留学生dissertation网：the Emerging Field of Emotion Regulation

Review of General Psychology Copyright 1998 by the Educational Publishing Foundation
1998, VoL 2, No. 3, 271-299 1089-2680/98/$3.00
The Emerging Field of Emotion Regulation: An Integrative Review
James J. Gross
Stanford University
The emerging field of emotion regulation studies how individuals influence whichemotions they have, when they have them, and how they experience and express them.
留学生dissertation网This review takes an evolutionary perspective and characterizes emotion in terms ofresponse tendencies. Emotion regulation is defined and distinguished from copingmood regulation, defense, and affect regulation. In the increasingly specialized disciplineof psychology, the field of emotion regulation cuts across traditional boundariesand provides common ground. According to a process model of emotion regulation,emotion may be regulated at five points in the emotion generative process: (a) selectionof the situation, (b) modification of the situation, (c) deployment of attention, (d)change of cognitions, and (e) modulation of responses. The field of emotion regulationpromises new insights into age-old questions about how people manage their emotions.Conquer your passions and you conquer the wodd.
---Hindu proverb
To yield to man's emotions will assuredly lead to strifeand disorderliness . . . . It is only under the influence ofteachers and laws.., that courtesy will be observedetiquette respected, and order restored.
--Hsun Tzu (3rd C., B.C.E., DeBary, Chan, & Watson,
1960, p. 118)
The principal use of prudence or self-control is that itteaches us to be masters of our passions.
--Descartes (1649/1955, p. 427)
How should we manage our emotions?Should we attend to them or disregard them?
Esteem them or revile them? Encourage them orsuppress them? Each culture answers thesequestions differently, but there is a commontheme: we need to exert some measure ofcontrol over our emotions. Nowhere, perhaps, isthis interventionist sentiment stronger than inthe West. One of the central tenets of Westernphilosophy is "the wisdom of reason against thetreachery and temptations of the passions"(Solomon, 1976, p. 11).
Even within the Western tradition, however,opinions differ as to just how much emotionsshould be controlled. Some philosophers, suchWork on this article was supported by Grant MH58147from the National Institute of Mental Health. I would like tothank Lisa Feldman Barrett, Oliver John, Richard Lane,Randy Larsen, and James Pennebaker for helpful commentson a draft of this article.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressedto James J. Gross, Department of Psychology,Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305-2130.
Electronic mail may be sent to james @psych.stanford.edu.as Seneca (trans., 1963) and Ryle (1949), haveseen emotions as troublesome deviations from
proper functioning, and thus in need of severe#p#分页标题#e#
correction. Others, such as Aristotle (trans.,
1941) and Hume (1739/1969), have seenemotions in a more positive light, and thus lessin need of strict regulation. This ambivalentWestern legacy is reflected in conflicting sayingssuch as "He who keeps a cool headprevails" and "Let your feelings be yourguide."
In the past 2 decades, an exciting new chapter
has opened in the age-old discussion of how weshould manage emotions: psychological researchhas begun to focus explicitly on emotionregulation. Research on emotion regulationoriginated in developmental psychology (Gaensbauer,1982) and now is flourishing in the childand adult literatures alike (e.g., Campos, Campos,& Barrett, 1989; Gross, 1998). In thisarticle, I review the emerging field of emotionregulation. First, I orient the reader to anevolutionary perspective that views emotions asresponse tendencies. Second, I define emotionregulation and distinguish it from related
constructs. Third, I show how emotion regulationcuts across traditional subdisciplinary
boundaries within psychology. Fourth, I proposea process model of emotion regulation thatfacilitates analysis of the potentially overwhelming
number of kinds of emotion regulation.Fifth, I consider several important challenges
that the field still needs to address. I concludethat we do not yet have complete answers to
271
272 GROSS
most of the questions about how emotions are
regulated. Nonetheless, I argue that psychological
research on emotion regulation shows every
http://www.ukthesis.org/dissertation_sample/shehuixueliuxueshenglunwenxuqi/promise of providing the theoretical models and
the empirical findings needed to answer fundamentalquestions about how we can and shouldmanage our emotions.
What Is Emotion?
Any discussion of emotion regulation presupposesan understanding of what emotion is. Andnot just any definition will do. For example,Carver and Scheier (1990) view emotion as thereadout of a system that monitors the rate atwhich the discrepancy between a goal andreality is being decreased (also see Hsee &
Abelson, 1991, for a similar position). Positiveemotion signals a rate of discrepancy reductionthat is faster than expected; negative emotionsignals a rate that is slower than expected.
Although the individual may take actions thatlead to a decrease in negative emotion (e.g.,allocating more resources to the task; Carver,Lawrence, & Scheier, 1996), emotion regulationis viewed as an accidental by-product of suchaction, rather than an end in itself. For this
reason, Carver and Scheier's (1990) conceptionof emotion provides relatively inhospitableground for the study of emotion regulation.
Emotions as Response Tendencies
Other perspectives fairly cry out for an
analysis of emotion regulation. William James
(1884, 1894), for example, regarded emotions as#p#分页标题#e#
adaptive behavioral and physiological response
tendencies that are called forth directly by
evolutionarily significant situations. Although
individuals often express these emotional response
tendencies, they do not always do so.
James's view of emotions as response tendencies
allows that individuals may modulate their
emotional response tendencies, such as when
they whistle instead of running away in fear.
Discrepancies between emotional response tendencies
and manifest behavior prompt questions
about how, why, and when individuals might try
to regulate their emotional response tendencies.
Researchers today continue to draw on
James's response-tendency perspective. As
shown in Figure 1, many contemporary researchers
conceive of emotions as flexible response
sequences (Buck, 1994; Frijda, 1986; Scherer,
1984) that are called forth whenever an
individual evaluates a situation as offering
important challenges or opportunities (Tooby &
Cosmides, 1990). Emotional response tendencies
are relatively short lived and involve
changes in the behavioral, experiential, autonomic,
and neuroendocrine systems (Lang,
1995). Importantly, emotional response tenden-
Emotional
Cues
I
Emotional
Response Tendencies
.Behavioral
.Experiential
.Physiological JI
Evaluation Modulation
Emotional
Responses
Figure 1. A consensual process model of emotion generation. Adapted from "Antecedentand
Response-Focused Emotion Regulation," by J. J. Gross, 1998, Journal of Personality and
Social Psychology, 74, p. 226. Copyright 1998 by the American Psychological Association.
Adapted with permission.
