Makes explicit a reconceptualization of the nature of emotion that over the past decade has fostered the study of emotion regulation. In the past, emotions were considered to be feeling states indexed by behavioral expressions; now, emotions are considered to be processes of establishing, maintaining, or disrupting the relation between the organism and the environment on matters of significance to the person. When emotions were conceptualized in the traditional way as feelings, emotion regulation centered on ego-defense mechanisms and display rules. The former was difficult to test; the latter was narrow in scope. By contrast, the notion of emotions as relational processes has shifted interest to the study of person/environment transactions in the elicitations of emotion and to the functions of action tendencies, emotional "expressions" language, and behavioral coping mechanisms. The article also treats the importance of affect in the continuity of self-development by documenting the impressive stability of at least two emotional dispositions: irritability and inhibition.As Dodge (1989) noted in his comments opening this special section on emotion regulation, it has proved very difficult to define the inclusion and exclusion criteria that characterize human emotions. As a result, consensus about the definition of emotion eludes us. Nevertheless, working assumptions about the characteristics of emotion do determine the questions that researchers ask. Such assumptions illuminate certain phenomena and leave others in the dark; moreover, changes in such assumptions permit novel approaches to important yet neglected issues.In this article, we will argue that major changes are taking place in the conceptualization of emotion and will point out that some of the implications of these changes are not yet widely recognized. These changes focus on new ways of considering how emotions are elicited, what the functions of emotion are in the adaptation of humans to their social and nonsocial world, and how emotions lay the basis for important enduring personality dispositions (Malatesta, in press). Because Dodge has provided an excellent and succinct summary of the five articles that constitute this special section in his opening article, and because he has documented the interrelations among the five articles very clearly, the objective of this commentary will be to describe what we think is the Zeitgeist of which these articles are a part and to which they add impetus. We will also highlight important emergent issues in the area of emotional regulation that were either underemphasized in the articles or left out altogether. Our purpose, therefore, is to complement the other articles in this special section, rather than to review them.Emotion: From Structure to Function We mentioned above that even in the absence of consensus, working definitions determine the nature of the questions asked Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Joseph J. Campos,
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