Chapter 9:
- Emotion regulation → the ways that individuals influence the intensity, duration and
type of emotions they experience and do not experience, the situations under which
they experience a given emotion and how and whether they eventually express those
emotions.
- Emotion regulation strategies → the ways that people regulate their emotions
Motives for regulating emotions:
All of the reasons to want to alter the expression or experience of emotion starts from the
idea that the current emotional state is somehow ‘’undesirable’’, reasons are:
1. Hedonic motivation → wanting to regulate your emotions due to the negative
hedonic tone of the emotion
2. Instrumental motivation → regulating your emotions because you believe certain
emotions are appropriate (and other inappropriate) to the task you need to perform.
An example is choosing to engage in activities that would make you feel angry before
playing a computer game that involves confrontation with enemies, but not before playing a
computer game that involves building an empire.
3. Prosocial motives → people may want to regulate their emotions in order to protect
the feelings of others. They do it because of the expected interpersonal
consequences of displaying certain emotions.
4. Self-protection motives → suppressing emotions or feign/fake an emotion in order
to protect one’s personal safety or to elicit helpful reactions from others.
5. Impression management motive → regulating emotions due to the fear of being
judged negatively by others because of expressing an inappropriate emotion. It is
based on knowledge of norms that prescribe what emotions are appropriate in a
particular context.
- Emotion norms prescribe outward emotional displays and the very feeling that can be
experienced in a given situation.
- Display rules specify the emotional expressions appropriate to a specific situation
- Feeling rules prescribe the feelings one should experience according to social and
cultural conventions
Emotion regulation strategies:
Gross’s process model → we use different strategies at different points in our experience
of emotion eliciting situations:
1. Antecedent-focused emotion regulation → it involves attempts to control or modify
an emotion before it has even been elicited
2. Response-focused regulation → the modification of the subjective, expressive or
physiological aspects of an emotion when the experience is already occurring
, 1. Antecedent-focused strategies:
- Situation selection → it involves seeking out events or people that you know might
evoke feelings that you do want to experience and avoiding those you know you
don’t want to experience.
- Situation modification → it involves trying to alter the features of a situation in order
to modify its emotional impact (e.g: asking Eva to turn down the music)
- Attentional deployment → it allows you to affect the emotional impact of a situation
by how you take in information in your environment. Individuals use selective
attention to limit (or enhance) their exposure to the emotionally evocative aspects of
an event.
- Cognitive change → modifying how one thinks about a situation in order to increase
or decrease the occurrence of specific emotions.
2. Response-focused regulation:
- Response modulation → modifying an emotion’s specific subjective, physiological
or expressive components in one of the following ways:
a) Regulation of expressive behavior --. the suppression or amplification of facial
expressions of emotion in particular, but also bodily and vocal displays of emotion,
which might, in turn, modulate emotional experience
b) Regulation of physiological arousal → it is affected by medication such as
tranquilizers which decrease muscle tension or by beta-blockers which inhibit the
adrenergic beta-receptors and thereby reducing sympathetic arousal. Other drugs
and activities that affect muscle tension and/or physiological arousal are alcohol,
coffee, marijuana, cigarettes, exercise and self-induced muscle relaxation.
c) Regulation of experience → it involves focused concentration on, or suppression
of, intense thoughts that accompany feelings.
Concentration on the thoughts is called rumination and consists of consciously
drawing attention to (especially) negative thoughts and feelings with the goal of
making sense of them and thus reducing their unpleasant impact.
Suppression of emotional thoughts is called emotional thought suppression and it
may paradoxically facilitate the return of the suppressed emotions.
d) Social sharing of emotions → emotional disclosure
Cognitive reappraisal:
Because we make emotional predictions about upcoming events, we can use the cognitive
change strategy of reappraisal to change how we think about an upcoming situation in order
to modify its emotional impact.
People often use reappraisal to think about a negative event in less emotional terms, thereby
dampening their negative emotions. Positive experiences also be reappraised in ways that
regulate positive feelings as well (e.g: not being laughing during class). In one study
participants were told to look at a film and they were instructed to increase or decrease their
amusement through reappraisal:
,Research suggests that this emotion regulation strategy is successful in reducing
both negative and positive emotional experience, expression and physiological
arousal. Furthermore, it does not impair memory.