SPECIAL ISSUE: EMOTION REGULATION 273
cies may be modulated, and it is this modulation
that determines the final shape of the emotional
response (Gross, 1998). t
Historically, emotions were seen as nonspecific,
disruptive activation states (Hebb, 1949;
Young, 1943). More recent analyses emphasize
the functions emotions serve (Keltner & Gross,
in press). Although emotions address different
adaptive problems (Ekman, 1992), they generally
facilitate decision making (Oatley &
Johnson-Laird, 1987), prepare the individual for
rapid motor responses (Frijda, 1986), and
provide information regarding the ongoing
match between organism and environment
(Schwarz & Clore, 1983). In addition to their
intraorganismic functions, emotions also serve
social functions. They inform us about others'
behavioral intentions (Fridlund, 1994), give us
clues as to whether something is good or bad
(Walden, 1991), and script our social behavior
(Averill, 1980; Keltner & Buswell, 1997).
Enthusiasm for functional analyses of emotion#p#分页标题#e#
should not blind us to James's observation
that emotional response tendencies often need to
be modulated. Indeed, inherent in the notion of a
response tendency is the idea that a response
tendency is only one of many determinants of
behavior. In the discussion of emotion regulation
that follows, I draw on James's responsetendency
perspective on emotion. First, however,
I clarify several important distinctions among
terms that often are used interchangeably.
Relations With Related Constructs
All manner of distinctions have been made in
an attempt to bring order to the "conceptual and
definitional chaos" that characterizes emotion
research (Buck, 1990, p. 330). Many of these
distinctions are idiosyncratic. However, a few
distinctions have broader currency, including
those made among affect, emotion, emotion
episodes, and mood.
In some contexts, affect and emotion are used
interchangeably. In others, affect is used to refer
to the experiential (Buck, 1993; MacLean,
1990) or behavioral (American Psychiatric
Association [APA], 1994; Kaplan & Sadock,
1991) components of emotion. Following
Scherer (1984), I use affect as the superordinate
category for valenced states, including emotions
such as anger and sadness, emotion episodes
such as a barroom brawl and delivering bad
news to a close friend, moods such as depression
and euphoria, dispositional states such as liking
and hating, and traits such as cheerfulness and
irascibility (Chaplin, John, & Goldberg, 1988).
The most important distinctions among members
of the affect family are those among
emotion, emotion episodes, and mood. Whereas
emotions unfold over a relatively short time
period, emotion episodes are more extended in
both time and space (Frijda, 1993; Stein,
Trabasso, & Liwag, 1993). Emotion episodes,
also referred to as plots (Ekman, 1984), scripts
(Tomkins, 1984), and adaptational encounters
(Lazarus, 1991a), include each of the protagonists
and all of the events in a given emotional
scene (Forgas, 1982). For example, the emotion
of anger involves acute changes in posture,
facial movements, tone of voice, verbal expression,
experience, and autonomic responding.
The emotion episode of anger includes all of
these things as well as the instigator, the social
context, and the whole sequence of responses
and recriminations as they emerge in the
ongoing interaction (see Averill, 1982).
Emotions also may be distinguished from
moods (Parkinson, Totterdell, Briner, & Reynolds,
1996). One distinguishing feature is
duration (Nowlis & Nowlis, 1956); mood is the
"pervasive and sustained 'emotional climate,'"
and emotions are "fluctuating changes in#p#分页标题#e#
emotional 'weather'" (APA, 1994, p. 763). A
second distinguishing feature is that emotions
typically have specific objects and give rise to
behavioral response tendencies relevant to these
objects (Frijda, 1993; Isen, 1984; Lazarus,
1991a). By contrast, moods are more diffuse
(Morris, 1989), and although they may give rise
to broad action tendencies such as approach or
withdrawal (Lang, 1995), moods bias cognition
more than they bias action (Davidson, 1994;
Fiedler, 1988). Recently, several investigators
have formulated a hierarchical view that integrates
emotions and moods (Diener, Smith, &
Fujita, 1995; Watson & Clark, 1992). This view
holds that specific emotions are lower order
elements within higher order valenced mood
categories. In the context of emotion regulation,
1 The process model of emotion generation presented in
Figure 1 is a distillation of major points of convergence
across emotion researchers including Arnold (1960), Ekman
(1972), Izard (1977), Lazarus (1991a), Levenson (1994),
Leventhal (1984), Plutchik (1980), Scherer (1984), and
Tomkins (1962).
274 GROSS
however, differences in the response tendencies
that are associated with moods and emotions
suggest the need for maintaining this distinction.
I therefore focus primarily on the regulation of
emotion rather than affect, emotion episodes, or
mood. 2
What Is Emotion Regulation?
From time immemorial, people have wondered
how to manage their emotions. Only in the
past 2 decades, however, has the field of emotion
regulation begun to emerge as a relatively
independent research domain. Now that we have
a working definition of emotion, we can address
the topic of emotion regulation. In the following
sections, I consider two precursors to the
contemporary study of emotion regulation. I
then use a response-tendency perspective to
define emotion regulation.
Precursors to the Contemporary Study
of Emotion Regulation
The psychoanalytic tradition is one important
precursor to the contemporary study of emotion
regulation. This tradition emphasizes two types
of anxiety regulation (S. Freud, 1926/1959). The
first concerns reality-based anxiety, which arises
when situational demands overwhelm the ego.
Here, anxiety regulation consists of avoiding
such situations in the future, even to the point of
excessive behavioral constriction. The second
type of anxiety regulation concerns id- and
superego-based anxiety, which arises when
strong impulses press for expression. Here,
anxiety regulation consists of curtailing the
expression of impulses that the ego judges will
create high levels of future anxiety. Ego defense
is the general term given to processes that#p#分页标题#e#
regulate these two types of anxiety as well as
other painful negative affects (Paulhus, Fridhandler,
& Hayes, 1997). Typically, ego defenses
operate outside of awareness (Erdelyi, 1993).
Individuals have characteristic defensive styles
that differ in reality distortion, impairment,
energy consumption, and unnecessary nongratification
of impulses (Fenichel, 1945; A. Freud,
1946; Haan, 1977; Vaillant, 1977). Emotion
regulation researchers remain concerned with
reducing negative emotion experience through
behavioral or mental control. However, the
focus has expanded to include conscious and
unconscious processes that increase or decrease
the experience or expression of negative or
positive emotions (Mayer & Salovey, 1995;
Parrott, 1993). Methodologically, correlational
and experimental approaches have taken the
place of the clinical method. Researchers still
view difficulties with emotion regulation as
being central to psychopathology (Cicchetti,
Ackerman, & Izard, 1995; Gross & Munoz,
1995); however, they now pay greater attention
to normative emotion regulatory processes.
