530 v. AFFECTI vE PROCESSES
more adaptive regulation and fine-  tuning of 
strategy use to a given context. Meanwhile, 
the increased emotional awareness exhibited 
by highly open individuals (Terracciano et 
al., 2003) may motivate them to attend to 
their environment and the way they regulate 
their emotions in order to reach their emo -
tion regulation goals. High openness may 
also facilitate comfort relying on different 
strategies other than the ones typically used.
Monitoring  Stage
To successfully regulate their emotions, in -
dividuals must not only be able to effectively 
deploy a tactic, but they must also know 
when to stop using it. Individuals need to 
monitor their emotional state to determine 
whether they should continue using the 
same strategy, switch to a different strategy, 
or stop regulating. In order to make this de -
cision, the regulator needs to monitor the 
environment for relevant contextual factors 
and track how contextual factors are chang -
ing. Individuals need to be able to stop or 
change their strategy use when a strategy is 
not adaptive in a given context. We focus on 
two individual differences relevant to this 
stage: flexibility and rumination.
Emotion regulatory flexibility is the abil -
ity to switch between different emotion 
regulation strategies based on contextual 
demands (Aldao, Sheppes, & Gross, 2015; 
Bonanno & Burton, 2013). For example, an 
individual high in emotion regulatory flex -
ibility may choose to stop using distraction, 
an attentional deployment strategy, once 
the situation is no longer high intensity, and 
switch to using a strategy that is more use -
ful for a low-  intensity situation, such as re -
appraisal (Sheppes et al., 2014). This would 
not only be crucial to helping them success -
fully accomplish their goal, but it would also 
likely prevent them from wasting resources. 
Individual differences in strategy use and 
emotional beliefs could influence their abil -
ity to flexibly regulate their emotions. To the 
extent that one has a tendency to chronically 
rely on a particular strategy (e.g., suppres -
sion), one might be less likely to turn to al -
ternative strategies (e.g., reappraisal) when 
necessary, and therefore exhibit low flex -
ibility. Individuals who believe emotions are 
uncontrollable or that they cannot effective -ly use a particular strategy may also be less 
likely to rely on a diverse set of strategies. In 
addition, if conscientious and open individu -
als are better at implementing tactics due to 
their increased motivation and emotional 
awareness, respectively, they might also be 
more flexible in their strategy use for similar 
reasons. Indeed, one study found that dur -
ing an emotion regulatory task, conscien -
tious individuals were more willing to try 
different emotion regulation strategies if 
their prior efforts were unsuccessful (South -
ward et al., 2018).
In contrast to emotion regulatory flexibil -
ity, rumination represents a failure to switch 
to another regulation strategy when a change 
may be useful. Rumination is characterized 
by repeatedly thinking about or dwelling on 
one’s emotions (Nolen-  Hoeksema, 2000). 
When individuals ruminate, they engage in 
this maladaptive cycle of repetitive think -
ing without identifying a solution to what 
may be bothering them (Nolen-  Hoeksema, 
Wisco, & Lyubomirsky, 2008). Rumination 
might narrow an individual’s perception of 
his or her situation and prevent him or her 
from more holistically looking at the de -
mands of the situation. For example, given 
that emotional flexibility requires being able 
to weigh the costs and benefits of using a 
given strategy (e.g., Aldao, 2013; Bonanno 
& Burton, 2013), rumination might prevent 
individuals from making an accurate cost– 
benefit analysis of different strategies. In 
turn, they might be less likely to turn to a 
strategy that is beneficial for meeting their 
contextual demands. Rumination might 
also more broadly make it difficult for indi -
viduals to recognize that various strategies 
are available to them, because rumination 
makes them less optimistic, thereby de -
creasing their motivation to seek out effec -
tive solutions and increasing the likelihood 
that they will continue to rely on negative 
thoughts to make sense of their situation 
(Nolen-  Hoeksema et al., 2008).
Directions for Future Research
In this chapter we have delineated a num -
ber of important individual differences that 
might interest researchers studying person -
ality and emotion regulation. Next, we pro -