Suppression of expressive behavior:
In many studies of expressive suppression, experimental participants are exposed to
emotion-inducing films or slides and are instructed to suppress their overt emotional
reactions when they occur. Control conditions participants receive no regulation instructions.
Participants' facial expressions are filmed, their physiological responses are recorded and
their self-reports of subjective feelings are collected.
Findings are that participants who try to suppress their emotional expression did so to a
significant degree compared to those with no suppression instructions. However,
suppressors were still more expressive during emotion-arousing films than during the neutral
film. It does also lead to an increased sympathetic arousal, which suggests that trying to
prevent emotional displays takes some effort.
Although people can suppress expression, they don't do so completely.
Reappraisal vs expressive suppression:
Cognitive reappraisal seems to be a strategy that alters many components of emotion whistl
expressive suppression seems to work mostly on the outward display of emotion. There may
be different hidden costs to the two strategies:
1. Cognitive consequences of both:
- Suppression of emotional expression impairs memory for information encountered
during the suppression period and people are aware of their memory impairment.
- Reappraisal does not impair the recall of verbal information.
The memory impairment in suppressors may thus be due to reduced cognitive and
attentional resources imposed by suppression (attention on the self, less attention for
encoding external events). Furthermore, suppressionheightens self-monitoring, which
impedes the encoding of verbal information.
2. Social consequences of both:
- Suppression may impair the suppressor’s responsiveness in a social encounter.
Furthermore, suppression conceals the feelings, social motives and behavioral
intentions of an individual. However, suppressing one’s feelings can also have
positive social consequences because it protects others’ feelings and prevents
interpersonal conflict. Whether the suppression is beneficial or detrimental depends
on the specific emotions that are concealed, the situation in which the suppression
, occurs (e.g: with boss can be good) and the frequency with which emotions are
suppressed (temporary can be good).
The negative effects of expressive suppression seem to be specific to Western cultures, in
which the overt emotion expression is valued. In this culture, reappraisal is more efficient.
Note: despite its benefits, reappraisal is not the preferred strategy in every context (not when
there are high-intensity negative emotions).
Emotional thought suppression:
- Rebound effect → the ironic and counterproductive effect of the active suppression
of unwanted thought
The classic experiment that showed this is the white bear experiment (more participants
thought about a white bear when they were told not to do so compared to having received no
instruction).
Thought suppression involves two processes according to Wegner’s model of mental
control:
1. Automatic monitoring process → it is effortless and involuntary and functions
outside of conscious awareness and requires no cognitive resources.
2. Controlled operating process → it is conscious, intentional and requires cognitive
resources.
The monitoring process searches mental content for instances of the unwanted thought.
Each time it detects the presence of the to-be-suppressed unwanted thought the operating
process is activated with the goal to seek out distracter thoughts that capture conscious
attention and serve to keep the unwanted thought out of mind.
The model proposes two explanations for the rebound of suppressed thoughts:
- Association explanation → it states that the distracter thoughts that are used to
replace the unwanted thought become strongly associated with the unwanted
thought. Distracters then serve as memory cues that prompt the unwanted thought
whenever they come to mind or appear in the environment
- Accessibility explanation → it states that suppression increases the accessibility of
the to-be-suppressed unwanted thought, because the automatic monitoring process
continues to search for the unwanted thought even when suppression is no longer
required (no cueing by a distracter).
- Cognitive load explanation → it states that the rebound effect is more likely when
cognitive resources are reduced due to concurrent tasks, time pressure or stress.
Cognitive load undermines the operating process and so the monitoring process
finds even more instances of the unwanted thoughts.
Suppression of emotions and emotional thoughts does not cause the classic rebound effect.
The absence of an emotional rebound may be due to people's prior experience with
controlling intrusive emotional thoughts (greater variety of distractors and the presence of
emotional distractors may redirect attention away from the emotional thoughts and reduce
their rebound (e.g: disgust suppressed when shown with clean images compared to
neutral)).
However, inhibition of emotional thoughts may calm the mind, but not the body. There is a
physiological rebound.