The stress and coping tradition is a second
important precursor to contemporary emotionregulation
research. The organizing principle in
this tradition is that organisms produce similar
psychophysiological responses to diverse challenges
(Selye, 1956; see also Sapolsky, 1994).
Early researchers focused on responses to
physical challenges such as cold or crowding.
Later researchers expanded their focus to
include responses to psychological challenges
such as public speaking or exams. Although
psychological stress and coping research has its
roots in the psychoanalytic tradition, it is
distinguished by a concern with adaptive,
conscious coping processes, and by a focus on
situational rather than person variables (Parker
& Endler, 1996). Coping is defined as "cognitive
and behavioral efforts to manage specific
external and/or internal demands that are
appraised as taxing or exceeding the resources
of the person" (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984,
p. 141). Researchers have distinguished between
problem-focused coping, which aims to
solve the problem, and emotion-focused coping,
which aims to decrease negative emotion
experience. Emotion regulation researchers have
borrowed heavily from the stress and coping
tradition. However, by examining specific emotions,
they have sought to make finer grained
distinctions among environment-organism interactions
than is possible using the broader rubric
of stress. Emotion regulation researchers also
have emphasized that both positive and negative
emotions may be regulated, and that both
emotion expression and experience may be#p#分页标题#e#
targeted. Although traditional definitions of
2 Mayer, Salovey, Gomberg-Kaufman, and Blainey (1991)
have proposed a conception of mood that subsumes mood
regulation. This substantially enlarges the traditional conception
of mood. I believe it may be more useful to distinguish
regulatory processes from the targets of regulation.
SPECIAL ISSUE: EMOTION REGULATION 275
coping overlap with contemporary conceptions
of emotion regulation, coping and emotion
regulation are by no means redundant. Coping
includes nonemotional actions taken to achieve
nonemotional goals (Scheier, Weinbtraub, &
Carver, 1986) as well as actions taken to
regulate emotions. Emotion regulation includes
processes that may or may not tax the individual's
resources, as well as processes not traditionally
considered in the coping literature, such as
sustaining or augmenting positive emotions (but
see Folkman, 1997).
Defining Emotion Regulation
What, then, is emotion regulation? Emotion
regulation refers to the processes by which
individuals influence which emotions they have,
when they have them, and how they experience
and express these emotions. Emotion regulatory
processes may be automatic or controlled,
conscious or unconscious, and may have their
effects at one or more points in the emotion
generative process (which I describe in a later
section). Because emotions are multicomponential
processes that unfold over time, emotion
regulation involves changes in "emotion dynamics"
(Thompson, 1990), or the latency, rise time,
magnitude, duration, and offset of responses in
behavioral, experiential, or physiological domains.
Emotion regulation also involves changes
in how response components are interrelated as
the emotion unfolds, such as when large
increases in physiological responding occur in
the absence of overt behavior.
This perspective on emotion regulation treats
the nervous system as multiple, partially independent
information processing subsystems (e.g.,
Fodor, 1983; Gazzaniga, 1985; LeDoux, 1989;
Maclean, 1975; Malmo, 1975; Panksepp, 1982).
Subsystems work with differing inputs, and
often provide different outputs, even given the
same input. Imagining a provocation can
produce anger, even when we know that there is
no threat (Lang, 1979). Similarly, seeing a roach
in our soup can produce feelings of disgust and
fear of disease, even when we know the roach
has been sterilized (Rozin & Fallon, 1987).
Interconnected neural subsystems monitor one
another to varying degrees and are in continuous
bidirectional excitatory or inhibitory interaction.
The notion that there are bidirectional links
between limbic centers that generate emotion#p#分页标题#e#
and cortical centers that regulate emotion is
important. It forces us to move beyond simple
models of top-down control (Head, 1921;
Jackson, 1884) to models that emphasize
emotional tuning of higher brain centers (Derryberry
& Tucker, 1992) as well as more
traditional top-down control.
I focus on five aspects of this definition of
emotion regulation. First, individuals increase,
maintain, and decrease negative and positive
emotions (Parrott, 1993). All of these processes
are included in my definition of emotion
regulation. Second, neural emotion circuits do
not appear to overlap completely (LeDoux,
1994; Panksepp, 1982; 1998). This suggests that
circuits involved in regulating these emotions
also may not overlap completely, and that there
may be important differences in emotion regulatory
processes across emotions. Third, this
definition of emotion regulation emphasizes
regulation in self. Other definitions include
attempts to influence others' emotions (e.g.,
Gross & Levenson, 1993; Masters, 1991;
Thompson, 1994). I now believe this double
usage is unfortunate, as it mixes two potentially
quite different sets of motives, goals, and
processes. Fourth, prototypic examples of emotion
regulation are conscious, such as deciding
to change an upsetting conversational topic or
squelching laughter at a child's inappropriate
antics. One can imagine, however, emotion
regulatory activity that occurs without conscious
awareness, such as hiding one's disappointment
at an unattractive present (Cole,
1986) or turning one's attention away from
potentially upsetting material (Boden &
Baumeister, 1997). Previous discussions have
distinguished categorically between conscious
and unconscious processes (Masters, 1991;
Mayer & Salovey, 1995). I prefer to think of a
continuum from conscious, effortful, and controlled
regulation to unconscious, effortless, and
automatic regulation (Shiffrin & Schneider,
1977). Fifth, I make no a priori assumptions as
to whether emotion regulation is good or bad
(Thompson & Calkins, 1996). This circumvents
the confusion that was created in the stress and
coping literature by predefining defenses as
maladaptive and coping as adaptive (Parker &
Endler, 1996). Thus, cognitive strategies that
dampen negative emotions may permit medical
professionals to operate successfully (Lief &
Fox, 1963; Smith & Kleinman, 1989). The same
276 GROSS
strategies, however, may be used to dehumanize
an enemy and neutralize empathic distress that
could interfere with state-sanctioned killing
(Bandura, 1977).
