Emotion and emotion regulation (regulation) ✓

Question 1

Emotion regulation refers the the implementations of a set of actions (conscious or unconscious), in which the aim is to start, stop ormodulate the trajectory of an emotion.

Why is emotional regulation so important?

Answer 1

Emotional regulation is very important in your everyday life, if it is defect it can cause being overly reactive or having overly intense emotional experiences is an important cause of distress and impairments.

Question 2

Emotion regulation is a very complex process, just like emotions are. What to main theories/modells explain emotion regulation?

Answer 2

1. Campos
Emotion manifestation and regulation are seens as a unitary model

2. Garnefski
Emotion manifestation and regulation are two seperate phenomenons

He claims there are nine different emotional regulation strategies, som healthy others not:
Maladative

1. Self-blame
2. Other-blame
3. Rumination
4. Catastrophizing

Adaptive (enhance emotional adjustment)

1. Putting into perspective
2. Positive refocusing
3. Positive reappraisal
4. Acceptance
5. Planning

3. Emotion regulation is a process aimed att maximising positiv emotion and minimizing negativ emotion
This definition of emotion regulation does not cover the entire spectrum of the emotionregulation process as sometimes people will decrease experiencing positive emotions so they can stay focused, or increase negative emotionall experience to become more assertive.

4. Gross
Emotion regulation is a process by which individuals influence what emotion they have, when they have them and how to experience and express them.

Emotion regulation in Gross theory can be aimed at reducing, strengthening or maintaining the experience of either positive or negative emotions. This will depend on the current needs or goals of the individual

Question 3

In Gross modell of emotion regulation he presents 5 families related to the dynamic of the emotional process in which regulation occurs. Which are these?

Answer 3

Situation selection: you can influence exposure to the situation that can generate, disable or indisable emotion.

Situation modification: you can alter a situation in order to modify its emotional impact

Attentional deployment: you control the location of attention to modify and emotional response.

Cognitive change: you change the evalutation of a situation to influence the emotional impact.

Response modulation: you engage in a behavior in order to influence some aspect general emotion.

The first 4 families of strategies are classified as antecent-focused emotional regulation = this strategy occures before emotional respons

The last (response modulation) is classified as response-focused emotional regulation as this happens after the emotion has occured.

Question 4

In conclusion there can be two types of emotional regulation: explicit and implicit. What do these mean?

Answer 4

Explicit (cognitive) emotional regulation: processes that require a conscious effort for initiation. This demands some level of monitoring during implimentation and are asociated with some level of insight and awareness.

Implicit (automatic) emotional regulation: processes that are evoked automatically by the stimulus itself. Doesn’t require monitoring and can happen without insight and awarness from stimulated person.

We have a learning phase, an example of implicit emotio regulation is exctintion (which requires learning that a stimulus that was first introducing a negative emotion is actually not dangerous and therefore you can alter how the implicit response emotional regulation of a stimuli produces a respons, eg from negative to positivt or vice versa).

Explicit emotional regulation requires so much energy, that the majority of emotions are regulated with an implicit manner.