Healthy and Unhealthy Emotion Regulation: Personality Processes, Individual Differences, and Life Span Development

Abstract

Individuals regulate their emotions in a wide variety of ways. Are some forms of emotion regulation healthier than others? We focus on two commonly used emotion regulation strategies: reappraisal (changing the way one thinks about a potentially emotion-eliciting event) and suppression (changing the way one responds behaviorally to an emotion-eliciting event). In the first section, we review experimental findings showing that reappraisal has a healthier profile of short-term affective, cognitive, and social consequences than suppression. In the second section, we review individual-difference findings, which show that using reappraisal to regulate emotions is associated with healthier patterns of affect, social functioning, and well-being than is using suppression. In the third section, we consider issues in the development of reappraisal and suppression and provide new evidence for a normative shift toward an increasingly healthy emotion regulation profile during adulthood (i.e., increases in the use of reappraisal and decreases in the use of suppression).

Emotion regulation and binge eating in children

“…57 No effect of age on the use of adaptive and maladaptive strategies was found, suggesting that children at this age seem to be at the same developmental stage in regard to emotion regulation. As emotion regulation varies over the course from childhood to adulthood 58,59 our results are valid for this age group. In general, as individuals mature they might learn to make greater use of healthy emotion regulation strategies and fewer use of unhealthy emotion regulation strategies.…”

Emotional Regulation Questionnaire (ERQ): indicadores psicométricos e relações com medidas afetivas em amostra idosa

“…A estratégia de reavaliação tem sido associada com eficácia na diminuição de desgosto (Gross, 1998a), maior experiência e expressão de emoções positivas, satisfação com a vida e menos sintomas depressivos (Gross & John, 2003;John & Gross, 2004) e a estratégia de supressão, por sua vez, relaciona-se com aumento da atividade simpática (Gross, 1998a), comprometimento da memória para informações sociais (Richards & Gross, 2000) e mais fortemente com medidas de psicopatologia como ansiedade e depressão (Gross & John, 2003) e senso de inautenticidade (Sheldon, Ryan, Rawsthorne, & Ilardi, 1997). John e Gross (2004) compararam três grupos etários e também demostraram que idosos utilizaram menos a estratégia de supressão e revelaram maiores índices de bem-estar.…”

Cognitive Reappraisal and Expressive Suppression Emotion Regulation Strategies in Cigarette Smokers

“…It also reduces the experience of negative emotions, but at greater costs, by limiting cognitive resources to systematically evaluate decisions (e.g., to smoke or not). Frequent suppression is associated with memory decrements (Richards & Gross, 2000) and poor psychological and physical health John & Gross, 2004) and thus is considered a poor regulatory style. The two strategies appear to be independent in that habitual use of reappraisal is unrelated to suppression utilization (Gross & John).…”