Relations With Related Constructs
Constructs related to emotion regulation
include coping, mood regulation, mood repair,#p#分页标题#e#
defense, and affect regulation. Coping is distinguished
from emotion regulation by its primary
focus on decreasing negative emotion experience
and by its use of the protracted organismsituation
interaction----or emotion episode--as
the preferred unit of analysis. Moods are
distinguished from emotions by their less well
defined behavioral response tendencies. Thus in
comparison with emotion regulation, mood
regulation and mood repair are more concerned
with altering emotion experience than emotion
behavior (Forgas, 1995; Parkinson et al., 1996;
Thayer, 1996). Like coping, defenses typically
have as their focus the regulation of negative
emotion experience, particularly anxiety. Defenses
usually are unconscious (Bond, Gardner,
Christian, & Sigal, 1983) and are studied as
stable individual differences rather than as
processes. The construct of affect regulation has
been used in a variety of ways (e.g., Taylor,
Bagby, & Parker, 1997; Westen, 1994). In
keeping with the broad conception of affect
described above, Figure 2 depicts affect regulation
as superordinate to coping, emotion regulation,
mood regulation, and traditional egodefensive
processes. These closely related
constructs have permeable boundaries, but I
conceptualize emotion regulation as one of
several major forms of affect regulation.
Affect Regulation
Figure 2. A hierarchical conception of affect regulation.
Emotion Regulation Across
Psychological Subdisciplines
Emotion regulation cuts across traditional
subdisciplinary boundaries. 3 As shown in Figure
3, each of the major subfields of psychology
contributes to an understanding of emotion
regulation. The field of emotion regulation
therefore provides important common ground in
an age of fractionation and specialization. In the
following sections, I consider emotion regulation
from the perspective of biological, cognitive,
developmental, social, personality, clinical,
and health psychology. Recognizing that each
section could grow into a full-length review, I
illustrate, rather than fully review, the contributions
these seven subfields have made or could
make to the study of emotion regulation.
Biological Psychology
One challenge that faces biological psychology
in general, and the allied discipline of
affective neuroscience in particular (Davidson
& Sutton, 1995; Panksepp, 1991; 1998), is to
elucidate the neural substrate of emotion regulation.
Researchers now think that bidirectional
pathways (Mega & Cummings, 1994) between
prefrontal cortex and subcortical emotiongenerative
structures modulate subcortical activity
(LeDoux, 1987; MacLean, 1990; Ploog,
1992) and suffuse cortical information processing#p#分页标题#e#
with emotional meaning (Damasio, 1994).
Evidence implicating the prefrontal cortex in
emotion regulation comes both from lesion and
developmental studies. Individuals who have
lesions involving the prefrontal region tend to be
emotionally impulsive and poorly affectively
regulated (e.g., Kolb & Taylor, 1990; Rolls,
Hornak, Wade, & McGrath, 1994; Stuss &
Benson, 1986; Tucker, Luu, & Pribram, 1995).
Developmentally, too, a correlation has been
reported between structural changes in the
prefrontal cortex that take place toward the end
of the first year and the emergence of rudimentary
forms of emotion regulation (Dawson,
3I focus on psychological research, although other
disciplines also have made important contributions to the
study of emotion regulation, including philosophy (e.g.,
Solomon, 1976), sociology (e.g., Hochschild, 1979), anthropology
(e.g., White, 1993), and economics (e.g., Loewenstein,
1996).
SPECIAL ISSUE: EMOTION REGULATION 277
~ ocial~
sona,i
J
I motionRe ,,1,,tion I
J oa,O
Figure 3. Emotion regulation and seven subfields of psychology.
Panagiotides, Klinger, & Hill, 1992; Diamond,
1991).
There is much to learn, however, about the
precise nature of central (e.g., Diamond, 1991)
and peripheral (e.g., Fabes & Eisenberg, 1997;
Porges, 1995) mechanisms that mediate emotion
regulation. Are emotional impulses regulated by
the same mechanisms that provide control over
other prepotent impulses (APA, 1994; Lion,
1992)? Or are regulatory structures specific not
only to various classes of impulses (e.g.,
emotional, appetitive, aversive) but even to the
individual emotions themselves? Hints of specificity
have emerged, but researchers have yet to
agree about even such basic issues as whether
the left or right prefrontal cortex is preferentially
charged with the regulation of negative versus
positive emotion (e.g., Dawson et al., 1992; Fox,
1994b; Tucker et al., 1995). Effective regulation
requires feedback from the monitored system,
and there are multiple internal and external
sources of information about emotional responding
(Pennebaker & Roberts, 1992). However,
little is known about how emotional response
tendencies are represented at various levels of
the neuroaxis. How might these representations
influence emotion regulation? Is the capacity to
verbally label emotional response tendencies
necessary for certain forms of emotion regulation
(Feldman Barrett, in press; Lane, Ahem,
Schwartz, & Kaszniak, 1997; Taylor et al.,
1997)? Answers to questions regarding the
neural bases of emotion regulation will provide
a much needed biological foundation for future
theoretical and empirical analyses.#p#分页标题#e#
Cognitive Psychology
Long cool to emotion, cognitive psychology
has begun to show an appreciation of the rich
interdigitation of cognitive and affective processes
or, as Lewis and colleagues put it, the
"cognitive-emotional fugue" (Lewis, Sullivan,
& Michalson, 1984). Researchers have demonstrated
complex dependencies between affective
processes and cognitive processes such as
problem solving (e.g., Clore, 1994; Isen, Daubman,
& Nowicki, 1987), learning (e.g., Mineka,
Davidson, Cook, & Keir, 1984; Ohman, 1986),
and memory (e.g., Blaney, 1986; Cahill, Prins,
Weber, & McGaugh, 1994; Chdstianson, 1992).
Research directly relevant to emotion regulation
has been limited. However, Wegner and
colleagues recently have begun to clarify the
cognitive underpinnings of one form of emotion
regulation (Wegner, Erber, & Zanakos, 1993).
They have shown that attempts to regulate
negative emotions via thought suppression yield
paradoxical increases in negative mood if
cognitive load is high. Wegner (1994) hypothesizes
that when cognitive resources are limited,
the conscious operating system that seeks out
278 GROSS
desired mental contents is out-performed by a
less cognitively costly monitoring system that
flags undesirable mental contents. Several recent
studies have assessed the cognitive consequences
of emotion regulation more directly. In
two studies, Richards and Gross (in press) found
that emotion suppression impaired memory for
auditory information that had been presented
during an emotion-eliciting slide-viewing task.
In a complementary study, Baumeister (in press)
found that both emotion suppression and
exaggeration impaired performance on subsequent
cognitive tasks such as anagram solving.
Because emotion regulation involves both attention
allocation and cognitive processing, cognitive
psychology is uniquely equipped to probe
these processes.
Developmental Psychology
Recognizing that self-regulation is the foundation
of organized behavior (Maccoby, 1980),
developmental psychologists have paid considerable
attention to emotion regulation (e.g.,
Bridges & Grolnick, 1995; Eisenberg & Fabes,
1992a; Fox, 1994a; Garber & Dodge, 1991).
