536 v. AFFECTI vE PROCESSES
strategies available to them and continually 
rely on the same set of strategies to regulate 
their emotions. Future research should con -
sider further investigating how difficulties in 
these various stages of emotion regulation 
might predict psychopathology and adjust -
ment outcomes. For instance, individuals 
who believe they are less able to control their 
emotions or who frequently rely on typically 
maladaptive strategies may be at greater risk 
for psychopathology.
As with the recent surge in research on 
personality and physical health (Shanahan, 
Hill, Roberts, Eccles, & Friedman, 2014; 
Takahashi, Edmonds, Jackson, & Roberts, 
2013; Weston, Hill, & Jackson, 2015), there 
has also been increased interest in the link 
between individual differences in emotion 
regulation and physical health. Much of 
this research has focused on individual dif -
ferences at the selection stage. For instance, 
individuals higher in reappraisal use are at 
lower risk for cardiovascular diseases (e.g., 
coronary heart, atherosclerotic), while indi -
viduals higher in suppression use are at lower 
risk (Appleton, Buka, Loucks, Gilman, & 
Kubzansky, 2013; Gianaros et al., 2014). 
Relatedly, both the onset and a faster pro -
gression of cancer has been linked to greater 
habitual use of suppression (Bahnson, 1981; 
McKenna, Zevon, Corn, & Rounds, 1999; 
Spiegel & Giese-Davis, 2003). More work 
is now needed to examine a wider range of 
individual differences in emotion regulation 
beyond simply strategy use. For instance, 
low emotional flexibility might cause one to 
accumulate more negative affective and so -
cial consequences that ultimately take a toll 
on one’s health. The mechanisms by which 
emotion regulation could influence health 
also need to be explored (DeSteno, Gross, 
& Kubzansky, 2013). For example, do strat -
egies influence the motivation to engage 
in certain health behaviors or decisions in 
the ways that other personality traits (e.g., 
conscientiousness) might or serve as health 
behaviors in themselves (e.g., physical exer -
cise)?
Relatedly, it will be important to deter -
mine the predictive value of emotion regu -
lation compared to other personality traits 
(e.g., the Big Five), as well as their relative 
consequences for a broader set of life do -mains, such as job success. For instance, 
given suppression’s negative social costs 
(e.g., English et al., 2012; Srivastava et al., 
2009), heightened use of this strategy might 
prevent people from forming social connec -
tions that have the potential to create new 
job opportunities. Meanwhile, reappraisal 
could promote job success by encouraging 
individuals to overcome anxiety that comes 
with pursuing new job opportunities or al -
lowing them to persevere when they experi -
ence failures.
Concluding  Comments
Emotion regulation should be of interest 
to personality researchers for at least three 
main reasons. First, there are reliable indi -
vidual differences in various aspects of each 
stage of emotion regulation. Second, a wide 
range of personality factors, such as the Big 
Five and attachment, predict individual dif -
ferences in emotion regulation processes. 
Third, emotion regulation processes play a 
key role in determining long-term adjust -
ment.
It is clear from our review of the litera -
ture that most research has focused on how 
people typically regulate, but there are indi -
vidual differences in several other emotion 
regulation processes, ranging from what 
people think they can do (self-  efficacy) to 
how effective they are in regulating (capabil -
ity). More work will be needed to test the 
specificity or generality of our approach to 
individual differences in emotion regulation 
compared to affect regulation more broadly. 
There are likely not only many points of 
overlap but also some important differences. 
For instance, similar to how individuals dif -
fer in the emotion regulation strategies they 
tend to use, they also differ in their mood 
regulation strategies (Carver et al., 1989). 
However, we might expect mood regulation 
patterns to be more stable because mood oc -
curs over a longer period of time than emo -
tion. Drawing on the strengths of various 
approaches, such as self-  report and behav -
ioral tasks, future research can continue to 
investigate the stability of these individual 
differences, how they relate to other traits, 
and how they predict important outcomes.