524 v. AFFECTI vE PROCESSES
Defining Emotion and  Emotion  Regulation
Across most conceptions of emotion, three 
features are emphasized. First, emotion re -
quires that individuals attend to a stimulus 
in the environment (or “situation”) that is 
relevant to their goals. These goals can be 
commonly held across individuals or be 
more idiosyncratic; they can be short-term 
or long-term; and they can be conscious or 
unconscious. The nature of the emotion (or 
“response”) elicited depends on the individu -
al’s specific interpretation (or “appraisal”) of 
this goal-  relevant situation. Second, emotion 
is constituted by complex changes in multi -
ple response domains. Although laypeople 
often equate emotion with subjective experi -
ence, it also involves loosely coupled changes 
in behavior and physiology (Mauss, Leven -
son, McCarter, Wilhelm, & Gross, 2005). 
There is a recursive quality to emotion in 
that responses feed back into the emotion 
generative cycle by modifying the situation. 
Emotions track changes in the situation, sig -
naling to the individual important aspects of 
the environment and helping to coordinate 
adaptive responding (Frijda, 1986; Tooby & 
Cosmides, 1990). For instance, emotional 
expressions communicate to others the in -
ternal state of the individual and thereby 
promote social bonding (Ekman, 1993; 
Izard, 1990; Keltner & Kring, 1998). Third, 
emotions are malleable; that is, we are not 
at the mercy of our emotions but rather we 
can exert control over them in order to allow 
for competing responses (James, 1884). Al -
though emotions are often functional, this is 
not always the case. At times, emotions may 
not align well with our long-terms goals, for 
example, when we feel too anxious to apply 
for a new job that could provide us with 
valuable opportunities, or inappropriately 
express our anger toward our employer, 
which could hurt our chances of getting pro -
moted. In these situations, emotion regula -
tion processes are often recruited.
Emotion regulation  involves attempts 
to influence which emotions are elicited, 
when they are elicited, and how they are 
experienced and expressed (Gross, 1998b, 
2002). Typically, individuals use emotion 
regulation to increase positive emotion or 
decrease negative emotion (i.e., prohedoni -
cally; Gross, Richards, & John, 2006; Lar -sen, 2000). However, there are situations in 
which individuals are motivated to engage in 
contrahedonic regulation (Tamir, 2009), for 
example, when they want to confront oth -
ers or avoid a threat (Sutton, 1991; Tamir, 
Mitchell, & Gross, 2008). Emotion regu -
lation processes can also target one’s own 
emotions ( intrinsic  emotion regulation) or 
the emotions of others ( extrinsic  emotion 
regulation; Gross & Thompson, 2007). 
Closely related constructs include mood 
regulation (Larsen, 2000; Thayer, 1996) 
and coping (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984). In 
contrast to emotion regulation, mood regu -
lation (Larsen, 2000) is focused on changing 
one’s mood (i.e., a longer lasting, often more 
diffuse affective state) and thereby primarily 
targets subjective experience. Coping (Laza -
rus & Folkman, 1984) centers on relieving 
stress stemming from an adverse event or life 
circumstance, whereas emotion regulation 
can be used to enhance, reduce, or maintain 
either positive or negative emotion.
The Process Model of  Emotion  Regulation
The process model of emotion regulation 
(Gross, 1998b) organizes emotion regula -
tion strategies based on where they have 
their primary impact on the unfolding emo -
tion. Five distinct families of emotion regu -
lation are delineated in this model: situation 
selection  (approaching or avoiding situa -
tions based on the expected emotional im -
pact), situation modification  (changing as -
pects of a situation that one is already in), 
attentional deployment  (shifting attention 
away from stimuli that may elicit unwanted 
emotion or toward stimuli that are expected 
to elicit desired emotions), cognitive change  
(modifying the meaning of an emotional 
stimulus to change its impact), and response 
modulation  (attempting to modify response 
tendencies once an emotion has been elic -
ited). The first four families have been la -
beled antecedent-  focused  strategies because 
they focus on an earlier point in the emotion 
generative cycle. These types of strategies 
are generally expected to be more effective 
at regulating emotion than response-  focused  
strategies that occur later in the emotion 
generative cycle.
Indeed, there is substantial evidence to 
support the differential impact of specific 