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Psychological Inquiry: An International Journal for the

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Sharpening the Focus: Emotion Regulation, Arousal,

and Social Competence
James J. Gross
Published online: 19 Nov 2009.

To cite this article: James J. Gross (1998) Sharpening the Focus: Emotion Regulation, Arousal, and Social Competence,
Psychological Inquiry: An International Journal for the Advancement of Psychological Theory, 9:4, 287-290, DOI: 10.1207/
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 COMMENTARIES
sound of one hand clapping, and the wrong hand at that
(Halverson & Wampler, 1997).
Emotional socialization is a key element in mental
health. As theory and research evolve on this important
boundary topic, it will be important to connect to over-
arching approaches to mental health. Eisenberg et al.
show us that we are already part of the way there, but
we will need truly interactive approaches, such as a
diathesis-stress model. In this classic approach to
mental health, two components interact to produce out-
comes. The diathesis element involves dispositions
and vulnerabilities, whereas the stress element in-
volves environmental forces that activate dispositions.
These elements are complementary in that, by them-
selves, neither diathesis nor stress alone determines
outcomes. If we apply this approach to the socializa-
tion of emotion, diathesis is represented by tempera-
ment and stress is represented by the family, which
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provides the first environmental forum for the initia-
tion, maintenance, and suppression of emotion. From a
personality perspective, the family represents the first
arena for the development of emotional self-regulation
and self-control (Halverson & Wampler, 1997).
We may use a metaphor to describe this relation. By
almost any standard, granite is a hard rock, and resists
most mechanical efforts to alter its shape. When a
granite rock falls into a mountain stream, however, the
forces of the water smooth its edges over time. The
rock is still granite, but with enough exposure to the
stream, the edges disappear. This metaphor may de-
scribe what happens to most of us as we are exposed to
emotional socialization.
Sharpening the Focus:
Emotion Regulation, Arousal, and Social Competence
James J. Gross
Department of Psychology
Stanford University
Emotions are said to help us respond effec-
tively to opportunities and challenges. However,
emotions are by no means always helpful. At
times, our anxiety leads us to duck opportunities
we should embrace, our anger leads us to respond
in ways that harm everyone concerned, and our
pride leads us to make boasts that we no sooner
make than regret. Emotional competence-or
knowing how to use one's emotions to full advan-
tage-is a fine art. Skilled practitioners of this art
know how and when to regulate emotions to
achieve their goals.
Note
William G. Graziano and RenCe M. Tobin, Depart-
ment of Psychology, Texas A&M University, College
Station, TX 77843.
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Emotion Regulation, Arousal, and
Social Competence
Why are some people gifted at this art, whereas
others are certifiably emotionally incompetent? In the
target article, Eisenberg, Cumberland, and Spinrad
argue that parental behaviors are one important deter-
minant of a child's capacity to regulate emotional re-
sponses in flexible, situation-appropriate ways. These
regulatory capacities, in turn, determine the child's
emotional responses-including the child's physio-
logical arousal. Moreover, it is the child's arousal
 COMMENTARIES
that determines the child's social competence, de-
fined as the ability to achieve social goals while
maintaining positive relationships with others. In
brief, Eisenberg et al. argue the following: "People
who are unable to modulate the intensity, duration,
and frequency of their emotional responses and emo-
tion-related behavior are relatively likely to become
physiologically overaroused and to behave in ways
that undermine the quality of social interactions."
Successful emotion regulation leads to optimal
physiological arousal, which facilitates social compe-
tence. Unsuccessful emotion regulation, by contrast,
leads to suboptimal physiological arousal states-par-
titularly high arousal states-that compromise social
functioning.
Out of necessity, Eisenberg et al.'s broad bandwidth
model levels rather than sharpens at many points to
bridge the diverse literatures relevant to emotion so-
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cialization. I suggest the need for a sharper focus on
emotion regulation and arousal, two processes said to
mediate between parental behavior and the child's so-
cial competence. In particular, it is necessary to specify
which aspects of emotion are being regulated, how this
is being done, and what physiological states result
from these regulatory efforts.
