What do I want to feel? Emotion goals in childhood, adolescence, and adulthood.

Beliefs about emotion utility can influence context-sensitive emotion goals (i.e., desired emotional responses). Although key for emotion regulation, emotion goals have been overlooked in children and adolescents. In 2018-2019 results of Studies 1 and 2 showed that children (N = 192, Mage  = 8.65, 47% girls, 96% White) were less motivated by and found anger less useful in confrontation than adolescents (N = 192, Mage  = 12.96, 50% girls, 93% White) and adults (N = 195, Mage  = 29.82, 51% women, 96% White). The link between emotion goals and beliefs about emotion utility was weaker in children. In 2021, Study 3 (N = 60, 8-year-olds, 47% girls, 90% White) ruled out expectations as a possible explanation for the previous findings. Context-sensitive utility of emotions may be acquired during development.

Appraisal and coping predict health and well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic: An international approach.

COVID-19 has had a devastating impact on people worldwide. We conducted an international survey (n = 3646) examining the degree to which people's appraisals and coping activities around the pandemic predicted their health and well-being. We obtained subsamples from 12 countries-Bangladesh, Bulgaria, China, Colombia, India, Israel, the Netherlands, Norway, Peru, Portugal, Turkey and the United States. For each, we assessed appraisals and coping strategies as well as indicators of physical and mental health and well-being. Results indicated that, despite mean-level societal differences in outcomes, the pattern of appraisals and coping strategies predicting health and well-being was consistent across countries. Use of disengagement coping (particularly behavioural disengagement and self-isolation) was associated with relatively negative outcomes. In contrast, optimistic appraisals (particularly of high accommodation-focused coping potential and the ability to meet one's physical needs), use of problem-focused coping strategies (especially problem-solving) and accommodative coping strategies (especially positive reappraisal and self-encouragement) were associated with relatively positive outcomes. Our study highlights the critical importance of considering accommodative coping in stress and coping research. It also provides important information on how people have been dealing with the pandemic, the predictors of well-being under pandemic conditions and the generality of such relations.

Motivated emotion and the rally around the flag effect: liberals are motivated to feel collective angst (like conservatives) when faced with existential threat.

A careful look at societies facing threat reveals a unique phenomenon in which liberals and conservatives react emotionally and attitudinally in a similar manner, rallying around the conservative flag. Previous research suggests that this rally effect is the result of liberals shifting in their attitudes and emotional responses toward the conservative end. Whereas theories of motivated social cognition provide a motivation-based account of cognitive processes (i.e. attitude shift), it remains unclear whether emotional shifts are, in fact, also a motivation-based process. Herein, we propose that under threat, liberals are motivated to feel existential concern about their group's future vitality (i.e. collective angst) to the same extent as conservatives, because this group-based emotion elicits support for ingroup protective action. Within the context of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, we tested and found support for this hypothesis both inside (Study 1) and outside (Study 2) the laboratory. We did so using a behavioural index of motivation to experience collective angst. We discuss the implications of our findings for understanding motivated emotion regulation in the context of intergroup threat.

Beliefs about emotion: implications for avoidance-based emotion regulation and psychological health.

People's beliefs about their ability to control their emotions predict a range of important psychological outcomes. It is not clear, however, whether these beliefs are playing a causal role, and if so, why this might be. In the current research, we tested whether avoidance-based emotion regulation explains the link between beliefs and psychological outcomes. In Study 1 (N = 112), a perceived lack of control over emotions predicted poorer psychological health outcomes (increased self-reported avoidance, lower well-being, and higher levels of clinical symptoms), and avoidance strategies indirectly explained these links between emotion beliefs and psychological health. In Study 2 (N = 101), we experimentally manipulated participants' emotion beliefs by leading participants to believe that they struggled (low regulatory self-efficacy) or did not struggle (high regulatory self-efficacy) with controlling their emotions. Participants in the low regulatory self-efficacy condition reported increased intentions to engage in avoidance strategies over the next month and were more likely to avoid seeking psychological help. When asked if they would participate in follow-up studies, these participants were also more likely to display avoidance-based emotion regulation. These findings provide initial evidence for the causal role of emotion beliefs in avoidance-based emotion regulation, and document their impact on psychological health-related outcomes.

Successful emotion regulation requires both conviction and skill: beliefs about the controllability of emotions, reappraisal, and regulation success.

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.

Why Do People Regulate Their Emotions? A Taxonomy of Motives in Emotion Regulation.

