursuing nonhedonic goals (such as the up-regulation of anger)
contribute to the development of certain psychopathologies? One possible
mechanism of this would be that pursing nonhedonic goals might make it
more difficult to pursue their hedonic counterparts, suggesting that when
practicing emotion regulation, it is not simply the act of regulating that is
being strengthened but also the path to that specific emotional goal. In addition to providing insight into the functions and mechanisms of emotion regulation processes, understanding why pursuits of nonhedonic goals are costly
will allow future research to investigate ways to decrease such costs, making
instrumental emotion regulation an increasingly valuable tool.
DEFINING BOUNDARIES BEYOND EXPLICIT EMOTION REGULATION
Implicit emotion regulation. Implicit emotion regulation is a very promising
line of research and much remains to be done to fully understand the nature
of this type of emotion regulation. Like much research on implicit processing,
defining a boundary between implicit and explicit processing can be tricky.
For example, are processes that could be accessible to conscious awareness
considered implicit (Bargh, 1994; Bargh & Morsella, 2008)? In addition, it
is still unclear exactly where the boundary conditions are between implicit
emotion regulation and a naturally low response to an emotional event. If
an implicit regulatory process is entirely inaccessible to conscious awareness, and its only effect is on the size and strength of the emotional response,
how are we to know if this is a regulatory process or if it merely changed
the initial emotional response? Neuroimaging evidence for engagement of
regulatory regions (e.g., prefrontal regions) might provide a hint that regulatory processes were engaged (Meyer, Berkman, Karremans, & Lieberman,
2011). However, it is also possible that with time and practice, regulatory
processes that once required the recruitment of cognitive control regions no
longer require their active engagement. Future work should closely examine
the boundary between explicit and implicit regulation, as well as the boundary between implicit regulation and altered emotional reactivity.
Other forms of self-regulation. In addition to the often-blurred boundary
between implicit and explicit emotion regulation, it is unclear where to draw
the line between emotion regulation and other types of regulation such as
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executive functioning (i.e., a set of processes that allow us to pair past experiences with future action such as working memory, strategizing, organizing,
etc.) and self-regulation. Emotion regulation has been conceptualized as one
type of cognitive control, requiring multiple processes generally thought
components of executive functioning (Gross, 2014; Ochsner et al., 2012).
This raises a question regarding the degree to which emotion regulation
should be considered as similar to executive function processes such as
inhibition, switching, or working memory (Miyake, Friedman, Emerson,
Witzki, & Howerter, 2000). Are individuals who are skilled at one or more
types of executive functioning also more skilled at one or more types of
emotion regulation? Which types of executive functioning contribute most
strongly to emotion regulation? Do different executive functions predict the
ability to use a single emotion regulation strategy well, (Gyurak, Goodkind,
Kramer, Miller, & Levenson, 2012; McRae, Jacobs, Ray, John, & Gross, 2012;
Schmeichel & Demaree, 2010) the ability to use multiple emotion regulation
strategies well, or the ability to choose between different emotion regulation
strategies (Sheppes, Scheibe, Suri, & Gross, 2011)?
Even more broadly, how does emotion regulation fit in with other types of
self-regulation and willpower? Research on self-regulation often considers
regulatory abilities that are not inherently emotional, such as choosing a
healthy snack over an indulgent one, or being able to endure an unpleasant
physical stimulus without electing to stop (Baumeister et al., 2000; Hagger,
Wood, Stiff, & Chatzisarantis, 2010). Theorists have conceived of these
self-regulatory processes as a specific and limited resource, such that exerting self-regulatory effort at time 1, makes it more difficult to self-regulate
at time 2 (Muraven & Baumeister, 2000). It is not yet clear how to best
integrate emotion regulation into this more general conceptualization of
self-regulation. Such inquiries would shed light on both the overlap and distinction between these two critical processes. The self-regulation literature
contains rich information about the consequences of using self-regulation
on subsequent self-control tasks. Therefore, understanding how emotion
regulation relates to these more general forms of self-regulation would allow
the area of emotion regulation to benefit from years of exploring the costs,
benefits and mechanisms of self-regulation.
CHALLENGES OF EMOTION REGULATION RESEARCH
The future of emotion regulation research seems to hold a great deal of
promise but also clearly poses a set of difficult challenges. In the following
section we will discuss some of these challenges that face future research,
but acknowledge that these are problems not unique to the field of emotion
regulation and extend to the scientific study of emotion in general. We
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will then discuss ways in which the field can work with or through these
challenges to contribute meaningfully to the field of emotion regulation.
MEASURING EMOTION
Emotion researchers commonly assert that there is no gold standard measure
of emotion, and instead rely on the use of multiple methods to confidently
measure emotion. However, there is little consensus about how to interpret
the effects of emotion regulation on a particular emotion when multiple measures do not agree (Mauss, Levenson, McCarter, Wilhelm, & Gross, 2005). In
the context of emotion regulation, identifying change in emotion in accordance with the regulatory goal is key. When should emotion be considered
successfully regulated? For example, what might it mean if an individual
reports successfully decreasing negative emotion, but measures of bodily
activation show no change? Is this a meaningful effect of emotion regulation on certain response systems but not others, or should this be considered
a weaker, less complete effect of emotion regulation? As future research aims
to identify more and more nuanced accounts of the emotional changes that
result from the use of different emotion regulation strategies, consistently
interpreting convergent and divergent patterns of changes in different measures of emotion will be crucial.