One key discovery is temperamental differences
in emotion and emotion regulation (Derryberry
& Rothbart, 1997). Some children have lower
thresholds for negative or positive affect than do
others (e.g., Davidson, 1992; Derryberry &
Rothbart, 1984; Fox, 1989). Likewise, some
children have better emotion regulatory capacities,
such as self-soothing, than others (Rothbart
& Derryberry, 1981). Under the rubric of social
referencing, researchers have considered how#p#分页标题#e#
adult emotion-expressive behavior alters children's
ongoing behavior (Bandura, 1992; Campos
& Stenberg, 1981), and Block (1971) has
described the importance of parental investment
in ego control. From an early age, nonverbal
guidance is richly supplemented by emotion talk
(Dunn & Brown, 1991; Hooven, Gottman, &
Katz, 1995). One important question is how
others' emotion regulatory suggestions interact
with temperamental factors to shape what
children say to themselves when they are on
their own (Kopp, 1982; Luria, 1961).
The interaction between response tendencies
and regulatory capacities has been explored in
the context of attachment (e.g., Belsky &
Rovine, 1987; Dozier & Kobak, 1992; Thompson,
1990) and social competence (Eisenberg et
al., 1995; Rubin, Coplan, Fox, & Calkins,
1995). Developmental psychologists also have
explored children's developing conceptions of
and capacities for emotion regulation (e.g.,
Meerum Terwogt & Stegge, 1995). This literature
has focused on children's emerging understanding
that they can--and often should--
control their emotions (e.g., Cole, Zahn-Waxler,
& Smith, 1994; Harris, 1989; Kopp, 1989;
Saarni, 1990). Developmental psychologists
have focused primarily on infancy and early
childhood. Recently, life-span theorists also
have begun to study emotion regulatory processes.
For example, Carstensen and colleagues
have found that the salience of emotion
regulatory goals increases with age (Carstensen,
1995) and that emotional control may actually
increase with age (Gross et al., 1997). One
important challenge is to chart the developmental
course of emotion regulation across the life
span.
Social Psychology
Social psychology might seem irrelevant to a
conception of emotion that prioritizes internal
action tendencies. However, response tendencies
are inextricably linked to social context
(Buck, 1984, 1994); classic investigations of
authority (Milgram, 1974) and deindividuation
(Zimbardo, 1969) have revealed just how far
emotional responses can be shaped by social
context. More recently, social psychologists
have explored the social foundations of emotional
processes in studies of independent versus
interdependent cultures (e.g., Markus & Kitayama,
1991; Weisz, Rothbaum, & Blackburn,
1984). By considering social context, researchers
will transcend inner or "push" models of
emotion, and develop more sophisticated models
that emphasize both "push" and "pull"
factors (Ekman, 1972; Kappas, 1996).
Such models are clearly necessary to understand
the emotion regulatory bases of important
social processes such as helping behavior,#p#分页标题#e#
self-handicapping, marital interaction, and dissonance
reduction. For example, Cialdini and
colleagues' negative-state relief model (Cialdini,
Darby, & Vincent, 1973) holds that helping
behavior is motivated by the desire to decrease
one's own sadness (see Batson & Shaw, 1991;
Cialdini & Fulz, 1990). But when does an
individual alter a situation in order to decrease
SPECIAL ISSUE: EMOTION REGULATION 279
another person's negative emotion-expressive
behavior that is upsetting (Hoffman, 1981)
rather than deflecting attention (Shaw, Batson,
& Todd, 1994)? Social handicapping, or actions
taken to excuse failure or magnify credit for
success (Berglas & Jones, 1978), may be framed
as a trade-off between optimally effective action
and anticipatory emotion regulation (Baumeister
& Scher, 1988). In order to feel proud, or to
avoid feeling shame, individuals may introduce
obstacles or withdraw effort, thereby diminishing
the objective probability of success. Emotion
regulatory processes also figure prominently
in marital interaction: Gottman (1993)
suggested that marital interaction styles are
crafted so as to achieve a certain ratio of positive
to negative emotion. The motivating power of
negative-emotion reduction also is relevant to
cognitive dissonance processes, originally described
as efforts undertaken to reconcile two
logically inconsistent cognitions (Festinger,
1957). Although typically framed in cognitive
terms, dissonance reduction can be conceptualized
in terms of individuals' attempts to
diminish negative emotions engendered by
self-relevant discrepancies (see Abselson, 1983;
J. Cooper & Fazio, 1984; Steele, 1988; Swann,
1987; Tesser & Cornell, 1991). Because emotion
regulation is almost always a social affair,
social psychology will play a vital role in
emotion regulation research.
Personality Psychology
Personality psychology is centrally concerned
with agency (Bandura, 1982). An agentic
perspective acknowledges the role of social
factors, such as those described in the previous
section, but emphasizes the active role that
individuals play in shaping their own behavior
and the world around them. Much of the
research inspired by this perspective has focused
on perceptions of environmental control (Rothbaum
et al., 1982; Seligman, 1975); perceived
coping efficacy now is known to affect a wide
range of outcomes, including anxiety and
depression (for a review, see Bandura, 1997).
Recently, analyses of control over external
events have been complemented by analyses of
control over internal psychological processes
such as thoughts and emotions (Bandura, 1997;
Logan & Cowan, 1984; Wegner & Pennebaker,#p#分页标题#e#
1993). The study of emotion regulatory processes
forms a natural part of this inquiry.
But personality psychology is more than the
study of basic personality processes. It also is
concerned with individual differences. Understanding
emotion regulatory processes requires
a working conception of what is being regulated
in a particular person at a particular time.
Research on individual differences in emotion
has focused on emotional expression (e.g.,
Gross & John, 1997, 1998; Kring, Smith, &
Neale, 1994), experience (e.g., Feldman, 1995;
Lane & Schwartz, 1987; Larsen & Ketelaar,
1991), and physiological responding (e.g., Fox,
1989; Goldsmith, 1993; Porges, 1995), as well
as on the interrelations among response systems
(e.g., Cacioppo et al., 1992). Unfortunately, a
consideration of individual differences in emotion
regulation is complicated by the large
number of terms that have been used (John,
1990). These include emotional control (Roger
& Najarian, 1989), negative-mood regulation
(Catanzaro & Mearns, 1990), repression (Weinberger,
1990), and rumination-distraction
(Nolen-Hoeksema, 1993). Related constructs
include monitoring-blunting (Miller, 1987),
sensation seeking (Zuckerman, 1979), constructive
thinking (Epstein & Meier, 1989), optimism
(Scheier & Carver, 1985), impulsivity (Eysenck
& Eysenck, 1969), behavioral inhibition (Kagan,
Reznick, & Snidman, 1988), constraint
(Tellegen, 1985), ambivalence over emotional
expressivity (King & Emmons, 1990), delay of
gratification (Mischel, 1974), alexithymia (G. J.
