The self-regulation of emotion or emotion regulation is the ability to respond to the ongoing experience with the range of emotions in a manner that is socially tolerable and sufficiently flexible to permit spontaneous reactions as well as the ability to delay spontaneous reactions as needed. It can also be defined as extrinsic and intrinsic processes responsible for monitoring, evaluating, and modifying emotional reactions. The self-regulation of emotion belongs to the broader set of emotion regulation processes, which includes both the regulation of one's own feelings and the regulation of other people's feelings.
Emotion regulation is a complex process that involves initiating, inhibiting, or modulating one's state or behavior in a given situation — for example, the subjective experience (feelings), cognitive responses (thoughts and mental processes), emotion-related physiological responses (for example heart rate or hormonal activity), and emotion-related behavior (bodily actions or expressions). Functionally, emotion regulation can also refer to processes such as the tendency to focus one's attention to a task and the ability to suppress inappropriate behavior under instruction. Emotion regulation is an important function in human life.
People are continually exposed to a wide range of potentially arousing stimuli. Inappropriate, extreme or unchecked emotional reactions to such stimuli could impede functional fit within society; therefore, people must engage in some form of emotion regulation almost all of the time. Generally speaking, emotion dysregulation has been defined as difficulties in controlling the influence of emotional arousal on the organization and quality of thoughts, actions, and interactions. Individuals who are emotionally dysregulated exhibit patterns of responding in which there is a mismatch between their goals, responses, and/or modes of expression, and the demands of the social environment. For example, there is a significant association between emotion dysregulation and symptoms of ADHD, depression, anxiety, eating pathology, and substance abuse. Individuals diagnosed with mood disorders and anxiety disorders also experience dysfunction in the automatic regulation of emotions, further impacting their emotion regulation abilities. Higher levels of emotion regulation are likely to be related to both high levels of social competence and the expression of socially appropriate emotions.Pulkkinen, L. (1982). Self-control and continuity from childhood to late adolescence. In P. B. Bakes & O. Brim Jr. (Eds.), Life-span development and behavior (Vol. 4, pp. 63-105). New York: Academic Press.
Theory
Process model The process model of emotion regulation is based upon the modal model of emotion. The modal model of emotion suggests that the emotion generation process occurs in a particular sequence over time. This sequence occurs as follows: Situation: the sequence begins with a situation (real or imagined) that is emotionally relevant. Attention: attention is directed towards the emotional situation. Appraisal: the emotional situation is evaluated and interpreted. Response: an emotional response is generated, giving rise to loosely coordinated changes in experiential, behavioral, and physiological response systems. Because an emotional response (4.) can cause changes to a situation (1.), this model involves a feedback loop from (4.) Response to (1.) Situation. This feedback loop suggests that the emotion generation process can occur recursively, is ongoing, and dynamic.Gross, J. J. & Thompson, R. A. (2007). Emotion regulation: Conceptual foundations. In J. J. Gross (Ed.), Handbook of Emotion Regulation (pp. 3-24). New York: Guilford Press.
The process model contends that each of these four points in the emotion generation process can be subjected to regulation. From this conceptualization, the process model posits five different families of emotion regulation that correspond to the regulation of a particular point in the emotion generation process. They occur in the following order: Situation selection Situation modification Attentional deployment Cognitive change Response modulation The process model also divides these emotion regulation strategies into two categories: antecedent-focused and response-focused. Antecedent-focused strategies (i.e., situation selection, situation modification, attentional deployment, and cognitive change) occur before an emotional response is fully generated. Response-focused strategies (i.e., response modulation) occur after an emotional response is fully generated.
MCCE Model (Model of the Cognitive Control of Emotion) The Model of the Cognitive Control of Emotion (MCCE), developed by Kevin Ochsner, depicts how various emotion regulation strategies intervene at specific points along the emotion-generation process. The model traces a sequence beginning with a stimulus encountered in context, whether internal (thoughts, sensations) or external (people, actions, events), which is then processed through stages of attention, appraisal, and response, ultimately producing experiential, behavioral, and physiological outcomes.
Cognitive control processes act on this sequence at five distinct points. Situation selection and situation modification intervene before the stimulus is even fully processed, shaping which stimuli a person encounters or how the situation itself is altered. Attentional deployment governs where attention is directed toward a stimulus or its particular attribute, while cognitive change, most prominently through reappraisal, shifts the appraisal stage by reinterpreting the emotional significance of the situation in either an aversive or appetitive direction. Finally, response modulation acts after the emotional response has already been generated, directly influencing experience, behavior, or physiology.