- Emotion regulation → the ways that individuals influence the intensity, duration and
type of emotions they experience and do not experience, the situations under which
they experience a given emotion and how and whether they eventually express those
emotions.
- Emotion regulation strategies → the ways that people regulate their emotions
Motives for regulating emotions:
All of the reasons to want to alter the expression or experience of emotion starts from the
idea that the current emotional state is somehow ‘’undesirable’’, reasons are:
1. Hedonic motivation → wanting to regulate your emotions due to the negative
hedonic tone of the emotion
2. Instrumental motivation → regulating your emotions because you believe certain
emotions are appropriate (and other inappropriate) to the task you need to perform.
An example is choosing to engage in activities that would make you feel angry before
playing a computer game that involves confrontation with enemies, but not before playing a
computer game that involves building an empire.
3. Prosocial motives → people may want to regulate their emotions in order to protect
the feelings of others. They do it because of the expected interpersonal
consequences of displaying certain emotions.
4. Self-protection motives → suppressing emotions or feign/fake an emotion in order
to protect one’s personal safety or to elicit helpful reactions from others.
5. Impression management motive → regulating emotions due to the fear of being
judged negatively by others because of expressing an inappropriate emotion. It is
based on knowledge of norms that prescribe what emotions are appropriate in a
particular context.
- Emotion norms prescribe outward emotional displays and the very feeling that can be
experienced in a given situation.
- Display rules specify the emotional expressions appropriate to a specific situation
- Feeling rules prescribe the feelings one should experience according to social and
cultural conventions
Emotion regulation strategies:
Gross’s process model → we use different strategies at different points in our experience
of emotion eliciting situations:
1. Antecedent-focused emotion regulation → it involves attempts to control or modify
an emotion before it has even been elicited
2. Response-focused regulation → the modification of the subjective, expressive or
physiological aspects of an emotion when the experience is already occurring
, 1. Antecedent-focused strategies:
- Situation selection → it involves seeking out events or people that you know might
evoke feelings that you do want to experience and avoiding those you know you
don’t want to experience.
- Situation modification → it involves trying to alter the features of a situation in order
to modify its emotional impact (e.g: asking Eva to turn down the music)
- Attentional deployment → it allows you to affect the emotional impact of a situation
by how you take in information in your environment. Individuals use selective
attention to limit (or enhance) their exposure to the emotionally evocative aspects of
an event.
- Cognitive change → modifying how one thinks about a situation in order to increase
or decrease the occurrence of specific emotions.
2. Response-focused regulation:
- Response modulation → modifying an emotion’s specific subjective, physiological
or expressive components in one of the following ways:
a) Regulation of expressive behavior --. the suppression or amplification of facial
expressions of emotion in particular, but also bodily and vocal displays of emotion,
which might, in turn, modulate emotional experience
b) Regulation of physiological arousal → it is affected by medication such as
tranquilizers which decrease muscle tension or by beta-blockers which inhibit the
adrenergic beta-receptors and thereby reducing sympathetic arousal. Other drugs
and activities that affect muscle tension and/or physiological arousal are alcohol,
coffee, marijuana, cigarettes, exercise and self-induced muscle relaxation.
c) Regulation of experience → it involves focused concentration on, or suppression
of, intense thoughts that accompany feelings.
Concentration on the thoughts is called rumination and consists of consciously
drawing attention to (especially) negative thoughts and feelings with the goal of
making sense of them and thus reducing their unpleasant impact.
Suppression of emotional thoughts is called emotional thought suppression and it
may paradoxically facilitate the return of the suppressed emotions.
d) Social sharing of emotions → emotional disclosure
Cognitive reappraisal:
Because we make emotional predictions about upcoming events, we can use the cognitive
change strategy of reappraisal to change how we think about an upcoming situation in order
to modify its emotional impact.
People often use reappraisal to think about a negative event in less emotional terms, thereby
dampening their negative emotions. Positive experiences also be reappraised in ways that
regulate positive feelings as well (e.g: not being laughing during class). In one study
participants were told to look at a film and they were instructed to increase or decrease their
amusement through reappraisal:
,Research suggests that this emotion regulation strategy is successful in reducing
both negative and positive emotional experience, expression and physiological
arousal. Furthermore, it does not impair memory.
