One of the fastest growing areas within psychology is the field of emotion regulation. However, enthusiasm for this topic continues to outstrip conceptual clarity, and there remains considerable uncertainty as to what is even meant by “emotion regulation.” The goal of this review is to examine the current status and future prospects of this rapidly growing field. In the first section, I define emotion and emotion regulation and distinguish both from related constructs. In the second section, I use the process model of emotion regulation to selectively review evidence that different regulation strategies have different consequences. In the third section, I introduce the extended process model of emotion regulation; this model considers emotion regulation to be one type of valuation, and distinguishes three emotion regulation stages (identification, selection, implementation). In the final section, I consider five key growth points for the field of emotion regulation.

Emotion Regulation: Current Status and Future Prospects

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Human Nature and the Social Order.

Emotion regulation has been conceptualized as a process by which individuals modify their emotional experiences, expressions, and physiology and the situations eliciting such emotions in order to produce appropriate responses to the ever-changing demands posed by the environment. Thus, context plays a central role in emotion regulation. This is particularly relevant to the work on emotion regulation in psychopathology, because psychological disorders are characterized by rigid responses to the environment. However, this recognition of the importance of context has appeared primarily in the theoretical realm, with the empirical work lagging behind. In this review, the author proposes an approach to systematically evaluate the contextual factors shaping emotion regulation. Such an approach consists of specifying the components that characterize emotion regulation and then systematically evaluating deviations within each of these components and their underlying dimensions. Initial guidelines for how to combi...

The Future of Emotion Regulation Research: Capturing Context.

The field of emotion regulation has now come of age. However, enthusiasm for the topic continues to outstrip conceptual clarity. In this article, I review the state of the field. I do this by asking--and attempting to succinctly answer--10 fundamental questions concerning emotion regulation, ranging from what emotion regulation is, to why it matters, to how we can change it. I conclude by considering some of the challenges that confront this rapidly growing field.

Emotion regulation: Taking stock and moving forward.

The CuPS (Culture × Person × Situation) approach attempts to jointly consider culture and individual differences, without treating either as noise and without reducing one to the other. Culture is important because it helps define psychological situations and create meaningful clusters of behavior according to particular logics. Individual differences are important because individuals vary in the extent to which they endorse or reject a culture's ideals. Further, because different cultures are organized by different logics, individual differences mean something different in each. Central to these studies are concepts of honor-related violence and individual worth as being inalienable versus socially conferred. We illustrate our argument with 2 experiments involving participants from honor, face, and dignity cultures. The studies showed that the same "type" of person who was most helpful, honest, and likely to behave with integrity in one culture was the "type" of person least likely to do so in another culture. We discuss how CuPS can provide a rudimentary but integrated approach to understanding both within- and between-culture variation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved). Language: en

https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2282&context=soss_research

Within- and between-culture variation: Individual differences and the cultural logics of honor, face, and dignity cultures.

When the relative contribution of the self and the group to a group success is unclear, Americans tend to exhibit a self-serving bias (rewarding the self more than what the self deserves), whereas the Chinese tend to exhibit an other-serving bias (rewarding the group more than the group deserves). In a study comparing the reward allocation biases of Americans and Chinese in different group outcome conditions, the authors showed that the abovementioned cultural difference is found (a) only for culturally congruent success experience (attaining approach goals for Americans and avoidance goals for Chinese) and (b) among individuals who are motivated by the need for cognitive closure to exhibit culturally typical responses. This finding has important implications for understanding the dynamic nature of cultural influences on social behaviors.

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Cultural construction of success and epistemic motives moderate American-Chinese differences in reward allocation biases