Empirically, Ochsner's work demonstrated that engaging these regulatory strategies activates the prefrontal cortex (PFC), which in turn modulates amygdala activity, decreasing it during downregulation of negative emotion and increasing it during upregulation. This finding established that cognitive control operates through a top-down PFC-to-amygdala pathway rather than through changes in the stimulus itself. The MCCE model therefore provides a structural map for identifying precisely where in the emotion-generation timeline a given regulatory strategy exerts its effect, and which underlying brain regions support that intervention.
Strategies
Situation selection Situation selection is an emotional regulation strategy that involves choosing to avoid or approach a future emotional situation. If a person selects to avoid or disengage from an emotionally relevant situation, they are decreasing the likelihood of experiencing an emotion. Alternatively, if a person selects to approach or engage with an emotionally relevant situation, they are increasing the likelihood of experiencing an emotion.
Typical examples of situation selection may be seen interpersonally, such as when a parent removes his or her child from an emotionally unpleasant situation. Use of situation selection may also be seen in psychopathology. For example, avoidance of social situations to regulate emotions is particularly pronounced for those with social anxiety disorder and avoidant personality disorder.
Effective situation selection is not always an easy task. For instance, humans display difficulties predicting their emotional responses to future events. Therefore, they may have trouble making accurate and appropriate decisions about which emotionally relevant situations to approach or to avoid.Loewenstein, G. (2007). Affect regulation and affective forecasting. In J. J. Gross (Ed.), Handbook of Emotion Regulation (pp.180-203). New York: Guilford Press.
Situation modification Situation modification involves efforts to modify a situation so as to change its emotional impact. Situation modification refers specifically to altering one's external, physical environment. Altering one's "internal" environment to regulate emotion is called cognitive change. Younger and older adults seem to also regulate their emotions through situation modification in differing ways that reflects what type of material they consume ranging from negative, neutral, and positive. Livingstone and Isaacowitz conducted research where they observed younger and older adults as they viewed different types of material and had the choice to skip what material they saw, and it came out that older adults are better able to regulate the negative material, focusing mainly on the positive, than the younger adults who still consumed positive material, but not as much modification. This demonstrated that as we age, we gain a better understanding of situation modification and being able to emotionally self-regulate.Livingstone, K. M., & Isaacowitz, D. M. (2015). Situation selection and modification for emotion regulation in younger and older adults. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 6(8), 904–910. https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550615593148 Beyond individual situational strategies, structured psychotherapeutic approaches such as cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) have demonstrated effectiveness in improving emotion regulation by targeting maladaptive cognitive patterns and enhancing coping skills.Hofmann, S.G., Asnaani, A., Vonk, I.J., Sawyer, A.T., Fang, A. (2012). The Efficacy of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy: A Review of Meta-analyses. Cognitive Therapy and Research, 36(5), 427–440. doi:10.1007/s10608-012-9476-1.
Examples of situation modification may include injecting humor into a speech to elicit laughter or extending the physical distance between oneself and another person.
Attentional deployment Attentional deployment involves directing one's attention towards or away from an emotional situation.
Distraction Distraction, an example of attentional deployment, is an early selection strategy, which involves diverting one's attention away from an emotional stimulus and towards other content. Distraction has been shown to reduce the intensity of painful and emotional experiences, to decrease facial responding and neural activation in the amygdala associated with emotion, as well as to alleviate emotional distress. As opposed to reappraisal, individuals show a relative preference to engage in distraction when facing stimuli of high negative emotional intensity. This is because distraction easily filters out high-intensity emotional content, which would otherwise be relatively difficult to appraise and process.
Rumination Rumination, an example of attentional deployment, is defined as the passive and repetitive focusing of one's attention on one's symptoms of distress and the causes and consequences of these symptoms. Rumination is generally considered a maladaptive emotion regulation strategy, as it tends to exacerbate emotional distress. It has also been implicated in a host of disorders including major depression.
Worry Worry, an example of attentional deployment, involves directing attention to thoughts and images concerned with potentially negative events in the future. By focusing on these events, worrying serves to aid in the down-regulation of intense negative emotion and physiological activity. While worry may sometimes involve problem solving, incessant worry is generally considered maladaptive, being a common feature of anxiety disorders, particularly generalized anxiety disorder.
Thought suppression