Sharpening the Focus: The What and
How of Emotion Regulation
Prototypic examples of emotion regulation include
refraining from expressing disappointment after re-
ceiving an inappropriate gift, or trying to stay calm
while helping an upset friend. However, emotion regu-
lation spans the full range of changes in emotion dy-
namics (Thompson, 1990), or the latency, rise time,
magnitude, duration, and offset of responses in behav-
ioral, experiential, or physiological domains. Given
the breadth of emotion regulatory targets and pro-
cesses, any discussion of emotion regulation is ad-
vanced by specifying what is being regulated and how
this regulation is being achieved.
What Aspect of Emotion Is Being
Regulated?
Eisenberg et al. appear to have in mind one com-
mon-and important-target of emotion regulation;
namely, negative emotion experience and physiologi-
cal responding. As Parrott (1993) suggested, however,
individuals increase, maintain, and decrease negative
and positive emotions. In addition, it is now widely
agreed that emotion can be divided-at least for heu-
ristic purposes-into three components that are only
loosely coupled; namely, behavioral expression, sub-
jective experience, and peripheral physiological re-
sponding. Minimally, therefore, any discussion of
emotion regulation should specify what aspect of emo-
tion is being regulated and what the desired endpoint
is. Eisenberg et al. focus on emotion experience and
physiological responding, but it seems likely that there
are other important routes to shaping a child's develop-
ing emotional competence.
How Is Emotion Being Regulated?
Which aspect of emotion is targeted for emotion
regulation must be distinguished from how emotion
regulation is achieved. For example, one can keep
one's face still in several quite different ways, such as
by cognitively transforming a potentially emo-
tion-eliciting situation so that it is emotionally cool, or
by working very hard to still the facial muscles without
doing anything to diminish the felt emotion. I distin-
guish two broad classes of emotion regulation: ante-
cedent-focused emotion regulation, which occurs
before emotional response tendencies are generated,
and response-focused emotion regulation, which oc-
curs after emotional response tendencies are generated
(Gross, 1998b). Antecedent-focused emotion regula-
tion involves modifying the inputs to the emotion sys-
tem by (a) selecting situations (e.g., avoiding a
quarrelsome neighbor), (b) modifying problematic sit-
uations, (c) attending to one rather than another aspect
of the immediate situation, or (d) modifying the way
emotion-relevant stimuli are appraised (i.e., what
meaning these features of the environment are as-
signed). By contrast, response-focused emotion regu-
lation comes relatively late in the emotion generative
process. At this point, emotional response tendencies
have been activated, and the individual modulates (di-
minishes or augments) the experiental-, behavioral-, or
physiological-response tendencies that have been gen-
erated. Examples of response-focused emotion regula-
tion include hiding one's delight at a strong hand in a
game of cards or talung a deep breath to slow a racing
heart before a long-anticipated date. In the context of
Eisenberg et al.'s model, distinctions among forms of
emotion regulation will prove useful because anteced-
ent-focused forms of emotion regulation decrease
emotional responding, whereas response-focused
forms of emotion regulation may actually increase
physiological responding (Gross, 1998a).
Sharpening the Focus: Beyond Generic
Arousal
When we are emotional, our bodies respond. We
sweat, our hearts pound, and we breathe more
quickly. If emotion regulation alters emotions, it
stands to reason that emotion regulation should alter
 COMMENTARIES
these physiological responses. Eisenberg et al. are
thus on solid ground when they suggest that a child's
physiological state can be powerfully shaped by emo-
tion regulation. However, the conception of general-
ized arousal that they employ is now viewed with
quite some suspicion in many quarters. In fact, some
have gone so far as to argue that the notion of gener-
alized arousal is so ill-defined as to be "scientifically
meaningless" (Blascovich, 1992, p. 217). Eisenberg
et al.'s model might be sharpened, therefore, by more
clearly specifying the specific physiological changes
that mediate between parents' behaviors and a child's
social competence.
