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Title

Sarah Swann

Appalachian State University

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Abstract
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Title of Longer Length

Emotional regulation is the ability of an individual to control how their emotions are

expressed, how they experience their emotions, and/or when their emotions are expressed.

According to James J. Gross (2014), the process model of emotion regulation adds to the modal

model of emotion regulation by adding five levels that correspond with situation, attention,

appraisal, and response. Emotion regulation dictates which step in the model one will attempt to

control the emotion. The first level in the process model of emotional regulation is situation

selection. This stage happens before the situation has occurred. The individual may choose to

avoid the situation all together, and thus avoid the emotional response. After the situation has

been presented, the individual can either change the situation, or change their position within the

situation. This is called situation modification. If the situation has been found to be unchangeable

then the individual can decide the amount of attention they wish to give to the situation. This

level would be attentional deployment. Cognitive change occurs when the individual gives

attention to the situation then, in order to practice emotion regulation, they choose to change the

way they think about the situation. The final step in the process model of emotional regulation,

response modulation, assumes that the situation is unavoidable, attention must be given to the

situation, and changing the way one thinks about the situation is not possible. In this step, the

individual attempts to alter their emotional reactions to the situation. Emotion regulation is

important because it helps to reduce highly emotional responses to stressful situations. There

were two types of emotion regulation strategies that were employed for this study. They were

emotion suppression and cognitive reappraisal. The question being investigated in this study is

whether cognitive reappraisal or emotional suppression have more positive long-term outcomes.
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Reappraisal is a coping strategy that entails changing the way you think about a situation

to regulate emotional responses. Suppression means that the individual is already in the act of

feeling the emotion and they attempt to suppress the outward suppression of that emotion. For

example, if someone is about to cry but they force a smile to keep others from seeing they are

upset. Reappraisal is an “Antecedent-Focused Strategy” because the action of feeling the

emotion has not occurred yet. The individual changes the way they think about a situation before

the situation causes the emotional response. Suppression is a “Response-Focused Strategy”

because the individual is already in the act of physically responding to the emotion when they

decide to suppress it (Gross & John, 2003).

Gross and John (2003) found that individuals who employed the use of reappraisal more

often than suppression reported a higher experience of positive emotions and a low experience of

negative emotions. The authors used a PANAS self-report including a 20-item scale with a

discrete emotions measure with individuals rating how much they experience six positive and six

negative emotions. The peer reports indicated that the participants who use reappraisal express

and experience more positive emotions than negative emotions. Participants who used

suppression more frequently expressed and experienced less positive emotion. Emotional

expression was measured by the participants indicating how much they expressed their emotions

based on the same six positive and six negative affective states from question one. They also had

peers rate how much a participant expressed these emotions based on their interactions with

others. From this study, it was shown that individuals who regularly employ cognitive

reappraisal experienced more positive emotional experience and less negative emotional

experience, while those who used suppression experienced more negative supporting our theory
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that reappraisal leads to long-term positive outcomes and suppression leads to long-term negative

outcomes.

Kalokerinos, Greenaway, and Denson (2015) found similar results in their study, which

measured the effects of reappraisal and suppression on the downregulation of positive and

negative emotional experiences. The target emotions of amusement and sadness were first

measured using 18 emotion words before watching a sad or amusing movie to create a baseline.

The same measure was administered after the film and participants were instructed to rate how

they felt during the film. Their findings indicated that reappraisal was more effective in reducing

both positive and negative emotional experiences than suppression and the control. This research

supports our study by showing that reappraisal is affective at lessening the experience of both

positive and negative emotions.

A study Geisler and Schröder-Abé (2012) researched the effects of self-regulatory

strength on the experience of positive and negative emotions after using emotional suppression.

The study measured heart rate to determine the ability of the participant to self-regulate. The

method included couples that discussed an ongoing issue between them. Negative affect,

relationship satisfaction, and spontaneous expressive suppression were measured. The findings

indicated that the participants experienced more negative emotions the more they suppressed

their expression. This was, however, shown to have the greatest effect on those with low self-

regulatory strength. For those with high self-regulatory strength, suppression was shown to have

a positive affect on their interpersonal relationship and relationship satisfaction. This study is

important to our research because it supported the finding that suppression leave to long-term

negative effects. However, it also showed the suppression is beneficial to social interactions and

relationships during arguments.