Taylor et al., 1997), levels of emotional
awareness (Lane, Quinlan, Schwartz, Walker, &
Zeitlin, 1990), coping style (Carver, Scheier, &
Weintraub, 1989), ego control (Block & Block,
1980), and emotional intelligence (Salovey,
Hsee, & Mayer, 1993). Some constructs, such as
rumination, focus on specific regulatory processes.
Other constructs, such as emotional
intelligence, include diverse processes such as
"the verbal and nonverbal appraisal and expression
of emotion, the regulation of emotion in the
self and others, and the utilization of emotional
context in problem solving" (Mayer & Salovey,
1993, p. 433). This wealth of constructs testifies
to the importance of individual differences in
emotion regulation. However, one important
contribution will be to further specify the
emotion regulatory processes that underlie each
of these individual-difference constructs.
280 GROSS
Clinical Psychology
Emotion regulatory processes are central to
mental health; they can either support or disrupt
the capacity to work, relate to others, and enjoy
oneself (Gross & Munoz, 1995). Indeed, emotion#p#分页标题#e#
dysregulation is implicated in over half of
the DSM-1V Axis I disorders and in all of the
Axis II disorders (APA, 1994; Gross & Levenson,
1997; Thoits, 1985). In adults, emotion
dysregulation is associated with clinical problems
including binge eating (e.g., Lingswiler,
Crowther, & Stephens, 1989), alcohol abuse
(e.g., M. L. Cooper, Frone, Russell, & Mudar,
1995; Marlatt, 1985; Sayette, 1993), and of
course anxiety and the mood disorders (e.g.,
Barlow, 1986; Beck, Rush, Shaw, & Emory,
1979). In children, difficulties regulating depression
and anxiety are related to internalizing
disorders, whereas difficulties regulating anger
are related to externalizing disorders (e.g.,
Caspi, Henry, McGee, Moffitt, & Silva, 1995;
Rubin et al., 1995). Within the normal range of
functioning, poor emotion regulation in conjunction
with high levels of negative emotion
predicts lesser social competence and decreased
peer acceptance and liking (Eisenberg & Fabes,
1992b). A shared focus on emotion regulation
unites developmental and clinical psychology in
the study of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder
(Barkley, 1997; Hinshaw, Simmer, & Heller,
1995), Down's syndrome (Thompson, 1991),
and child maltreatment (Cicchetti et al., 1991).
Emotion dysregulation--particularly high levels
of poorly regulated hostility--has effects that
extend beyond the dysregulated individual.
Vulnerable family members, such as those
recently hospitalized for schizophrenia (Kavanagh,
1992) or depression (Coiro & Gottesman,
1996), are at elevated risk for relapse if
their family environment is characterized by
high levels of negative-emotion expression.
Interventions to help individuals, couples, and
families modify ineffective patterns of emotion
regulation are the staple of psychotherapy. Such
interventions target emotion regulatory patterns
ranging from those that influence the situation
(e.g., Lewinsohn, Munoz, Youngren, & Zeiss,
1986) or the way the situation is construed (e.g.,
Dodge, 1991; Ellis, 1962) to those that alter the
emotional response itself (e.g., Deffenbacher,
1994; Novaco, 1975). Many schools of therapy
teach that difficulties with emotion regulation
must be re-experienced in therapy (Cicchetti et
al., 1991; Greenberg & Safran, 1987) where the
therapist can help the patient develop the
capacity to regulate emotions in new ways
(Averill & Nunley, 1992; Folkman & Lazarus,
1988). Establishing what constitutes "appropriate"
emotion regulation is an important challenge
for clinicians who must help patients
examine what their implicit emotion regulatory
goals are, what they would like them to be, and#p#分页标题#e#
how they may best achieve these goals.
Health Psychology
Health psychologists long have maintained
that mismanaging negative emotions can cause
illness (Alexander & French, 1946; Dunbar,
1954; Friedman, 1990). Some evidence now
supports this claim. Chronic hostility and anger
inhibition are associated with hypertension and
coronary heart disease (e.g., Dembroski, Mac-
Dougal, Williams, Haney, & Blumenthal, 1985;
Jorgensen, Johnson, Kolodziej, & Schreer,
1996; Julkunen, Salonen, Kaplan, Chesney, &
Salonen, 1994; T. W. Smith, 1992; but see Suls,
Wan, & Costa, 1995). Emotion inhibition also
may exacerbate minor ailments (Pennebaker,
1990; Pennebaker, Kiecolt-Glaser, & Glaser,
1988) and may even accelerate cancer progression
(Fawzy et al., 1993; Gross, 1989; Spiegel,
Bloom, Kraemer, & Gottheil, 1989). The theme
that unites these findings is that tight control of
negative emotions may adversely affect physical
health.
How might emotional control affect physical
health? One possible mechanism is sustained
physiological responding that exceeds metabolic
demands (Folkow, 1987; Steptoe, 1981;
R. B. Williams, 1986). Relative to natural
emotional expression, suppression leads to
increased sympathetic activation despite a concomitant
decrease in somatic activity (Gross &
Levenson, 1993; 1997). However, there is an
immense difference between acute changes in
sympathetic tone and clinically significant
pathology. This gap needs to be bridged by
studies that link the short- and long-term
consequences of emotion regulation. A second
possible mechanism is immune suppression.
Increased sympathetic nervous system activation
appears to selectively inhibit certain aspects
of the immune response (e.g., Maier, Watkins, &
Fleshner, 1994). In principle, selective downSPECIAL
ISSUE: EMOTION REGULATION 281
regulation of immune parameters might, over
the longer term, lead to greater incidence of
illness. Here, too, however, much more needs to
be done before researchers can draw any firm
conclusions. Given the myriad forms of emotion
regulation, the important role of incompletely
defined individual differences in emotion generation
and regulation, and the multiple pathways
to good or poor health, documenting the
long-term health consequences of various forms
of emotion regulation is a task as daunting as it
is important.
Emotion Regulatory Processes
Emotions encode situation-response dependencies
that have proven valuable over the
sweep of millennia (Tooby & Cosmides, 1990).
