Successful emotion regulation requires both conviction and skill: beliefs about the controllability of emotions,reappraisal, and regulation success |
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| Authors: | Tony Gutentag Eran Halperin Roni Porat Yochanan E Bigman Maya Tamir |
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| Institution: | 1. Department of Psychology, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel;2. School of Psychology, The Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, Herzliya, Israel;3. School of Psychology, The Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, Herzliya, Israel;4. Department of Psychology and the Federmann Center for the Study of Rationality, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel |
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| Abstract: | To succeed in self-regulation, people need to believe that it is possible to change behaviour and they also need to use effective means to enable such a change. We propose that this also applies to emotion regulation. In two studies, we found that people were most successful in emotion regulation, the more they believed emotions can be controlled and the more they used an effective emotion regulation strategy – namely, cognitive reappraisal. Cognitive reappraisal moderated the link between beliefs about the controllability of emotion and success in emotion regulation, when reappraisal was measured as a trait (Study 1) or manipulated (Study 2). Such moderation was found when examining the regulation of disgust elicited by emotion-inducing films (Study 1), and the regulation of anger elicited by real political events (Study 2). We discuss the implications of our findings for research and practice in emotion regulation. |
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| Keywords: | Emotion emotion regulation incremental beliefs reappraisal |
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