To explain what needs fixing in arousal theory, a lit-
tle background is helpful. Arousal theory had three ma-
jor contributory streams: (a) Cannon (1929) and
Selye's (1956) discussion of global sympathetic and
endocrine responses to stressors, (b) Hull's (1943) de-
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scription of a general drive that energizes behavior,
and (c) Lindsley's (1951) investigation of the role of
the reticular activating system and electroencephalo-
gram (EEG) changes in arousal. In its classic form,
arousal theory postulated a unidimensional continuum
of whole-organism activation ranging from quiescence
to states of great agitation and excitement (Duffy,
1962; Malmo, 1959). Heightened arousal was thought
to involve sympathetic and endocrine activation, ener-
gized behavior, and EEG activation. This was a very
powerful conceptual scheme because it allowed re-
searchers to plot an organism's behavior with respect
to both direction (approach or withdrawal) and activa-
tion (varying states of general arousal). In the data-rich
but theory-poor field of psychophysiology, this over-
arching unidimensional continuum of arousal orga-
nized a wide range of findings.
Questions about the unitary nature of arousal began
to gather with growing urgency in the 1960s. Lacey's
(1967) critique of arousal theory was a particularly im-
portant catalyst. In this critique, Lacey elaboratedon the
notion of directionalfractionation,whichreferred to the
fact that, at times, one physiological response system
showed a change in one direction, whereas another re-
sponse system showed either no change, or a change in
another direction. Take, for example, a night watchman
who hears a noise. He freezes-still as can be-and his
heart rate slows as he stares intently into the dark. At the
same time, his sweating increases, and he shows EEG
changes consistent with heightened activation. A uni-
tary conception of arousal has great difficulty account-
ing for these changes, and over the past 30 years, there
has been a growing sentimentthat the notion of general-
ized arousal is no longer tenable in its classical form.
A number of efforts to refine the notion of generic
arousal have been made in both animal and human lit-
eratures. For example, the animal literature supports a
distinction between the defense reaction and the vigi-
lance reaction (Fisher, 199l). Both reactions involve
increased physiological activation, but the defense re-
action (also known as the fight-or-flight response)
leads to increased arterial pressure, heart rate, and car-
diac output, with little change in total peripheral resis-
tance, whereas the vigilance reaction (also known as
thefreezing response) leads to decreased heart rate and
decreased cardiac output, but increased total peripheral
resistance. In the human literature, Tomaka,
Blascovich, Kelsey, and Leitten (1993) proposed a
similar distinction, which they referred to as challenge
versus threat.
These distinctions among different forms of
"arousal" are important. Eisenberg et ai. see the
child's state of physiological arousal as mediating be-
tween emotion regulation and social behavior. Thus,
when a child is confronted with another child who is
upset, Eisenberg et al. argue that, if the child is emo-
tionally competent (and has learned to regulate emo-
tions well), the child's response will be empathic. On
the other hand, if the child has not learned these emo-
tion regulatory skills, the other child's distress will
lead to increased physiological responding and to dis-
tress rather than empathic responding. However,
what are the physiological-response parameters that
affect the child's ability to produce socially compe-
tent behavior? Only by moving beyond global con-
ceptions of arousal will be it be possible to ascertain
which specific types of physiological activation (e.g.,
threat responses) are responsible for compromised
social competence.
Note
James J. Gross, Department of Psychology, Stan-
ford University, Jordan Hall, Building 420, Stanford,
CA 94305-2130. E-mail: james@psych.stanford.edu
References
Blascovich, J. (1992). A biopsychosocial approach to arousal regu-
lation. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 11,
213-237.
Cannon, W. B. (1929).Bodily changesinpain, hunger,fear, andrage
(2nd ed.). New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.
Duffy, E. (1962). Activation and behavior. New York: Wiley.
Fisher, L. (1991). Stress and cardiovascularphysiology in animals. In
M. R. Brown, G. F. Koob, & C. Rivier (Eds.), Stress:
Neurobiology and neuroendocrinology (pp. 463-474). New
York: Marcel Dekker.
Gross, I. J. (1998a). Antecedent- and response-focusedemotion reg-
ulation: Divergent consequences for experience, expression,
and physiology. Journal ofPersonali@ and Social Psychology,
74,224-237.
Gross, J. I. (1998b).The emerging field of emotion regulation: An in-
tegrative review. Review of General Psychology, 2, 271-299.