Emotion regulation involves the pursuit of desired emotional states (i.e., emotion goals) in the service of superordinate motives. The nature and consequences of emotion regulation, therefore, are likely to depend on the motives it is intended to serve. Nonetheless, limited attention has been devoted to studying what motivates emotion regulation. By mapping the potential benefits of emotion to key human motives, this review identifies key classes of motives in emotion regulation. The proposed taxonomy distinguishes between hedonic motives that target the immediate phenomenology of emotions, and instrumental motives that target other potential benefits of emotions. Instrumental motives include behavioral, epistemic, social, and eudaimonic motives. The proposed taxonomy offers important implications for understanding the mechanism of emotion regulation, variation across individuals and contexts, and psychological function and dysfunction, and points to novel research directions.

Will you touch a dirty diaper? Attitudes towards disgust and behaviour.

Individuals differ in their willingness to engage with disgusting stimuli (e.g., dirty diapers). We propose that such differences are associated with attitudes towards disgust. Specifically, we predicted that people with less negative attitudes towards disgust (i.e., those who evaluate disgust less negatively) would be more willing to engage with disgusting stimuli. We asked participants to engage with disgusting stimuli in the laboratory and used two measures that assess behavioural and affective or cognitive components of attitudes towards disgust. As predicted, less negative attitudes towards disgust were associated with greater engagement with disgusting stimuli, above and beyond the current experience of disgust and the tendency to experience disgust. These findings stress the importance of attitudes towards emotions in understanding emotion-relevant behaviour.

Together we cry: Social motives and preferences for group-based sadness.

Group-based emotions play an important role in helping people feel that they belong to their group. People are motivated to belong, but does this mean that they actively try to experience group-based emotions to increase their sense of belonging? In this investigation, we propose that people may be motivated to experience even group-based emotions that are typically considered unpleasant to satisfy their need to belong. To test this hypothesis, we examined people's preferences for group-based sadness in the context of the Israeli National Memorial Day. In two correlational (Studies 1a and 1b) and two experimental (Studies 2 and 3) studies, we demonstrate that people with a stronger need to belong have a stronger preference to experience group-based sadness. This effect was mediated by the expectation that experiencing sadness would be socially beneficial (Studies 1 and 2). We discuss the implications of our findings for understanding motivated emotion regulation and intergroup relations.

Yes I can: Expected success promotes actual success in emotion regulation.

People who expect to be successful in regulating their emotions tend to experience less frequent negative emotions and are less likely to suffer from depression. It is not clear, however, whether beliefs about the likelihood of success in emotion regulation can shape actual emotion regulation success. To test this possibility, we manipulated participants' beliefs about the likelihood of success in emotion regulation and assessed their subsequent ability to regulate their emotions during a negative emotion induction. We found that participants who were led to expect emotion regulation to be more successful were subsequently more successful in regulating their emotional responses, compared to participants in the control condition. Our findings demonstrate that expected success can contribute to actual success in emotion regulation.

Sad as a Matter of Choice? Emotion-Regulation Goals in Depression.

Research on deficits in emotion regulation has devoted considerable attention to emotion-regulation strategies. We propose that deficits in emotion regulation may also be related to emotion-regulation goals. We tested this possibility by assessing the direction in which depressed people chose to regulate their emotions (i.e., toward happiness, toward sadness). In three studies, clinically depressed participants were more likely than nondepressed participants to use emotion-regulation strategies in a direction that was likely to maintain or increase their level of sadness. This pattern was found when using the regulation strategies of situation selection (Studies 1 and 2) and cognitive reappraisal (Study 3). The findings demonstrate that maladaptive emotion regulation may be linked not only to the means people use to regulate their emotions, but also to the ends toward which those means are directed.

Knowing when to seek anger: Psychological health and context-sensitive emotional preferences.

According to hedonic approaches to psychological health, healthy individuals should pursue pleasant and avoid unpleasant emotions. According to instrumental approaches, however, healthy individuals should pursue useful and avoid harmful emotions, whether pleasant or unpleasant. We sought to reconcile these approaches by distinguishing between preferences for emotions that are aggregated across contexts and preferences for emotions within specific contexts. Across five days, we assessed daily confrontational and collaborative demands and daily preferences for anger and happiness. Somewhat consistent with hedonic approaches, when averaging across contexts, psychologically healthier individuals wanted to feel less anger, but not more happiness. Somewhat consistent with instrumental approaches, when examined within contexts, psychologically healthier individuals wanted to feel angrier in more confrontational contexts, and some wanted to feel happier in more collaborative contexts. Thus, although healthier individuals are motivated to avoid unpleasant emotions over time, they are more motivated to experience them when they are potentially useful.