DEFINING ADAPTIVE OR MALADAPTIVE EMOTION REGULATION
Determining which conditions lead to the most adaptive, helpful behavior
is a central focus of past, present and future research concerning emotion
regulation. A recurring challenge of this type of research is the ability to
clearly define what ‘adaptive’ means in any given context. So far, adaptiveness has been defined as a combination of the degree to which emotion
regulation goals are achieved and the cognitive, social and long-term affective consequences of that type of regulation. However, as we review above,
this definition does not consider nuances such as the fact that different
emotional goals are more and less adaptive, and that the side-effects of
different strategies may change by context or situation. These nuances are
a hurdle to a comprehensive definition of helpful emotion regulation, and
might even limit the ability of the field to explore flexibility in the use of
distinct emotion regulation strategies (Sheppes et al., 2011). Eventually, it is
possible that any definition of helpful emotion regulation will be a product
of a combination of several distinct factors. Until then, clearly defining what
adaptive means in the context of one study is imperative, and understanding how that definition is distinct from that in other contexts is one way
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in which the nuances of adaptive emotion regulation can begin to be fully
understood.
DEFINING MECHANISMS OF OVERLAPPING FORMS OF REGULATION
Understanding how explicit emotion regulation relates to implicit emotion
regulation—as well as to other forms of self-regulation—represents an
important challenge. Progress in this arena would allow researchers to
examine the overlap and disparities between their subspecialties of regulation, thereby speeding progress toward an understanding of each regulation
type and regulation as a whole. However, there are many barriers to a
clear and swift integration of these different literatures. For example, most
studies of explicit emotion regulation employ instruction-based laboratory
procedures, in which someone’s response to an emotional picture or film is
altered in accordance with an experimental cue to regulate. Although there
is some variation in how this is accomplished, many emotion regulation
experiments examine the effects of emotion regulation over the course of
several seconds or a few minutes. By contrast, studies of executive functioning often employ experimental conditions where trial types change far more
rapidly to examine an individual’s ability to respond accurately or quickly,
on the level of milliseconds (Miyake et al., 2000). On the other end of the
spectrum, self-regulation tasks are often employed over multiple minutes,
and relate to choices that individuals make repeatedly over days and weeks
(Hagger et al., 2010). Recent work has begun to bridge this gap by relating
performance on these cognitive control tasks to real-world self-regulation
abilities like smoking cessation (Berkman, Falk, & Lieberman, 2011). However, if the mechanisms behind executive function, emotion regulation and
self-regulation are to be directly compared, traditional laboratory procedures
should be modified to allow for the measurement of these processes on the
same timescale.
CONCLUSION
Emotion regulation is associated with both adaptive and maladaptive
outcomes (Gross, 2014; Webb et al., 2012). Delineating the multiple, interacting factors that lead to its most adaptive outcomes holds great promise
for alleviating clinical symptoms as well as maximizing well-being. More
specifically, future work on the flexible determination of adaptiveness based
on contexts, individuals, emotions, and goals, as well as the relationship
between emotion regulation and related regulatory processes will propel our
understanding of emotion regulation even further. This precise mechanistic
understanding could lead to the development of efficient, targeted and
Emotion Regulation
15
individualized interventions. Although the pursuit of these questions will
not be without challenges, the field of emotion regulation has, is currently
and will continue to contribute a more nuanced understanding of the
influence we have over our emotions, guiding us toward more sensitive,
calibrated, and fulfilling emotional lives.
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PAREE ZAROLIA SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Paree Zarolia, MA, is a graduate student in the Affect/Social Psychology program at the University of Denver. Her research interests include
emotion–cognition interactions, emotion regulation, and the role of emotion
in complex decision-making.
KATERI McRAE SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Kateri McRae is an Assistant Professor at the University of Denver, and
Director of the Automaticity, Affect, Control and Thought Lab (http://www.
du.edu/psychology/aact/index.html). Her research interests include the
social, cognitive, and personal factors that impact how emotion and
cognition interact. She uses a variety of methods, including neuroimaging.
JAMES J. GROSS SHORT BIOGRAPHY
James J. Gross is Professor of Psychology at Stanford University, and Director
of the Stanford Psychophysiology Laboratory (http://spl.stanford.edu). He
is a leading figure in the areas of emotion and emotion regulation, and he has
received early career awards from the American Psychological Association,
the Western Psychological Association, and the Society for Psychophysiological Research.
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-
Emotion Regulation
PAREE ZAROLIA, KATERI McRAE, and JAMES J. GROSS
Abstract
Emotion regulation refers to the processes by which we influence which emotions we
have, when we have them, how we experience them, and how we express them. The
study of emotion regulation has become an increasingly popular and fruitful area
of research in the past few decades. In the following chapter, we summarize past
research, highlight current findings, and suggest some potential future directions
for the study of emotion regulation. We review foundational research highlighting
the process model of emotion regulation and research comparing distinct emotion
regulation strategies such as reappraisal and suppression. Then, we highlight new
conceptualizations of emotion regulation that question the assumption that emotion
regulation is inherently adaptive, that examine the effect of culture on emotion regulation, examine the contexts that lead to successful emotion regulation towards a
variety of emotion goals. Finally we discuss promising future directions for the study
of emotion regulation.