According to Allport (1937), “an impartial and objective attitude toward oneself is held to be a primary virtue, basic to the development of all others... if any trait of personality is intrinsically desirable, it is the disposition and ability to see oneself in perspective” (p. 422). Similarly, Jahoda (1953) claimed that a hallmark of healthy individuals is considering “matters one wishes were different, without distorting them to fit these wishes” (p. 349). In line with the viewpoints of these and other forerunners in psychology, this chapter presents a case for positive psychological interventions that promote positive yet realistic self-perceptions. Our recommendation arises from research showing that unrealistically positive self-perceptions – deemed self-enhancement – can actually hinder a person from succeeding and functioning optimally, whereas accurate self-perceptions yield a host of beneficial outcomes. In particular, we have conducted experiments directly comparing self-enhancement to accurate self-perceptions and consistently found that the former is detrimental, whereas the latter promotes academic excellence, motivation to improve and achieve, and psychological well-being. Likewise, robust research from within positive psychology supports this claim, which we will review in this chapter. Taking into account this body of evidence, interventions may be most effective in helping people to flourish if they encourage positive but realistic selfperceptions and if they provide effective methods to advance from a current, realistic self to a future, idealistic self. Indeed, in order to improve, be more successful, and lead fulfilling, meaningful lives, individuals need to have an accurate sense of themselves, their current abilities, and their current shortcomings, and to take action accordingly. Furthermore, emphasizing realistic self-perceptions within positive psychological interventions separates positive psychology from other trends that promote artificial positive thinking. These trends, such as the self-esteem movement, the

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Positive Psychological Interventions and Self‐Perceptions: A Cautionary Tale

Despite a general consensus on the negative consequences of emotion suppression in Western cultures, cross-cultural explorations to date have yielded many inconsistencies on whether such phenomena can be generalized to Eastern cultures. A set of two studies were conducted to examine the role of emotional valence in resolving such inconsistencies on both relationship satisfaction and subjective well-being. In accordance with our hypotheses, our results consistently revealed that the habitual suppression of emotions was associated with lower relationship satisfaction and subjective well-being, regardless of valence, for American participants. However, the effects of emotion suppression significantly varied by valence for Korean participants, such that suppressing negative emotions was less detrimental than suppressing positive emotions. Overall, the present study highlights the importance of considering the nature of different emotions and cultural contexts when examining the adaptiveness of emotion regulation strategies on individuals’ interpersonal and intrapersonal well-being.

Emotion suppression on relationship and life satisfaction: Taking culture and emotional valence into account

https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/bitstream/handle/2142/18556/Kim_Young.pdf?sequence=1

Know thyself: Misperceptions of actual performance undermine subjective well-being, future performance and achievement motivation

The subjective well-being (SWB) of an individual refers to her or his own sense of wellness and consists of a variety of cognitive and emotional components. Cognitive SWB includes life satisfaction, which taps into individuals' own evaluation of their lives. Emotional SWB is commonly assessed by the frequency of pleasant emotions and infrequency of negative emotions. Although survey studies of SWB have been conducted since the mid-20th century (see Diener, 1984), extensive research on SWB — cross-cultural research in particular — did not begin to accumulate until the 1990s. In particular, overall levels of SWB as well as its correlates and possible psychological causes have been of great interest to recent cross-cultural researchers. In this chapter, we highlight cross-cultural differences in SWB and provide a theoretical foundation for understanding the psychological processes related to those differences. We restrict our comparisons to those between European American and East Asian (Chinese, Korean, and Japanese) samples in part because research on these groups is extensive. In both groups, SWB may be influenced by common psychological factors (e.g., goal attainment, self-esteem). The nature of these factors and the degree to which they covary with SWB may differ across groups, however. For example, selfesteem is more strongly correlated with SWB in Western nations (around .60) than in Asian nations (around .40; Diener, Diener, & Diener, 1995). In other words, how positively individuals perceive themselves might be less predictive of life satisfaction in East Asian cultures. Our interpretation of these differences draws largely on the cultural psychology of self-construals (Markus & Kitayama, 1991), which assumes that individuals can define themselves either in reference to or in isolation from their social roles and that certain cultures may value one type of self-construal over another. We will first elaborate on self-construal theory and how it applies to European American and East Asian cultural patterns. We will then discuss

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Young Hoon Kim

Papers

Cultural construction of success and epistemic motives moderate American-Chinese differences in reward allocation biases

Positive Psychological Interventions and Self‐Perceptions: A Cautionary Tale

Emotion suppression on relationship and life satisfaction: Taking culture and emotional valence into account

Know thyself: Misperceptions of actual performance undermine subjective well-being, future performance and achievement motivation

Cultural processes underlying subjective well-being