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Over the past two decades, there has been 
a dramatic increase in research on how we 
manage our emotions and what implications 
these management efforts have for our well-
being (Gross, 2015). Much of this work has 
taken an experimental approach, manipu -
lating emotion regulation in the laboratory, 
then documenting its effects on emotion, 
cognition, physiology, or social interac -
tions (e.g., Butler et al., 2003; Gross, 1998a; 
Richards & Gross, 2000). More recently, 
researchers have begun to explore how con -
textual features (e.g., intensity of the emo -
tional stimulus) impact momentary emotion 
regulation efforts (e.g., Sheppes et al., 2014).
However, emotion regulation can also be 
examined at the trait level. There are system -
atic individual differences in various aspects 
of emotion regulation, such as one’s goals, 
beliefs, and strategy preferences. These emo -
tion regulation patterns predict important 
outcomes across a range of domains (e.g., 
psychological well-being, social function -
ing; Chervonsky & Hunt, 2017; Gross & 
John, 2003). Past work has also documented 
links between emotion regulation processes 
and other aspects of personality (e.g., at -
tachment, the Big Five; Laan, van Assen, & 
Vingerhoets, 2012; Gross & John, 2003).In this chapter, we provide a basic frame -
work for organizing findings on emotion 
regulation that would be of interest to per -
sonality researchers. We begin with a con -
ceptual overview of emotion regulation and 
the process model (Gross, 1998b, 2015), a 
guiding framework for our discussion. Then 
we outline various important types of trait-
level emotion regulation, and end by delin -
eating some fruitful current and future di -
rections for research.
Basic  Processes
Despite its sense of familiarity, emotion has 
been difficult for researchers to character -
ize. A major source of the difficulty here 
is that the term emotion  has fuzzy bound -
aries, often being used to describe a wide 
array of phenomena, ranging from the joy 
experienced at the birth of a child to the 
irritation of being stuck in traffic. In this 
section, we provide definitions for emotion 
and emotion regulation, then lay out the 
process model of emotion regulation. We 
use this model as the organizing structure 
for our discussion of individual differences 
in the next section.CHAPTER 24
Emotion Regulation
Basic Processes and Individual Differences
Tammy English  
Lameese  Eldesouky  
James J. Gross