INTRODUCTION
Emotions often play helpful roles in our everyday lives by quickly and efficiently guiding our behavior. However, emotions can also mislead us, or
overwhelm us, turning their helpful, adaptive functions into harmful, maladaptive dysfunctions. At such times, it is important to regulate, or change,
our emotions. For the present purpose, we define an emotion as a coordinated
set of changes in experience, behavior, and peripheral physiology occasioned
by an evaluation, or appraisal (Mulligan & Scherer, 2012).
Emotion regulation refers to the processes by which we influence which emotions we have, when we have them, and how we experience them and express
them (Eisenberg, Fabes, Guthrie, & Reiser, 2000; Gross, 1998b, 2013). While
our emotions can be regulated by others or by ourselves, for our purposes,
we will focus on the processes through which an individual changes the
latency, magnitude, or duration of his or her own emotion in behavioral,
experiential, or physiological domains (Gross, 2002). Previous research has
also demonstrated that emotion regulation can change dramatically throughout development (Silvers et al., 2012); therefore, for our purposes, we will
focus on adult emotion regulation to allow for a consistent discussion of the
Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Edited by Robert Scott and Stephen Kosslyn.
© 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ISBN 978-1-118-90077-2.
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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
most commonly investigated forms of emotion regulation.
We begin by reviewing foundational concepts and findings. Next, we
review research that is propelling the field toward a thorough understanding of the costs and benefits of specific emotion regulation strategies, how
the goal of emotion regulation need not be hedonic, and how broadening
beyond the investigation of explicit emotion regulation is providing a more
expansive view of the field by including other types of regulation. We then
discuss our predictions as to where the field of emotion regulation will be in
the future, and review the challenges that we face in this field.
FOUNDATIONAL CONCEPTS AND FINDINGS
COPING
The notion that one can regulate one’s emotions in several distinct ways was
first explored in the context of stress and coping. This work introduced the
idea that an emotion is not merely a passive response to an encounter with
a stimulus or situation, but rather a combination of a response and how one
chooses to deal with that response (Lazarus, Averill, & Opton, 1970; Lazarus,
Kanner, & Folkman, 1980). Further research built upon such findings by creating a taxonomy to categorize coping strategies and by identifying which
strategies are relatively more or less helpful (Baum, Fleming, & Singer, 1983;
Folkman & Lazarus, 1985). These efforts set the stage for subsequent theories
of emotion regulation and helped guide the first inquiries into the differences
among emotion regulation strategies.
THE PROCESS MODEL OF EMOTION REGULATION
Another important advance in the field of emotion regulation occurred with
the establishment of the process model of emotion regulation (Gross, 1998b,
2014). According to the process model, emotion may be regulated at five
distinct points as an emotional response unfolds: (i) when deciding which
potentially emotional situations to approach or avoid (situation selection);
(ii) when changing aspects of one’s current situation in order to influence
one’s emotions (situation modification); (iii) when directing attention
toward or away from various potentially emotional stimuli (attentional
deployment); (iv) when evaluating emotional stimuli or situations so as to
change one’s emotional response to a particular situation (cognitive change);
and (v) when modifying experiential, physiological, or behavioral responses
directly (response modulation; Gross, 1998b).
More concretely, situation selection allows an individual to opt in or out of
a situation that he or she anticipates would cause a particular emotion. For
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example, if one is scared of the dentist, one might avoid making an appointment despite a toothache. Situation modification allows that individual to
modify a situation to regulate one’s emotional response. In this case, one
might select a dentist adept at handling fearful patients. Attentional deployment allows the individual to select which aspects of the situation he or she is
focusing on, some of which may be more or less emotionally evocative than
others. One commonly used form of attentional deployment is distraction,
which involves directing attention away from emotional aspects of a stimulus or situation. Using this strategy, the fearful patient could focus on the
soothing music playing in the dentist’s office or on the picture of the smiling
people above the chair. Cognitive change refers to altering the thoughts that
lead to an emotion. One commonly used form of cognitive change is cognitive reappraisal, which involves reevaluating the meaning of an emotional
event in a way that changes the subsequent emotion. In the dentist example,
the patient could use cognitive reappraisal to tell oneself that the procedure
is for the best in the long term and that they will feel much healthier after
the visit. Finally, response modulation refers to attempts to directly influence
emotional responses once they are fully elicited. One commonly used form
of response modulation is expressive suppression, which involves trying to
prevent any facial or bodily expressions of emotion. In this case, the upset
patient could suppress one’s urge to cringe or shudder when faced with the
dentist’s tools.
COMPARING EMOTION REGULATION STRATEGIES
Subsequent research on emotion regulation largely has focused on comparing the properties of these strategies—most commonly, distraction (a form
of attention deployment), reappraisal (a form of cognitive change), and suppression (a form of response modulation; Gross & Levenson, 1997; McRae
et al., 2010; Ochsner, Silvers, & Buhle, 2012). The majority of these studies
have examined the immediate effects of explicitly cued emotion regulation;
that is, these studies have examined what happens when participants in
laboratory studies are instructed to use one or another form of emotion
regulation.