As the preceding review amply demonstrates,
however, emotional response tendencies aren't
always appropriate to the situations we now#p#分页标题#e#
face. Contemporary physical and social environments
differ dramatically from those that shaped
our emotions. Responses that served our ancestors
well often are suited poorly to modem
exigencies. For example, technological advances
have magnified the consequences that
our emotional responses have for ourselves and
others: an angry impulse that once would have
bruised now kills, thanks to the ready availability
of handguns. These considerations suggest
the importance of emotion regulation. But how
should we conceptualize the potentially overwhelming
number of processes involved in
regulating emotional response tendencies?
One approach is to spell out exactly what
people do when they try to regulate a particular
emotion or mood. For example, Rippere (1977)
asked participants what they thought a person
should do if that person felt depressed. Thayer
and colleagues (Thayer, Newman, & McClain,
1994) asked participants in more general terms
what they do to change their moods. In a similar
vein, Parkinson and colleagues (Parkinson et al.,
1996) identified over 200 mood regulatory
strategies using both interview and questionnaire
methods. The descriptive approach used
by these researchers elicits reports of behaviors
ranging from exercise to drinking to seeking
social support. It has the advantage of staying
close to the phenomenon of interest. However,
when the focus is broad--on affective processes
including mood and emotion--there is an
infinite number of behavioral acts that might
qualify as affect regulatory. Although description
of behavior is an important first step, it
eventually may prove to be too low a level of
analysis.
A second approach is to categorize emotion
regulatory efforts on the basis of the emotion
component targeted for regulation, such as
experience, expression, or physiology (e.g.,
Walden & Smith, 1997). This approach has the
advantage of parsimony. However, it has the
disadvantage of lumping diverse ways of
achieving change in each domain. For example,
inhibiting emotion-expressive behavior may be
accomplished by changing the way one thinks
about a situation or by relaxing one's facial
muscles (Gross, 1998). Grouping these processes
together obscures important differences
in causes, consequences, and underlying mechanisms
of action. This approach also has the
liability that individuals often try to change
multiple aspects of the emotion at once rather
than just one aspect as, for example, when they
want to make the emotion go away altogether.
Although specification of the target system is
important, it too may not be quite the right level
of analysis.
A third approach is to undertake a conceptual#p#分页标题#e#
analysis of the processes underlying diverse
emotion regulatory acts (see Frijda, 1986, for a
more detailed discussion along these lines). In
the response-tendency conception of emotion
depicted in Figure 1, emotional response tendencies
are generated once stimuli have been evaluated
as important. Then, once emotional response
tendencies have been generated, they may be
modulated in various ways. Within this framework,
emotion regulatory acts may be seen as
having their primary impact at different points in
the emotion generative process. Of course, what
individuals do to regulate their emotions--such
as going out to a bar with friends in order to get
their mind off an upsetting fight with a
coworker--often involves multiple regulatory
processes. However, a process-oriented approach
may bring us closer to understanding the
causes, consequences, and underlying mechanisms
than the other two approaches.
I distinguish five sets of emotion regulatory
processes: situation selection, situation modification,
attention deployment, cognitive change,
and response modulation. This is an elaboration
of the two-way distinction I have offered previ282
GROSS
ously between antecedent-focused emotion regulation,
which occurs before the emotion is
generated, and response-focused emotion regulation,
which occurs after the emotion is
generated (Gross, 1998; Gross & Munoz, 1995).
To orient the reader, I briefly describe these five
forms of emotion regulation before going into
more detail below.
The first is situation selection, shown in
Figure 4 by the solid line toward Situation 2 ($2)
rather than Situation 1 (S1). Once selected, a
situation may be tailored so as to modify its
emotional impact. This constitutes situation
modification?Importantly, situations differ in
terms of how much they may be modified,
ranging from a hypothetical limiting case of a
situation with no room for change (denoted by
Slx) to a situation with modest potential for
change (S2x, S2y, S2z). Situations also vary in
complexity, ranging from a hypothetical limiting
case of a situation with one aspect (al) to a
situation with multiple aspects (al, a2, a3, a4,
a5). Attentional deployment may be used to
select which aspect of a situation a person
focuses on. Even after a situation has been
selected, modified, and selectively attended to, it
still is possible to alter its emotional impact.
Cognitive change refers to selecting which of
the many possible meanings (ml, m2, m3) will
be attached to a situation. It is this meaning (m2)
that gives rise to emotional response tendencies,
including behavioral, experiential, and physiological
tendencies. Response modulation refers#p#分页标题#e#
to influencing these response tendencies once
they have been elicited, illustrated in Figure 4 by
decreased behavioral response tendencies (Brather
than B).
The process model of emotion regulation
shown in Figure 4 has clear limitations. First,
situations, aspects, and meanings are terms that
have proven notoriously resistant to definition.
What is offered is a set of working distinctions
among regulatory processes that I have found
useful in navigating the tangled literatures
relevant to emotion regulation. Second, response
tendencies may be modulated in more
subtle ways than increasing and decreasing
them; Figure 4 illustrates rather than exhausts
the possibilities. Third, there may be important
asymmetries in control across response domains.
For example, it may be easier to directly
modulate emotion-expressive behavior than
emotion experience. Fourth, this scheme calls to
mind external situations. However, I mean to
include internal "situations" also, in which case
attentional deployment may be used to select
Situations Aspects Meanings Responses
.R SI . . . . . . . . . ?Six . . . . . . . . . ?al . . . . . . . . . ?ml
.) al
. . ?"* S2x . . -"" ". . - ") a2
$2 "~. ) S2y''"') a3 . . . . . ) ml
.... ?S2z ?' - . ' : 7 " ~ a4 ,"" ) m2
"l a5 . . . . ?m3
* Behavioral
Emotional
Response * Experiential
Tendencies
* Physiological
~ B+
B
B-
.--~ E+
"==~E
E-
...~, p+
. . . ?
"-~p.
Situation Situation Attentional Cognitive
Selection Modification Deployment Change
Response
Modulation
Antecedent-Focused
Emotion Regulation
I I I
Response-Focused
Emotion Regulation
Figure 4. A process model of emotion regulation. (See text above for explanation of
abbreviations.)
SPECIAL ISSUE: EMOTION REGULATION 283
and modify imagined situations. Fifth, emotional
responses often modify situations, particulaxly
interpersonal situations. Emotions also
may give rise to attentional and cognitive
changes. Emotional responses thus may be seen
as the starting point for the next iteration of the
S-O--R sequence depicted in Figure 4. Feedback
pathways certainly could be introduced. Sixth,
emotion regulation can occur in parallel at
multiple points in the emotion generative
process, and regulatory processes are likely to
be adjusted dynamically. Seventh, reflecting
current limitations in our knowledge, this
scheme is silent regarding important topics such
as (a) the mechanisms subserving different
emotion regulatory processes, (b) the relations
among emotion regulatory processes, (c) the#p#分页标题#e#
relative efficacy of different forms of emotion
regulation, and (d) the interdependencies among
behavioral, experiential, and physiological response
tendencies. With these provisos on the
table, I turn to a discussion of the five forms of
emotion regulation shown in Figure 4.
