 24. Emotion Regulation  535
Fung, & Yeung, 2007; Tsai, 2007). As men -
tioned earlier, East Asians have been shown 
to value low-  arousal emotions, such as calm 
and peaceful, whereas Westerners are more 
likely to value high-  arousal emotions, such 
as excitement and enthusiasm. This work 
suggests that culture may influence the emo -
tional states people want to reach with their 
regulation efforts. As with many areas of re -
search, however, this work is largely limited 
to comparisons between Western and East 
Asian cultures, and more research on emo -
tion regulation is needed in other cultures. 
Furthermore, while there has been some re -
search on the role of culture in emotion reg -
ulation goals and strategies, there has been 
little work on the role of culture in other 
aspects of emotion regulation, such as self- 
efficacy beliefs or flexibility. To the extent 
that a person identifies with a culture that 
strongly values social order, for example, 
he or she might have less flexible strategy 
use given that using an alternative strategy 
might be socially costly.
Predicting Long‑Term  Adjustment
A large body of research has shown that per -
sonality consistently predicts several impor -
tant outcomes, such as subjective well-being 
(Costa & McCrae, 1980), social adjustment 
(Dyrenforth, Kashy, Donnellan, & Lucas, 
2010), psychopathology (Kotov, Gamez, 
Schmidt, & Watson, 2010), and physical 
health (Friedman, 2000). Similar to other 
aspects of personality, individual differences 
in emotion regulation may have important 
consequences for these and other domains of 
long-term adjustment.
There is in fact growing evidence that pat -
terns of emotion regulation are key predic -
tors of adjustment. Most research in this 
area has focused on how the cumulative 
impact of chronic use of certain strategies 
in daily life is reflected in differential well-
being profiles. Habitual use of reappraisal 
is correlated with higher emotional and so -
cial well-being (English, John, Srivastava, & 
Gross, 2012; English & John, 2013; Gross 
& John, 2003; Haga, Kraft, & Corby, 2009; 
Moore, Zoellner, & Mollenholt, 2008), 
whereas habitual use of suppression is asso -
ciated with lower life satisfaction, less close relationships (English & John, 2013; Gross 
& John, 2003; Haga et al., 2009; Kashdan 
& Stegar, 2006; Moore et al., 2008; Sriv -
astava et al., 2009), and declines in social 
adjustment across college (English et al., 
2012). The ability to effectively reappraise 
emotional stimuli has also been associated 
with greater emotional well-being (McRae 
et al., 2012). In contrast, believing emo -
tions are fixed and uncontrollable predicts 
lower self- and peer-  reported emotional and 
social well-being (Tamir et al., 2007). Inter -
ventions aiming to improve emotional and 
social adjustment often prominently fea -
ture emotion regulation. Examples include 
cognitive-  behavioral therapy, which encour -
ages patients to use cognitive change strate -
gies (Berenbaum, Raghavan, Le, Vernon, & 
Gomez, 2003), and mindfulness-  based ther -
apy, which aims to create emotional balance 
(Kabat-Zinn, 1990).
Emotion regulation difficulties have long 
been considered a core element of many 
forms of psychopathology, especially af -
fective disorders (e.g., depression, bipolar, 
anxiety; Berenbaum et al., 2003; Gross & 
Muñoz, 1995). The process model of emo -
tion regulation has recently been applied to 
psychopathology to identify how difficulties 
in various stages of emotion regulation might 
predict psychopathology (Sheppes, Suri, & 
Gross, 2015). For example, at the identifica -
tion and implementation stages, individuals 
with social anxiety disorder believe they are 
less able to control their emotions (De Cas -
tella et al., 2014; Spokas, Luterek, & Heim -
berg, 2009) or use reappraisal (Goldin et al., 
2009, 2012), suggesting that individuals with 
social anxiety disorder might be less likely to 
regulate their emotions and less successful in 
implementing certain strategies. Relatedly, 
other work has shown differences at the se -
lection stage, in which individuals with major 
depressive disorder and bipolar disorder 
tend to have higher habitual use of typically 
maladaptive strategies, such as suppression 
(Beblo et al., 2012; Campbell-  Sills, Cohan, 
& Stein, 2006; Gruber, Harvey, & Gross, 
2012) and rumination (Ghaznavi & Deck -
ersbach, 2012; Gilbert, Nolen-  Hoeksema, 
& Gruber, 2013; Nolen-  Hoeksema et al., 
2008). Individuals with these disorders may 
in part underrepresent the diverse set of 