Studies examining distraction have revealed that reallocating attention to
the less distressing aspects of an emotional stimulus—or to another stimulus
all together—does decrease the intensity of the emotion (Craske, Street,
Jayaraman, & Barlow, 1991; Thiruchselvam, Hajcak, & Gross, 2012; Urry,
2010). Reappraisal, or reinterpreting the meaning of the emotional stimulus
to decrease its impact, has also been repeatedly shown to decrease the intensity of unwanted emotions, even more so than distraction (Gross, 1998a,
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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
2014; McRae et al., 2010; Ochsner et al., 2004; Ray et al., 2005). Finally, expressive suppression has been shown to decrease the experience of positive
emotion, but not negative emotion, and to have paradoxical effects on emotion intensity such that bodily responding, as measured by the sympathetic
nervous system, increases (Gross, 1998a; Gross & Levenson, 1997).
As a supplement to these experimental effects, correlational studies of
self-reported reappraisal use have positive relationships with adaptive,
healthy outcomes such as well-being and positive affect, while self-reported
use of suppression is associated with less adaptive, unhealthy outcomes,
such as depressive symptoms and negative affect (Gross & John, 2003).
Therefore, reviews and meta-analyses of these findings typically conclude
that reappraisal should be considered a relatively adaptive strategy, followed by distraction, and finally suppression (Gross, 2014; Webb, Miles, &
Sheeran, 2012).
CURRENT CONCEPTUALIZATIONS OF EMOTION REGULATION
As we have seen, foundational work has identified the adaptive value of
some emotion regulation strategies (such as reappraisal) as greater than others (such as distraction or suppression). However, this early work did not
address factors that moderate the helpfulness of any given strategy. In addition, much of this work was focused on the goal of decreasing a negative emotional response. Finally, the vast majority of these studies investigated the use
of a conscious, explicit instruction to regulate. In recent years, research on
emotion regulation has expanded, revealing emotion regulation to be influenced by changes in context, not always increasing-positive or decreasing
negative emotion, and inclusive of processes that are not necessarily under
conscious control.
EMOTION REGULATION STRATEGIES ARE NOT INHERENTLY ADAPTIVE OR MALADAPTIVE
While foundational research established certain emotion regulation strategies as generally more adaptive, or helpful, than others (for a review, see
Webb et al., 2012), recent research has demonstrated that any one emotion
regulation strategy is not inherently adaptive or maladaptive. The adaptive
value of using any strategy is defined by two measures. The first measure is
how well someone succeeds in changing his or her emotions in a particular
context. The second one has to do with the consequences of emotion regulation. Different strategies often have side effects, impacting the cognitive or
social functioning of the person regulating, which may also be different in
different situations, or contexts.
Emotion Regulation
5
Recent work has shown that both the success and the consequences of
many strategies are very different in different contexts, or change when the
properties of the emotion to be regulated are changed, and that this is different for different regulatory processes. As an example of the trade-off between
emotion regulation goals and consequences, suppression is known to have
surprising effects on negative emotion, such that attempting to suppress the
expression of a negative emotion leads to increases in bodily signals that
correspond to negative emotion (Butler et al., 2003; Goldin, McRae, Ramel,
& Gross, 2008; Gross, 1998a, 1998b). Thus, when the goal is to decrease the
intensity of your negative emotion (e.g., when trying not to display anguish
when going through a painful medical procedure), expressive suppression is
typically an unhelpful choice. However, if you are in a strict social situation
that requires expressive suppression (e.g., suppressing a laugh at a funeral)
the social benefits of expressive suppression could outweigh the internal
costs of an increase in autonomic activation and emotional intensity.
Effects of Cultural Context. Understanding the conditions in which a given
emotion regulation strategy should be considered adaptive or maladaptive
has been a central focus of recent research. One example of this work
has begun to explore the impact of cultural context on the consequences
of suppression. For example, the increased bodily responding associated
with suppression is not as strong in individuals who hold Asian values
(Mauss & Butler, 2010). Furthermore, studies have demonstrated that an
individual who subscribes to an Asian value system will suffer fewer or
none of the negative social consequences of suppression as compared to
individuals who hold an European-American value system (Butler, Lee, &
Gross, 2007).
Effects of timing. In addition to focusing on the consequences of emotion
regulation, recent research has also examined when a given strategy will be
most successful in achieving its emotional goal. Reappraisal, for example,
is most successful when it is enacted early on as an emotion unfolds. If
started too late, the strategy can be fairly ineffective, possibly because it
becomes more difficult to manipulate your thoughts about what caused your
emotion after a negative response is already underway (Goldin et al., 2008;
Sheppes & Gross, 2011). For example, if one receives a negative evaluation
at work, telling oneself that this is an opportunity for growth (reappraisal)
might assist in decreasing feelings of sadness or frustration early in the
emotion generation process. On the other hand, distraction might result in
more successful down-regulation of negative emotion later in the emotion
generation process (Dan-Glauser & Gross, 2011; Sheppes & Meiran, 2008).
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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
In the negative work evaluation example, after one is feeling full blown
sadness or anger, reframing might seem futile and unrealistic; in this case,
distraction might be more helpful.