Hull, C. L. (1943). Principles (8 behavior. New York:
Appleton-Century-Crofts.
 COMMENTARIES
Lacey, J. I. (1967). Somatic response patterning and stress: Some re-
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(Eds.), Psychological stress: Issues in research @p. 14-37).
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Malmo, R. B. (1959). Activation: A neuropsychological dimension.
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Amy G. Halberstadt
Department of Psychology
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North Carolina State University
Emotion socialization is like a vast web in which
researchers tweak one strand after another in an at-
tempt to determine how the web works, which ele-
ments influence each other, and what the outcome of
changes in particular strands is over the course of
time. The metaphor of a web is particularly apt in the
study of emotional development, in which complex
interconnections among child characteristics, family
characteristics, peer relationships, the cultural envi-
ronment, and the process of maturation must be con-
sidered to understand how people develop their
emotional worlds. In their target article, Eisenberg,
Cumberland, and Spinrad make an important contri-
bution by outlining a comprehensive theory of how
the web of emotion socialization may work.
Eisenberg et al. contribute to the study of emotion
socialization in two ways. First, they bring together the
large and diverse literature on parental socialization of
emotion. They review the three main areas of research
in this area that have developed fairly independently:
parents' reactions to children's emotions, parents' dis-
cussion of emotion with their children, and family ex-
pression of emotion. The review is comprehensive and
thorough, and just by bringing this literature together,
it serves as a major contribution to the field.
Second, as part of the new wave of complex and so-
phisticated models on various aspects of socialization
(e.g., Cassidy, Parke, Butkovsky, & Braungart, 1992;
Dunsmore & Halberstadt, 1997; Gottman, Katz, &
Hooven, 1996), Eisenberg et al. contribute a complex
model on the socialization of emotion. With this
model, they have begun the insightful theorizing about
mediation and moderation that we need to advance the
field beyond simplistic models.
The model is rich in sources of influences, recog-
nizing that child, parent, contextual, and cultural char-
& J. W. Pennebaker (Eds.), Handbook of mental control (pp.
278-308). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Selye, H. (1956). The stress of lije. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Thompson, R. A. (1990). Emotion and self-regulation. In R. A.
Thompson (Ed.), Nebraska symposium on motivation: Vol. 36.
Socioemotional development (pp. 367-467). Lincoln: Univer-
sity of Nebraska Press.
Tomaka, J., Blascovich, J., Kelsey, R. M., & Leitten, C. L. (1993).
Subjective, physiological, and behavioral effects of threat
and challenge appraisal. Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, 65, 248-260.
acteristics all influence parental emotion-related so-
cialization behaviors (ERSBs). These behaviors are
perceived as impacting child socioemotional outcomes
both directly and via the child's level of arousal. In ad-
dition, the child's arousal is itself affected by a host of
moderators. Finally, the child's socioemotional out-
comes lead directly to his or her social behavior. This
model has the complexity and elegance to organize a
new generation of research, and it is worthy of contin-
ued discussion and modification.
Three areas regarding this model stand out as par-
ticularly intriguing for future research. First, how do
child characteristics (e.g., age, sex, and temperament)
impact parental ERSBs? There are at least two
ways-directly, as suggested by Eisenberg et al., and
indirectly, via parental beliefs and expectations about
those characteristics. The realities of age and temper-
ament (and possibly gender) impose constraints or
create opportunities for different parental ERSBs.
These variables, however, do not exist on their own.
Rather, they bring with them substantial meaning sys-
tems that are imbued with parental expectations, fan-
tasies, and goals. Thus, children of different ages and
temperaments will regulate emotions differently and
to varying degrees. Moreover, parents have different
beliefs and expectations about their children's ERSBs
based on what they perceive to be appropriate for
their child's age, sex, and temperament. These beliefs
and expectations may be harmonious with the child's
actual abilities; alternatively, child age and tempera-
ment may moderate to what degree and how parental
expectations are received, understood, and fulfilled.
Furthermore, parental expectations and child abilities
are usually interactive and changing over time. Thus,
these aspects of the system are complex and
transactional.