Preferring familiar emotions: as you want (and like) it?

Do people want to feel emotions that are familiar to them? In two studies, participants rated how much they typically felt various emotions (i.e., familiarity of the emotion) and how much they generally wanted to experience these emotions. We found that, in general, people wanted to feel pleasant emotions more than unpleasant emotions. However, for both pleasant and unpleasant emotions, people more (vs. less) familiar with an emotion also wanted to experience it more. Links between the familiarity of an emotion and wanting to experience that emotion were not explained by the concurrent experience of familiar emotions. Also, we show that although familiar emotions were also liked more, liking did not fully account for wanting familiar emotions. Finally, the familiarity of emotions mediated the links between trait affect and the emotions people wanted to feel. We propose that people are motivated to feel familiar emotions, in part, because of their instrumental value.

Flexibility or instability? Emotion goal dynamics and mental health.

Emotion goals (i.e., what people want or do not want to feel) have important implications for emotional and mental health because they can shape whether, when, and how people regulate their emotions. Although research has shown that emotion goals vary across individuals and situations, we know relatively little about the dynamic changes in emotion goals in daily life and their potential implications. Given the dynamic features of emotions and emotion regulation, emotion goals may also fluctuate across time and their fluctuations may be critically linked to mental health. This research assessed the everyday dynamics of emotion goals, in particular, variability and inertia, and their associations with mental health. In two studies (N = 56 in Study 1 and N = 173 in Study 2), we included different indices of mental health and used Ecological Momentary Assessments to measure both pleasant and unpleasant emotion goals and experiences at a momentary level in daily life. We found that variability in unpleasant, but not pleasant, emotion goals was linked to better mental health outcomes, even after controlling for the mean levels of emotion goals, and the variability and mean levels of the corresponding emotional experiences. Emotion goal inertia was unrelated to mental health. These findings suggest that emotion goal variability is an important novel factor that may contribute to or reflect mental health. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Better relationships do not always feel better: Social relationships interact in predicting negative emotions in early adolescence.

How negatively young adolescents feel is central to their well-being. Intuitively, better social relationships should be linked to less negative emotions. This study tested this assumption, using a sample of over 80,000 young adolescents from 32 countries (ages 10-12). Inconsistent with the notion that better social relationships are always related to better emotional experiences, we found that links between negative emotions and adolescents' relationships with friends or teachers critically depend on their relationships with family. When young adolescents had relatively better relationships with family, better relationships with friends or teachers predicted less negative emotions. However, when adolescents had relatively poorer relationships with family, better relationships with friends or teachers predicted more negative emotions. Results were consistent across adolescents' gender, age, culture, or socioeconomic status. Findings suggest that the broader social context should be considered for understanding how specific relationships predict negative emotions in early adolescence. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Knowing me, knowing you: Are people good at regulating their emotions good at regulating another's emotions?

Sometimes we regulate our emotions, and other times we need to regulate the emotions of others. In this investigation, we tested whether the ability to regulate one's own emotions and the ability to regulate other's emotions are related. We assessed regulators' self-oriented emotion regulation ability by measuring their own emotional experiences in a self-oriented emotion regulation task. We assessed regulators' other-oriented emotion regulation ability by measuring the emotional experiences of their targets in an other-oriented emotion regulation task. We found that self-oriented and other-oriented emotion regulation abilities were not significantly related. However, people were better able to regulate targets who were better at regulating themselves. People who frequently used self-oriented emotion regulation strategies (e.g., distraction) had greater self-oriented, but not other-oriented, emotion regulation ability. People with greater self-oriented emotion regulation ability made themselves feel less unpleasant emotions upon regulating their emotions. People with greater other-oriented emotion regulation ability made both the target of regulation and themselves feel less unpleasant emotions upon regulating the target's emotions. The target and regulator also felt closer to one another when the regulator had greater other-oriented emotion regulation ability. These findings suggest that the ability to regulate the emotions of others might be linked to desirable personal and social outcomes, even in interactions among strangers. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Stuck with the foot on the pedal: Depression and motivated emotion regulation in daily life.