Effects of emotion. Finally, how successfully an emotion is regulated may
depend on specific properties of the emotion to be regulated. For example,
reappraisal is more successful than distraction when used on low-intensity
emotions, like mild irritation, but distraction is more successful than reappraisal when used on high-intensity emotions, like extreme anger (Sheppes
& Gross, 2011). This finding speaks to the common practice of telling
oneself that the blood in a gory movie is “just ketchup” (reappraisal of a
low intensity emotion), but looking away when a terrifying beast appears
on the screen (distraction during a high intensity emotion). In addition,
there is evidence that reappraisal is more successful when used on negative
emotions that are elicited conceptually, with stories, from the top-down,
compared with those that are elicited perceptually, with pictures, from
the bottom-up (McRae, Misra, Prasad, Pereira, & Gross, 2012). Specifically,
when emotions are generated using perceptual stimuli such as pictures of
emotional faces, cognitive reappraisal is less effective than when emotions
are generated using conceptual stimuli such as a brief vignette describing a
terrible situation.
EMOTION REGULATION GOALS ARE NOT ALWAYS HEDONIC
One great appeal of research on emotion regulation is that it can provide
insights that might be helpful to those with mood and anxiety disorders. By
and large, these disorders are often characterized by a surplus of negative
affect and/or a paucity of positive affect (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual
of Mental Disorders, 2000). Therefore, many laboratory studies of emotion
regulation focus on emotion regulation when it is used to pursue hedonic
goals—to decrease negative affect and/or increase positive affect. While
understanding these processes is important, recent work has highlighted
the fact that in everyday life, we sometimes pursue emotional goals that are
not entirely hedonic, in that they do not minimize negativity or maximize
positivity.
A burgeoning area of research is that on instrumental emotion regulation,
which explores how strategies are used to up- or down-regulate an emotion
for a specific purpose and what adaptive emotion regulation means in this
new context (Hackenbracht & Tamir, 2010; Tamir, Mitchell, & Gross, 2008).
This research demonstrates that while individuals often select hedonic
regulation goals, they will also sometimes choose nonhedonic regulation
Emotion Regulation
7
goals. For example, individuals may choose to increase the unpleasant
emotion of anger when preparing for a confrontation or evoke sadness
when seeking help (Ford & Tamir, 2012; Hackenbracht & Tamir, 2010; Tamir
et al., 2008). Examining instances in which emotion regulation is used to
achieve nonhedonic goals has led to findings that suggest that different
emotional goals can lead to emotion-congruent memory biases during
later recall of appraisals (Holland, Tamir, & Kensinger, 2010) and that
seeking nonhedonic goals may be more effortful than seeking their hedonic
counterparts (e.g., trying to make oneself sad is harder than trying to
make oneself happy) (Riediger, Wrzus, Schmiedek, Wagner, & Lindenberger,
2011).
MOVING BEYOND EXPLICIT EMOTION REGULATION
Many important instances of emotion regulation are explicit, conscious,
and effortful in that individuals are aware that they are trying to change
their emotions. However, there are also instances of emotion regulation that
are less clearly a deliberate modification of an emotional experience. For
example, there has been an increasing amount of attention paid to implicit
emotion regulation.
Implicit emotion regulation includes process such as affective labeling (e.g.,
indicating whether someone is expressing sadness or anger), emotional conflict adaptation (i.e., more successful regulation after an instance in which
you have just regulated another emotional response), habitual emotion regulation (e.g., one’s automatic regulation of a reaction to an emotional event),
and priming of emotion regulatory goals and evaluations (e.g., subtly imbedding the goal of changing how you feel about something by changing the
way you think about it to encourage reappraisal) (Gyurak, Gross, & Etkin,
2011). Engaging in these types of regulation typically involves less effort than
explicit emotion regulation, and each type can occur with varying degrees
of conscious control. While they all conceptually fall under the umbrella of
implicit emotion regulation, how each type of regulation changes an emotion may be distinct. Affective labeling, or naming the emotion present in an
emotional stimulus, is often a deliberate process but is considered incidental in that it does not involve a deliberate attempt to change one’s emotional
response (Lieberman et al., 2007). Similarly, emotional conflict adaptation, or
the incidental regulation that arises immediately after control processes have
been activated is also not deliberate in nature, and recent research reveals that
the mechanisms through which each type of implicit regulation modulates
a response are distinct (Etkin & Schatzberg, 2011). The relative automaticity of each implicit regulation strategy affords an opportunity to achieve the
8
EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
results of emotion regulation without many of the cognitive costs, making
this an area of research that is attracting growing attention.
In addition to examining implicit emotion regulation, subfields examining
other types of self-control, or self-regulation, have begun to see how their
areas of focus relate to emotion and emotion regulation. For example, recent
research has demonstrated that positive affect can reenergize individuals
after they have exerted effort during a self-regulation task (Ren, Hu, Zhang,
& Huang, 2010). Traditional models of self-regulation have also historically
spoken about the negative subjective experiences associated with depleted
self-regulation resources (i.e., the fatigue or inability to complete a second
regulation task after completing a first) (Baumeister, Muraven, & Tice,
2000) but only recently have studies begun to examine how modifying that
emotional response can influence depleted self-regulation resources. In one
case, self-affirmations (e.g., I am strong) replenished depleted self-regulation
resources (Schmeichel & Vohs, 2009) and while self-affirmation may not be
a distinct emotion regulation strategy as defined by traditional models, it
is easy to see how developing and repeating positive self-statements could
fall under the category of reappraisal. Such findings subtly suggest that
self-regulation and emotion-regulation can be viewed as similar and complimentary processes, and theoretical discussions of the overlap between
these two important fields have begun to emerge (Holodynski, Seeger,
Kortas-Hartmann, & Wörmann, 2013).