Situation Selection
Situation selection refers to approaching or
avoiding certain people, places, or objects in
order to regulate emotions. Examples include
taking a different route to the store to avoid a
neighbor who tells offensive jokes or seeking
out a friend with whom one can have a good cry
(see Aspinwall & Taylor, 1997). To understand
situation selection, one must appreciate the
features of situations that typically make people
emotional (Scherer, Wallbott, & Summerfield,
1986). One also must appreciate individuals'
preferences regarding entertainment (Zillmann,
1988), self-gift-giving (Luomala & Laaksonen,
1997), and various aggregations of good and bad
news (Linville & Fischer, 1991). Situation
selection assumes knowledge of likely features
of remote situations and of expectable emotional
responses to these features. However, situations
are complex, and often have multiple layers of
emotional meaning. Self-knowledge is required
to make sound decisions about which situations
to seek out and which to avoid, particularly
when short-term benefits of emotion regulation
are pitted against longer term costs. A shy
person's efforts to decrease anxiety by avoiding
social situations may provide short-term relief at
the cost of longer term social isolation (Leary,
1986). Likewise, a sensation seeker's thrill
seeking may lead to injury (Zuckerman, 1979).
Because of the complexity of these tradeoffs,
effective situation selection may require the help
of caring others, ranging from parents to
partners to therapists. Indeed, one potent class of
cognitive-behavioral interventions involves
coaching regarding the situations to seek out or
avoid, such as when a therapist helps a
depressed patient plan pleasant activities (Lewinsohn
et al., 1986). Another important class of
cognitive-behavioral interventions involves helping
with stimulus control, which refers to the
regulation of behavior by anticipatory stimulus
selection (Kanfer & Gaelick, 1986), such as
when an individual avoids food cues in order not
to eat unwanted items (Schachter, 1968).
Situation Modification
A potentially emotion-eliciting situation--
whether a flat tire on the way to an important
appointment or loud music next door at 3:00
a.m.--does not ineluctably call forth emotion.
One may convert a meeting into a phone
conference, or convince a neighbor to tone down
a raucous party. Active efforts to directly modify#p#分页标题#e#
the situation so as to alter its emotional impact
constitute an important form of emotion regulation.
Such efforts have been referred to in the
stress and coping literature as problem-focused
coping (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984) and by
Rothbaum et al. (1982) as primary control.
Boundaries with situation selection are not
always clear, as robust efforts to modify a
situation may effectively call a new situation
into being. Another interesting boundary issue is
distinguishing the direct consequences of emotion
expression from those of emotion regulation.
Emotional expressions have important
social consequences and can dramatically alter
ongoing interactions (Keltner & Kring, 1998). If
one's partner suddenly looks sad, this can shift
the trajectory of an angry interaction as one
pauses to express concern or even backpeddle.
Thus emotion expressions are a potent means of
changing ongoing social interaction, and emotion
regulatory efforts that target situation
modification must be distinguished from the
direct consequences of unregulated emotion
expression (see Gross, in press).
284 GROSS
Attentional Deployment
Attentional deployment is one of the first
emotion regulatory processes to appear (Rothbart,
Ziaie, & O'Boyle, 1992). Strategies for changing
attentional focus may be grouped loosely under the
headings of distraction, concentration, and rumination.
Distraction focuses attention on nonemotional
aspects of the situation (Nix, Watson, Pyszczynski,
& Greenberg, 1995) or moves attention away from
the immediate situation altogether (Derryberry &
Rothbart, 1988), such as when an infant shifts its
gaze from the emotion-eliciting stimulus to decrease
stimulation (Stem, 1977; Stifter & Moyer,
1991). Dislraction also may involve changing
internal focus, such as when individuals disengage
from elusive goals by shifting attention to more
tractable ones (Mclntosh, 1996). Undesirable associative
Wains may be disrupted by saying "stop!"
(Meichenbaum, 1985) or by invoking thoughts
(Fraley & Shaver, 1997) or memories (Josephson,
Singer, & Salovey, 1996) that are inconsistent
with the undesirable emotional state. For
example, repressive coping may involve quickly
deflecting attention away from potentially threatening
stimuli (Boden & Baumeister, 1997; Krohne,
1996). In such cases, attentional deployment
may effectively be used to select new (internal)
situations, illustrating the permeable boundaries
among emotion regulation strategies. Concentration-
whether on work, gardening, rock climbing,
or art has the capacity to absorb cognitive
resources (Erber & Tesser, 1992); a well-chosen
task can create a self-sustaining transcendent#p#分页标题#e#
state that Csikszentmihalyi (1975) calls flow.
Concentration also may be used to draw attention to
emotion Iriggers. This is the heart of method acting,
in which an actor calls to mind an emotional
incident in order to portray that emotion convincingly
(Stanislavski, 1965). Wegner and Bargh
(1998) have termed this controlled starting of
emotion. Like the distraction examples above, this
use of concentration might be considered an internal
version of situation selection. Rumination also
involves directed attention, but here attention is
directed to feelings and their consequences. Ruminating
on the negative emotions characteristic of
depression leads to longer and more severe
depressive symptoms (Just & Alloy, 1997; Nolen-
Hoeksema, 1993). Similarly, Borkovec and colleagues
(Borkovec, Roemer, & Kinyon, 1995) have
shown that worrying---or focusing attention on
possible future threats--leads to long-lasting anxiety.
4 One intriguing issue is how best to represent
the complex tradeoffs between short-term and
long-term costs and benefits of various attentional
forms of emotion regulation.
Cognitive Change
Even after emotion-eliciting features of the
situation have been attended to, an emotional
response is by no means a foregone conclusion.
Emotion requires that percepts be embued with
meaning and that individuals evaluate their
capacity to manage the situation. Cognitively
oriented emotion researchers have described the
cognitive steps needed to transform a percept
into something that elicits emotion (e.g., Scherer,
1988; C. A. Smith & Ellsworth, 1985). Personality
psychologists have described the evaluations
individuals make regarding their capacity to
manage the perceived situation (e.g., Bandura,
1997; Folkman & Lazarus, 1988). Cognitive
change consists of modifying these cognitive
steps or evaluations (Frijda, 1986). Classical
psychological defenses such as denial, is