Over the past 20 years, research on meta-emotion and related concepts such as metamood and need for affect has become fruitful and prominent across a variety of disciplines, including media psychology in particular. This paper reviews the literature on meta-emotion and considers problems regarding the definition and operationalization of this construct. We propose a process model of meta-emotion and emotion regulation to integrate and extend existing work. Drawing on appraisal theories of emotion, we understand meta-emotion as a process that monitors and appraises emotions, recruits affective responses toward them, which results in a motivation to maintain and approach emotions, or to control and avoid them. This meta-emotion process plays an important role in media users' selection or rejection of specific media offerings and their invitation to experience emotion. We discuss how this framework may integrate previously unrelated findings on the role of emotions in guiding selective media use and conclude with directions for further research. Roosevelt's famous words on the fear of fear point to humans' ability to have emotions about emotions much like they can have thoughts about thoughts. Drawing on an analogy with meta-cognition, authors like Gaschke (1988), Oliver (1993) and Gottman, Katz, and Hooven (1997) have coined the term meta-emotion to refer to this phenomenon. Since then, researchers actively have examined meta-emotion and related areas (meta-mood, need for affect, and fear of emotions) across a variety of disciplines, including media psychology, personality research, child development, clinical psychology, attitude research, consumer research, and others.The common thread behind meta-emotion and related concepts is that people experience, evaluate, and deal with emotion in substantially different ways (Gottman et al., 1997;Maio & Esses, 2001;Mayer & Gaschke, 1988;Oliver, 1993). "Some like it hot" (Appel, in press, p. 1) whereas others could well do without the highs and lows of emotion.Some people feel easily "flooded" (Gottman, 1994, p. 21) or overwhelmed by emotions, whereas others are more confident in their ability to regulate emotions and to express them in socially appropriate ways. Besides these inter-individual differences, a given individual's willingness and ability to derive gratification from the experience of emotion may differ depending on the situation. Feeling sad while watching the final scene of Casablanca (USA, 1942) is a rewarding experience to many people, whereas feeling sad about losing love in one's own life is usually not.Such differences in the experience and expression of emotion have led a number of authors to conclude that sadness is not equal to sadness, anger is not equal to anger, and so on. Rather, emotions are accompanied by meta-level mental processes that color the Appraisal of emotions in media use 4 experience of emotions and influence how people express and regulate them. Meta-processes seem able even to modify what is often considered to be the m...

The desire to experience emotions is widely considered to be a key motivation for media use, especially for the use of media entertainment. But what exactly do people seek when they seek emotions? What kinds of gratifications do they obtain from the experience of emotions during media use? An overview of research on emotional gratifications shows that emotions can be gratifying in multiple ways Ϫ ranging from simple hedonistic gratifications to more complex gratifications such as feeling competent or morally good. An integrative framework is outlined that aims at a more systematic understanding of emotional gratifications and their influence on selective media use. We suggest that different aspects of an emotion's gratification potential are appraised simultaneously, and integrated into a holistic appraisal outcome that can be conceptualized as 'meta-emotion'. Meta-emotions guide the recipient's intuitive decision to accept, or reject a media offer's invitation to experience emotions.

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