FUTURE DIRECTIONS OF EMOTION REGULATION RESEARCH
Recent research has set the stage to begin answering some complex but essential questions about the adaptiveness of emotion regulation, the importance
of nonhedonic emotion regulation, and how a broader definition of emotion regulation—to include implicit emotion regulation and other regulatory
processes—relates to foundational work on emotion regulation. In the following section, we outline ways in which we predict each subarea of emotion
regulation research will grow, and how this growth will contribute to our
basic understanding of emotion regulation and its applications.
UNDERSTANDING ADAPTIVE AND MALADAPTIVE EMOTION REGULATION
Flexible matching of strategy to context, timing, and emotion. We predict that
future research will extend the work being done on the dynamic helpfulness
or unhelpfulness of specific emotion regulation strategies given the context,
the individual, and the properties of the regulated emotion. This work can
also be extended to understand the precise mechanisms through which
variation in all three of these impact emotion regulations. For example, while
Emotion Regulation
9
previous research has established that suppression holds more negative
social consequences for individuals holding European values as compared to
those holding Asian values (Mauss, Butler, Roberts, & Chu, 2010), why this
discrepancy occurs is less understood. Are the negative social consequences
suffered by individuals holding European values purely the result of
violated cultural norms (e.g., you should be emotionally responsive to what
I’m saying) or does the act of suppression lead to other cognitive or social
deficits in European-value individuals (e.g., such as memory inhibition or
lack of empathy in the suppressor) that others in the social group pick up on
and dislike?
In addition to cultural context, recent research has demonstrated that across
contexts (e.g., academic vs. social situations, emotional intensity, and type
of emotion) what most predicts mental health is the flexible use of adaptive emotion regulation strategies (Aldao & Nolen-Hoeksema, 2012). Understanding why some people are able to enact emotion regulation strategies
more flexibly than others could lead to important interventions to assist those
who currently do not benefit from emotion regulation. Future research will be
required to uncover the precise mechanisms that lead to contextual changes
in the consequences of emotion regulation, which will result in a more precisely defined landscape of when the use of different strategies is relatively
adaptive and maladaptive.
When successful emotion regulation is maladaptive. While recent research has
begun to outline the conditions under which reappraisal is more or less successful, future research might begin to explore instances when even highly
successful reappraisal may not be the most adaptive regulation choice. In
other words, are there times when successful emotion regulation and adaptive action represent two competing goals? For example, are there contexts
in which the ability to successfully down-regulate negative emotion might
cause peers to resent the regulator, or view him or her as less authentic or
genuine, or as an out-group member? Examination of this unique type of context, one in which service of a regulatory goal runs counter to larger goals,
would provide another defining feature when considering when, whether,
and how to regulate emotion.
Managing the cognitive demands of emotion regulation. In addition to social
costs, recent research has provided evidence of the cognitive costs of emotion regulation (Burns & Friedman, 2012; Jamieson, Mendes, Blackstock, &
Schmader, 2010). Just as helpful emotion regulation might involve a balance
between social goals and individual emotional goals, helpful emotion
regulation may also be supremely sensitive to cognitive context (i.e., the
10
EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
individual’s cognitive resources at the time of reappraisal). Knowing the
specific cognitive demands that are created by the combination of emotion
regulation strategy and context will be crucial for defining adaptive emotion regulation. For example, not all reappraisals are created equal, and
examining how a challenge to the reality of the situation (i.e., an “it’s not
real” reappraisal) differs from a change in future consequences (i.e., “things
will get better with time”) may shed light on the subtle ways in which
specific reappraisals move the individual toward his or her emotional goal
(McRae, Misra, et al., 2012). It is possible that the engagement of cognitive
resources in order to use one strategy is distinct from another, such that
a change in future consequences reappraisal requires greater prefrontally
mediated cognitive control (i.e., cognitive control that is characterized by
greater activation in prefrontal areas associated with effortful processing)
than a challenge to reality strategy but may also create more activation in
ventral striatum areas (areas involved in reward processing and positive
affect), leading to greater subjective positive affect. Depending on the degree
to which an individual has prefrontal resources available, he or she might
choose a challenge to reality strategy to conserve cognitive resources, or a
change in future consequences reappraisal to maximize their movement
toward their emotional goal. In contrast to reappraisal, distraction is a
process that requires relatively few cognitive resources and is preferable
when the stimulus will not be encountered again (Thiruchselvam, Blechert,
Sheppes, Rydstrom, & Gross, 2011) but because it involves disengaging
with the event that caused the emotion, it is not beneficial as a long-term
strategy. For example, if faced with a scary image, looking away might be
an adaptive and efficient choice; however, if that scary image is on your
company’s letterhead, then perhaps reframing it so you do not have an
emotional response every time you encounter it would be more beneficial.
Understanding the specific costs of each emotion regulation strategy will
help determine which strategy to select given the social and cognitive
demands of a particular context, allowing an individual to make the most
adaptive choice possible.
