Hello From the New Editor

The research goal was to identify potential “contextual” predictors of job performance for military officers. Exploratory factor analysis of job component ratings by military officers (n = 105) in the Irish Defence Forces revealed two “contextual” and two task-related factors. There were no differences in the extent to which contextual job components were a part of the jobs across four military units, but for one contextual factor, contextual components were a significant part of some jobs. Other research shows contextual components increment validity beyond both g and task-related job components. In this first reported study using a sample of military officers to examine contextual job behaviors, the findings suggest contextual components may also increment validity in officer selection models.     

Emotion Regulation in Adulthood: Timing Is Everything

Emotions seem to come and go as they please. However, we actually hold considerable sway over our emotions: We influence which emotions we have and how we experience and express these emotions. The process model of emotion regulation described here suggests that how we regulate our emotions matters. Regulatory strategies that act early in the emotion-generative process should have quite different outcomes than strategies that act later. This review focuses on two widely used strategies for down-regulating emotion. The first, reappraisal, comes early in the emotion-generative process. It consists of changing how we think about a situation in order to decrease its emotional impact. The second, suppression, comes later in the emotion-generative process. It involves inhibiting the outward signs of emotion. Theory and research suggest that reappraisal is more effective than suppression. Reappraisal decreases the experience and behavioral expression of emotion, and has no impact on memory. By contrast, suppression decreases behavioral expression, but fails to decrease the experience of emotion, and actually impairs memory. Suppression also increases physiological responding in both the suppressors and their social partners.