Values reflect how people want to experience the world; emotions reflect how people actually experience the world. Therefore, we propose that across cultures people desire emotions that are consistent with their values. Whereas prior research focused on the desirability of specific affective states or 1 or 2 target emotions, we offer a broader account of desired emotions. After reporting initial evidence for the potential causal effects of values on desired emotions in a preliminary study (N = 200), we tested the predictions of our proposed model in 8 samples (N = 2,328) from distinct world cultural regions. Across cultural samples, we found that people who endorsed values of self-transcendence (e.g., benevolence) wanted to feel more empathy and compassion, people who endorsed values of self-enhancement (e.g., power) wanted to feel more anger and pride, people who endorsed values of openness to change (e.g., self-direction) wanted to feel more interest and excitement, and people who endorsed values of conservation (e.g., tradition) wanted to feel more calmness and less fear. These patterns were independent of differences in emotional experience. We discuss the implications of our value-based account of desired emotions for understanding emotion regulation, culture, and other individual differences. (PsycINFO Database Record

Because emotion regulation is a motivated process, one must adopt a motivational perspective to understand it. We build on the distinction between goal setting (i.e., selecting end-states to achieve) and goal striving (i.e., engaging in behaviors to achieve desired end-states). First, we discuss how these concepts apply to regulation in the emotion domain. Second, we review existing research on setting emotion goals and striving for them. Third, we highlight how goal setting and goal striving can operate in tandem to shape emotion regulation. Finally, we highlight the importance of considering emotion regulation as a motivated process, and how doing so informs key topics explored in this special issue, including those pertaining to determinants (e.g., culture as setting emotion goals), consequences (e.g., monitoring emotion goal progress and mental health), and interventions (e.g., manipulating features of emotion goal setting and striving to promote adaptive emotion regulation).

Although religiosity is often accompanied by more intense emotions, we propose that people who are more religious may be better at using 1 of the most effective emotion regulation strategies-namely, cognitive reappraisal. We argue that religion, which is a meaning-making system, is linked to better cognitive reappraisal, which involves changing the meaning of emotional stimuli. Four studies (N = 2,078) supported our hypotheses. In Study 1, religiosity was associated with more frequent use of cognitive reappraisal in 3 distinct religions (i.e., Islam, Christianity, Judaism). In Studies 2A-2B, we replicated these findings using 2 indices of cognitive reappraisal and in a large representative sample. In Studies 3-4, individuals more (vs. less) religious were more effective in using cognitive reappraisal in the laboratory. We discuss how these findings inform our understanding of the psychology of religion and of emotion regulation.

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The gender-equality paradox refers to the puzzling finding that societies with more gender equality demonstrate larger gender differences across a range of phenomena, most notably in the proportion of women who pursue degrees in science, technology, engineering, and math. The present investigation demonstrates across two different measures of gender equality that this paradox extends to chess participation ( N = 803,485 across 160 countries; age range: 3–100 years), specifically that women participate more often in countries with less gender equality. Previous explanations for the paradox fail to account for this finding. Instead, consistent with the notion that gender equality reflects a generational shift, mediation analyses suggest that the gender-equality paradox in chess is driven by the greater participation of younger players in countries with less gender equality. A curvilinear effect of gender equality on the participation of female players was also found, demonstrating that gender differences in chess participation are largest at the highest and lowest ends of the gender-equality spectrum.