CHARACTERISTICS OF NONHEDONIC EMOTION REGULATION
An extension of work examining nonhedonic uses of emotion regulation will
flesh out the differences between emotion regulation that targets short-term
hedonic goals and regulation that does not. Previous research suggests that
pursuit of nonhedonic goals might be more cognitively taxing that pursuit
of hedonic goals (Riediger et al., 2011) and understanding why this is the
case will provide important insight into the evolutionary benefits of hedonic states and the mechanisms behind emotion regulation. For example, is
Emotion Regulation
11
it more difficult to pursue nonhedonic goals (e.g., making yourself angry
before playing an aggressive sport) purely because the individual is going
against the grain of powerful pleasure-seeking? What are the long-term consequences of exerting effort to oppose these processes? For example, could
chronically pursuing nonhedonic goals (such as the up-regulation of anger)
contribute to the development of certain psychopathologies? One possible
mechanism of this would be that pursing nonhedonic goals might make it
more difficult to pursue their hedonic counterparts, suggesting that when
practicing emotion regulation, it is not simply the act of regulating that is
being strengthened but also the path to that specific emotional goal. In addition to providing insight into the functions and mechanisms of emotion regulation processes, understanding why pursuits of nonhedonic goals are costly
will allow future research to investigate ways to decrease such costs, making
instrumental emotion regulation an increasingly valuable tool.
DEFINING BOUNDARIES BEYOND EXPLICIT EMOTION REGULATION
Implicit emotion regulation. Implicit emotion regulation is a very promising
line of research and much remains to be done to fully understand the nature
of this type of emotion regulation. Like much research on implicit processing,
defining a boundary between implicit and explicit processing can be tricky.
For example, are processes that could be accessible to conscious awareness
considered implicit (Bargh, 1994; Bargh & Morsella, 2008)? In addition, it
is still unclear exactly where the boundary conditions are between implicit
emotion regulation and a naturally low response to an emotional event. If
an implicit regulatory process is entirely inaccessible to conscious awareness, and its only effect is on the size and strength of the emotional response,
how are we to know if this is a regulatory process or if it merely changed
the initial emotional response? Neuroimaging evidence for engagement of
regulatory regions (e.g., prefrontal regions) might provide a hint that regulatory processes were engaged (Meyer, Berkman, Karremans, & Lieberman,
2011). However, it is also possible that with time and practice, regulatory
processes that once required the recruitment of cognitive control regions no
longer require their active engagement. Future work should closely examine
the boundary between explicit and implicit regulation, as well as the boundary between implicit regulation and altered emotional reactivity.
Other forms of self-regulation. In addition to the often-blurred boundary
between implicit and explicit emotion regulation, it is unclear where to draw
the line between emotion regulation and other types of regulation such as
12
EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
executive functioning (i.e., a set of processes that allow us to pair past experiences with future action such as working memory, strategizing, organizing,
etc.) and self-regulation. Emotion regulation has been conceptualized as one
type of cognitive control, requiring multiple processes generally thought
components of executive functioning (Gross, 2014; Ochsner et al., 2012).
This raises a question regarding the degree to which emotion regulation
should be considered as similar to executive function processes such as
inhibition, switching, or working memory (Miyake, Friedman, Emerson,
Witzki, & Howerter, 2000). Are individuals who are skilled at one or more
types of executive functioning also more skilled at one or more types of
emotion regulation? Which types of executive functioning contribute most
strongly to emotion regulation? Do different executive functions predict the
ability to use a single emotion regulation strategy well, (Gyurak, Goodkind,
Kramer, Miller, & Levenson, 2012; McRae, Jacobs, Ray, John, & Gross, 2012;
Schmeichel & Demaree, 2010) the ability to use multiple emotion regulation
strategies well, or the ability to choose between different emotion regulation
strategies (Sheppes, Scheibe, Suri, & Gross, 2011)?
Even more broadly, how does emotion regulation fit in with other types of
self-regulation and willpower? Research on self-regulation often considers
regulatory abilities that are not inherently emotional, such as choosing a
healthy snack over an indulgent one, or being able to endure an unpleasant
physical stimulus without electing to stop (Baumeister et al., 2000; Hagger,
Wood, Stiff, & Chatzisarantis, 2010). Theorists have conceived of these
self-regulatory processes as a specific and limited resource, such that exerting self-regulatory effort at time 1, makes it more difficult to self-regulate
at time 2 (Muraven & Baumeister, 2000). It is not yet clear how to best
integrate emotion regulation into this more general conceptualization of
self-regulation. Such inquiries would shed light on both the overlap and distinction between these two critical processes. The self-regulation literature
contains rich information about the consequences of using self-regulation
on subsequent self-control tasks. Therefore, understanding how emotion
regulation relates to these more general forms of self-regulation would allow
the area of emotion regulation to benefit from years of exploring the costs,
benefits and mechanisms of self-regulation.
CHALLENGES OF EMOTION REGULATION RESEARCH
The future of emotion regulation research seems to hold a great deal of
promise but also clearly poses a set of difficult challenges. In the following
section we will discuss some of these challenges that face future research,
but acknowledge that these are problems not unique to the field of emotion
regulation and extend to the scientific study of emotion in general. We
Emotion Regulation
13
will then discuss ways in which the field can work with or through these
challenges to contribute meaningfully to the field of emotion regulation.