According to cybernetic approaches, emotion regulation is motivated by the desire to reduce discrepancies between experienced and desired emotions. Yet, this assumption has rarely been tested directly in healthy or unhealthy populations. In two ecological momentary assessment studies, we monitored motivated emotion regulation in daily life in participants who varied in the severity of their depressive symptoms (Study 1; N = 173) and in clinically depressed and nondepressed participants (Study 2; N = 120). Across studies, associations between motivation in emotion regulation and discrepancies between experienced and desired emotions differed by depression. As expected, as discrepancies between experienced and desired emotions increased, individuals with lower depressive symptoms or without a clinical depression diagnosis were more motivated to regulate their emotions. In contrast, we found no evidence (Study 1) or weaker evidence (Study 2) for sensitivity to the size of the discrepancies between experienced and desired emotions among individuals with higher depressive symptoms or those diagnosed with clinical depression. These individuals were consistently motivated to regulate their emotions, regardless of the size of the discrepancies. These findings suggest that individuals prone to or suffering from depression may be less sensitive than nondepressed individuals to regulatory demands in emotion regulation. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Does interpersonal emotion regulation effort pay off?

Interpersonal emotion regulation shapes people's emotional and relational experiences. Yet, researchers know little about the regulation processes that influence these outcomes. Recent works in the intrapersonal emotion regulation space suggest that motivational strength, or effort, people invest in regulation might be the answer. We applied this motivated approach for the first time in the interpersonal space-looking at both intrinsic and extrinsic forms of interpersonal emotion regulation-in order to identify the potential emotional and relational outcomes of putting effort into regulating one's own emotions through others, and regulating others' emotions. In daily diary (N = 171) and experience sampling (N = 239) studies, we examined participants' interpersonal emotion regulation behaviors and socioemotional experiences in everyday social interactions over the course of 1 week. These methods allowed us to examine effort at both momentary and person levels. We found that people who habitually put in more intrinsic effort to feel better through others felt worse overall. People also felt worse on occasions when they put in more effort to extrinsically help others feel better, although at the person level extrinsic effort was associated with higher interaction quality. Together, our findings suggest that interpersonal emotion regulation success is not simply a matter of trying hard. This observation opens new research avenues to investigate the interplay of different factors that determine when, and for whom, investing effort in interpersonal emotion regulation pays off. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Can emotion regulation change political attitudes in intractable conflicts? From the laboratory to the field.

We hypothesized that an adaptive form of emotion regulation-cognitive reappraisal-would decrease negative emotion and increase support for conflict-resolution policies. In Study 1, Israeli participants were invited to a laboratory session in which they were randomly assigned to either a cognitive-reappraisal condition or a control condition; they were then presented with anger-inducing information related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Participants in the reappraisal condition were more supportive of conciliatory policies and less supportive of aggressive policies compared with participants in the control condition. In Study 2, we replicated these findings in responses to a real political event (the recent Palestinian bid for United Nations recognition). When assessed 1 week after training, participants trained in cognitive reappraisal showed greater support for conciliatory policies and less support for aggressive policies toward Palestinians compared with participants in a control condition. These effects persisted when participants were reassessed 5 months after training, and at both time points, negative emotion mediated the effects of reappraisal.

Evidence for utilitarian motives in emotion regulation.

This investigation demonstrates that emotion regulation can be driven by considerations of utility per se. We show that as participants prepared for a negotiation, those who were motivated to confront (vs. collaborate with) another person believed that anger would be more useful to them. However, only participants who were motivated to confront another and expected to receive a monetary reward for their performance (i.e., high utility), were motivated to increase their anger in preparation for the negotiation. Participants who were motivated to confront another but did not expect their performance to be rewarded (i.e., low utility), did not try to increase their anger, even though they expected anger to be useful in the negotiation. Such patterns demonstrate that people are motivated to experience even unpleasant emotions to maximise utility.

Emotion Norms Are Unique.

Emotion norms shape the pursuit, regulation, and experience of emotions, yet much about their nature remains unknown. Like other types of social norms, emotion norms reflect intersubjective consensus, vary in both content and strength, and benefit the well-being of people who adhere to them. However, we propose that emotion norms may also be a unique type of social norm. First, whereas social norms typically target behaviors, emotion norms can target both expressive behavior and subjective states. Second, whereas it may be possible to identify universally held social norms, norms for emotions may lack any universality. Finally, whereas social norms are typically stronger in more collectivist cultures, emotion norms appear to be stronger in more individualist cultures. For each of the potentially distinct features of emotion norms suggested above, we highlight new directions for future research.