Our emotional experiences weave the tale of our lives – we remember moments when we felt joy, gratitude, anger, sadness and fear, not that time when we felt oh-so-neutral. However, there are times when we try to hold back our emotions so that they don’t get the best of us, such as when we face an angry boss, an upset friend, an important doctor’s appointment, or a big exam. Research on
emotion regulation, suggests that people engage in different regulation strategies when they try to deal with their emotions, and these different strategies impact their feelings, well-being and even their close relationships.
How do we regulate our emotions? James Gross suggests that different types of regulation occur at different points in the emotional experience and his research focuses on two main types of emotion regulation: reappraisal and suppression.
For example, take Jerry who is being yelled at by his boss. As Jerry sits and listens to his boss yell at him, he may start to feel anger well up inside of him. When he first realizes he is experiencing anger, he can change his emotional experience by
reappraising how he views the situation. Perhaps instead of thinking about how his boss is mad at him, Jerry can focus on the interaction with his boss as an opportunity to better learn what his boss expects from him. By reappraising
the situation, it no longer makes sense for him to feel anger. If, however, Jerry lets his anger get the best of him, he may find himself seething mad at his boss but unable to express himself since yelling at his boss would be very inappropriate. In this situation, Jerry must
suppress any expression of anger towards his boss, despite how mad he is inside. James Gross and Oliver John (
2003) found that people who tend to reappraise have better outcomes than people who tend to reappraise less. They have also found that people who tend to suppress their emotions more have worse outcomes than people who tend to suppress their emotions less.
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