MEASURING EMOTION
Emotion researchers commonly assert that there is no gold standard measure
of emotion, and instead rely on the use of multiple methods to confidently
measure emotion. However, there is little consensus about how to interpret
the effects of emotion regulation on a particular emotion when multiple measures do not agree (Mauss, Levenson, McCarter, Wilhelm, & Gross, 2005). In
the context of emotion regulation, identifying change in emotion in accordance with the regulatory goal is key. When should emotion be considered
successfully regulated? For example, what might it mean if an individual
reports successfully decreasing negative emotion, but measures of bodily
activation show no change? Is this a meaningful effect of emotion regulation on certain response systems but not others, or should this be considered
a weaker, less complete effect of emotion regulation? As future research aims
to identify more and more nuanced accounts of the emotional changes that
result from the use of different emotion regulation strategies, consistently
interpreting convergent and divergent patterns of changes in different measures of emotion will be crucial.
DEFINING ADAPTIVE OR MALADAPTIVE EMOTION REGULATION
Determining which conditions lead to the most adaptive, helpful behavior
is a central focus of past, present and future research concerning emotion
regulation. A recurring challenge of this type of research is the ability to
clearly define what ‘adaptive’ means in any given context. So far, adaptiveness has been defined as a combination of the degree to which emotion
regulation goals are achieved and the cognitive, social and long-term affective consequences of that type of regulation. However, as we review above,
this definition does not consider nuances such as the fact that different
emotional goals are more and less adaptive, and that the side-effects of
different strategies may change by context or situation. These nuances are
a hurdle to a comprehensive definition of helpful emotion regulation, and
might even limit the ability of the field to explore flexibility in the use of
distinct emotion regulation strategies (Sheppes et al., 2011). Eventually, it is
possible that any definition of helpful emotion regulation will be a product
of a combination of several distinct factors. Until then, clearly defining what
adaptive means in the context of one study is imperative, and understanding how that definition is distinct from that in other contexts is one way
14
EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
in which the nuances of adaptive emotion regulation can begin to be fully
understood.
DEFINING MECHANISMS OF OVERLAPPING FORMS OF REGULATION
Understanding how explicit emotion regulation relates to implicit emotion
regulation—as well as to other forms of self-regulation—represents an
important challenge. Progress in this arena would allow researchers to
examine the overlap and disparities between their subspecialties of regulation, thereby speeding progress toward an understanding of each regulation
type and regulation as a whole. However, there are many barriers to a
clear and swift integration of these different literatures. For example, most
studies of explicit emotion regulation employ instruction-based laboratory
procedures, in which someone’s response to an emotional picture or film is
altered in accordance with an experimental cue to regulate. Although there
is some variation in how this is accomplished, many emotion regulation
experiments examine the effects of emotion regulation over the course of
several seconds or a few minutes. By contrast, studies of executive functioning often employ experimental conditions where trial types change far more
rapidly to examine an individual’s ability to respond accurately or quickly,
on the level of milliseconds (Miyake et al., 2000). On the other end of the
spectrum, self-regulation tasks are often employed over multiple minutes,
and relate to choices that individuals make repeatedly over days and weeks
(Hagger et al., 2010). Recent work has begun to bridge this gap by relating
performance on these cognitive control tasks to real-world self-regulation
abilities like smoking cessation (Berkman, Falk, & Lieberman, 2011). However, if the mechanisms behind executive function, emotion regulation and
self-regulation are to be directly compared, traditional laboratory procedures
should be modified to allow for the measurement of these processes on the
same timescale.
CONCLUSION
Emotion regulation is associated with both adaptive and maladaptive
outcomes (Gross, 2014; Webb et al., 2012). Delineating the multiple, interacting factors that lead to its most adaptive outcomes holds great promise
for alleviating clinical symptoms as well as maximizing well-being. More
specifically, future work on the flexible determination of adaptiveness based
on contexts, individuals, emotions, and goals, as well as the relationship
between emotion regulation and related regulatory processes will propel our
understanding of emotion regulation even further. This precise mechanistic
understanding could lead to the development of efficient, targeted and
Emotion Regulation
15
individualized interventions. Although the pursuit of these questions will
not be without challenges, the field of emotion regulation has, is currently
and will continue to contribute a more nuanced understanding of the
influence we have over our emotions, guiding us toward more sensitive,
calibrated, and fulfilling emotional lives.
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PAREE ZAROLIA SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Paree Zarolia, MA, is a graduate student in the Affect/Social Psychology program at the University of Denver. Her research interests include
emotion–cognition interactions, emotion regulation, and the role of emotion
in complex decision-making.
KATERI McRAE SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Kateri McRae is an Assistant Professor at the University of Denver, and
Director of the Automaticity, Affect, Control and Thought Lab (http://www.
du.edu/psychology/aact/index.html). Her research interests include the
social, cognitive, and personal factors that impact how emotion and
cognition interact. She uses a variety of methods, including neuroimaging.
JAMES J. GROSS SHORT BIOGRAPHY
James J. Gross is Professor of Psychology at Stanford University, and Director
of the Stanford Psychophysiology Laboratory (http://spl.stanford.edu). He
is a leading figure in the areas of emotion and emotion regulation, and he has
received early career awards from the American Psychological Association,
the Western Psychological Association, and the Society for Psychophysiological Research.
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