Introduction
Emotion regulation (ER) refers to the processes by which individuals influence their emotions, including how they experience and express them. This field has garnered significant attention across various subdisciplines of psychology, leading to diverse theoretical frameworks and empirical findings.
Key Insights
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Process Model of Emotion Regulation:
- The process model of ER identifies five families of strategies based on when they impact the emotion generation process: situation selection, situation modification, attentional deployment, cognitive change, and response modulation .
- Cognitive reappraisal, a form of antecedent-focused regulation, is generally effective and adaptive, involving changing how one thinks about a situation to influence emotional response .
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Neural Mechanisms:
- Emotion regulation involves interactions between prefrontal and cingulate control systems and cortical and subcortical emotion-generative systems .
- Neuroimaging studies highlight the role of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and the inhibition of the amygdala in regulating emotions .
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Behavioral and Biological Integration:
- Emotion regulation is increasingly viewed as a network of multilevel processes involving feedback and interaction between higher and lower systems, integrating behavioral and biological constituents.
- This systems view suggests that ER is a component of emotional activation and can sometimes lead to maladaptive outcomes, especially in adverse environments.
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Contextual Factors:
- Context plays a crucial role in emotion regulation, particularly in psychopathology, where rigid responses to the environment are common.
- There is a need for systematic evaluation of contextual factors shaping ER to develop a nuanced understanding of its relationship with context.
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Cognitive Control and Emotion Regulation:
- Cognitive control, which involves goal setting, control implementation, and monitoring, can be viewed as a form of emotion regulation aimed at reducing unpleasant experiences during goal-directed behavior.
- Controlled processes can regulate automatic emotional impulses, highlighting the interplay between cognitive control and ER.
Conclusion
Emotion regulation is a multifaceted process involving various strategies and mechanisms. The process model of ER provides a comprehensive framework for understanding these strategies, while neuroimaging studies elucidate the neural bases of ER. Integrating behavioral and biological perspectives, recognizing the importance of context, and considering the role of cognitive control are essential for advancing our understanding of emotion regulation.