 24. Emotion Regulation  531
pose four areas for future research that will 
advance our understanding of emotion regu -
lation processes and individual differences: 
developing new methods, examining stabil -
ity and change in emotion regulation pat -
terns, incorporating sociocultural consider -
ations, and predicting long-term adjustment.
Developing New  Methods
One step in moving research forward is de -
veloping new ways to assess emotion regu -
lation constructs. This includes (1) devel -
oping new self-  report survey measures and 
validating existing ones; (2) taking a more 
multimethod approach that incorporates 
informant and observer reports, as well as 
behavioral measures; and (3) capturing daily 
regulation efforts via ecological momentary 
assessments.
Thus far, efforts have primarily centered 
on creating self-  report measures. There are 
a number of existing instruments to assess 
individual differences in various aspects of 
emotion regulation, as described earlier, 
such as the TMMS (Salovey et al., 1995), 
which measures individual differences in 
emotional clarity, the ERQ (Gross & John, 
2003), which measures individual differ -
ences in strategy use, and the ERGS (Elde -
souky & English, 2019a), which measures 
individual differences in emotion regulation 
goals. However, we do not currently have a 
full representation of individual differences 
in emotion regulation. For instance, there 
are no existing measures to assess beliefs 
about emotion regulation strategies. In addi -
tion, the reliability and validity of many ex -
isting measures have not been documented. 
Some measures, such as the ERQ, have been 
validated in different samples of varying de -
mographic characteristics (e.g., age, culture; 
Balzarotti, John, & Gross, 2010; Cabello, 
Salguero, Fernández-  Berrocal, & Gross, 
2013; Gullone & Taffe, 2012), but this is 
not the norm.
More attention to measurement is also 
needed with regard to alternatives to self- 
report. Although self-  reports are valuable, 
especially when assessing internal traits 
(Vazire, 2010), there are a number of advan -
tages to also using other types of measures, 
such as informant reports or behavioral 
coding. For instance, highly evaluative traits are often rated more accurately by outside 
observers rather than by the target (Vazire, 
2010). Although there is some concern about 
the feasibility of these kinds of measures for 
emotion regulation, which largely involves 
internal processes, researchers have found 
relatively high self–other agreement among 
peers (Gross & John, 2003) and roman -
tic partners (Eldesouky, English, & Gross, 
2017; Impett, Le, Kogan, Oveis, & Keltner, 
2014) for habitual use of suppression and 
reappraisal. These findings suggest that out -
side observers may be able to accurately de -
tect emotion regulation traits in others, at 
least for some strategies. However, strategies 
that may be more easily observable, such as 
suppression, are still easier to detect (El -
desouky et al., 2017). Thus, more work is 
needed to determine specific behavioral cues 
of emotion regulation, as has been done for 
other personality traits (Funder & Sneed, 
1993). There may be systematic changes in 
posture, gestures, or body movement when 
people use certain strategies, such as in the 
case of suppression (e.g., increased fidgeting, 
less conversational turn taking). The use of 
informants and outside observers might mit -
igate some of the disadvantages that come 
with self-  report. Additionally, even if oth -
ers’ perceptions are not accurate, they can 
still be useful for identifying social conse -
quences of emotion regulation (Ambady & 
Rosenthal, 1992). For example, if a partner 
perceives that a person is suppressing his or 
her emotions, this might predict lower re -
lationship satisfaction, regardless of actual 
suppression use.
In addition to relying on measures other 
than self-  report, future work should ex -
pand its investigation of emotion regula -
tion to ecological momentary assessments. 
A number of researchers have in fact begun 
to examine emotion regulation in daily life 
using daily diaries and experience sampling. 
This work has been invaluable in identifying 
how various aspects of emotion regulation 
typically manifest in the context of everyday 
experience. For example, while laboratory 
work has documented how individuals can 
regulate their emotions for contrahedonic 
reasons (Tamir et al., 2008; Tamir, 2009), 
this type of regulation is actually quite un -
common in daily life (English et al., 2017; 
Gross et al., 2006; Kalokerinos, Tamir, & 