Suppression of expressive behavior:
In many studies of expressive suppression, experimental participants are exposed to
emotion-inducing films or slides and are instructed to suppress their overt emotional
reactions when they occur. Control conditions participants receive no regulation instructions.
Participants' facial expressions are filmed, their physiological responses are recorded and
their self-reports of subjective feelings are collected.
Findings are that participants who try to suppress their emotional expression did so to a
significant degree compared to those with no suppression instructions. However,
suppressors were still more expressive during emotion-arousing films than during the neutral
film. It does also lead to an increased sympathetic arousal, which suggests that trying to
prevent emotional displays takes some effort.
Although people can suppress expression, they don't do so completely.
Reappraisal vs expressive suppression:
Cognitive reappraisal seems to be a strategy that alters many components of emotion whistl
expressive suppression seems to work mostly on the outward display of emotion. There may
be different hidden costs to the two strategies:
1. Cognitive consequences of both:
- Suppression of emotional expression impairs memory for information encountered
during the suppression period and people are aware of their memory impairment.
- Reappraisal does not impair the recall of verbal information.
The memory impairment in suppressors may thus be due to reduced cognitive and
attentional resources imposed by suppression (attention on the self, less attention for
encoding external events). Furthermore, suppressionheightens self-monitoring, which
impedes the encoding of verbal information.
2. Social consequences of both:
- Suppression may impair the suppressor’s responsiveness in a social encounter.
Furthermore, suppression conceals the feelings, social motives and behavioral
intentions of an individual. However, suppressing one’s feelings can also have
positive social consequences because it protects others’ feelings and prevents
interpersonal conflict. Whether the suppression is beneficial or detrimental depends
on the specific emotions that are concealed, the situation in which the suppression
, occurs (e.g: with boss can be good) and the frequency with which emotions are
suppressed (temporary can be good).
The negative effects of expressive suppression seem to be specific to Western cultures, in
which the overt emotion expression is valued. In this culture, reappraisal is more efficient.
Note: despite its benefits, reappraisal is not the preferred strategy in every context (not when
there are high-intensity negative emotions).
Emotional thought suppression:
- Rebound effect → the ironic and counterproductive effect of the active suppression
of unwanted thought
The classic experiment that showed this is the white bear experiment (more participants
thought about a white bear when they were told not to do so compared to having received no
instruction).
Thought suppression involves two processes according to Wegner’s model of mental
control:
1. Automatic monitoring process → it is effortless and involuntary and functions
outside of conscious awareness and requires no cognitive resources.
2. Controlled operating process → it is conscious, intentional and requires cognitive
resources.
The monitoring process searches mental content for instances of the unwanted thought.
Each time it detects the presence of the to-be-suppressed unwanted thought the operating
process is activated with the goal to seek out distracter thoughts that capture conscious
attention and serve to keep the unwanted thought out of mind.
The model proposes two explanations for the rebound of suppressed thoughts:
- Association explanation → it states that the distracter thoughts that are used to
replace the unwanted thought become strongly associated with the unwanted
thought. Distracters then serve as memory cues that prompt the unwanted thought
whenever they come to mind or appear in the environment
- Accessibility explanation → it states that suppression increases the accessibility of
the to-be-suppressed unwanted thought, because the automatic monitoring process
continues to search for the unwanted thought even when suppression is no longer
required (no cueing by a distracter).
- Cognitive load explanation → it states that the rebound effect is more likely when
cognitive resources are reduced due to concurrent tasks, time pressure or stress.
Cognitive load undermines the operating process and so the monitoring process
finds even more instances of the unwanted thoughts.
Suppression of emotions and emotional thoughts does not cause the classic rebound effect.
The absence of an emotional rebound may be due to people's prior experience with
controlling intrusive emotional thoughts (greater variety of distractors and the presence of
emotional distractors may redirect attention away from the emotional thoughts and reduce
their rebound (e.g: disgust suppressed when shown with clean images compared to
neutral)).
However, inhibition of emotional thoughts may calm the mind, but not the body. There is a
physiological rebound.