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Unlike the studies above, this analysis utilized self-reports instead of experimental

conditions to discover an individual’s likelihood of using emotional suppression or cognitive

reappraisal, and their experiences of positive and negative emotion. This study seeks to establish

reappraisal as the method of emotion regulation with long-term positive outcomes. These

findings are important because they could help lead to more positive emotional experience. The

use of reappraisal versus suppression could give individuals a method of emotion regulation that

will not negatively affect their emotional experiences. Participant’s experience positive and

negative emotion was measured using self-reports. The results were then correlated with self-

reports of emotional suppression and cognitive reappraisal. It was hypothesized that the use of

reappraisal should be associated with increase signs of positive emotion, and decreased signs of

negative emotion. A second hypothesis was that the use of suppression should be associated with

increased signs of negative emotion, and decreased positive feelings but not expressions.

Method

Participants

Participants included 34 women and 18 men. Ages ranged from 18 to 36. The participants were

selected from the research methods class who participated as a part of their coursework.

Materials

Emotion Regulation Questionnaire. The Emotion Regulation Questionnaire is a 10-

item questionnaire that measures the different levels of emotion reappraisal and suppression an

individual uses. The participant rates their levels of reappraisal and suppression based on a scale

from one (strongly disagree) to seven (strongly agree). There are six items that correlate with

reappraisal, and four items that correlate with suppression. An example of a reappraisal question

would be, “Between 1 (strongly disagree) and 7 (strongly agree), in a stressful situation do you
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change the way you think about the event?” An example of a suppression question would be,

“Between 1 (strongly disagree) and 7 (strongly agree), do you hide your emotional expressions

so others cannot see you are upset?” Internal reliability of this scale was determined by an alpha

score. Reappraisal had an average of .79, and suppression had an average of .73. Test-retest

reliability was also tested and found to have a score of .69 for both the initial scale and the repeat

score three months later. The scale was shown to have criterion validity when compared to

gender and minority differences in emotional expression. Content validity was determined by the

scale including expressions of both positive and negative emotions. The research had face

validity by using clear language in the questions which determined if the individual used

suppression or appraisal more frequently.

Positive and Negative Affect Schedule. The Positive and Negative Affect Schedule

(PANAS) uses ten positive descriptor terms to measure the level of positive expressivity and ten

terms to measure negative expressivity (Watson, Clark, & Tellegen, 1988). These terms have

low secondary meaning rating and a high relevance rating in terms of the positive or negative

qualities of the terms. The participants rate their level of emotional expression according to a

five-point scale from very slightly or not at all, a little, moderately, quite a bit, and very much,

for a specific time frame (i.e. in the last week, in the last month). The researchers used test-retest

reliability and found that as the time frame lengthened the reliability of the test increased. Each

term has little to no double meaning of positive or negative expressions respectively. When

compared to other similar tests, the PANAS scale was found to be interchangeable, and offers

the participant a shorter and more straightforward test.

Berkeley Expressivity Questionnaire. The Berkeley Expressivity Questionnaire (BEQ)

measures the participant’s emotional expressivity through a 16-point self-report scale (Gross, &
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John, 1997). The participants rate their level of agreement or disagreement based on a 1 to 7

rating with 1 being strongly disagree and 7 being strongly agree. An example of a negative

expression from the questionnaire would be, “No matter how nervous or upset I am, I tend to

keep a calm exterior.” An example of a positive expression question according to the BEQ would

be, “When I’m happy, my feelings show.” The questionnaire shows convergent and discriminant

validity with strong positive correlations to a peer rated composite.

Procedure

Questionnaires were completed on the first day of the research methods class. The questionnaires

were offered in the following order: BEQ, ERQ, and PANAS.

Results

Reappraisal

As indicated in Table 1, there was a statistically significant positive correlation between

reappraisal and positive feelings. There was also a moderate positive correlation between

reappraisal and positive emotion expression. However, this relationship was not statistically

significant. As expected, reappraisal and negative emotion feelings were moderately negatively

correlated, and had statistical significance. Negative emotion expression and reappraisal had a

small negative correlation that was not statistically significant.

Suppression

Suppression was found to have a strong negative correlation with negative emotion

expression according to the BEQ. This correlation was statistically significant. There was also a

strong statistically significant negative correlation between suppression and negative emotion

feeling. As expected, there was a statistically significant moderate negative correlation between
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suppression and positive emotion expression. Suppression and positive feelings were shown to

have a small to moderate negative correlation that was not statistically significant.

Discussion

The results of this study indicated that reappraisal is more closely related to positive

emotional experience than suppression. Furthermore, frequent use of reappraisal showed a

decrease in negative feelings. Individuals who used reappraisal as their main means of emotion

regulation were more likely to experience long-term positive emotions. Use of suppression, on

the other hand, was seen to increase the experience and expression of negative feelings. Also,

suppression diminished the expression of positive emotions.

The findings in large part agreed with the findings of Gross and John (2003). Both studies

found a positive relationship between reappraisal and experience of positive emotions, and a

negative relationship between suppression and experience of positive emotions. There was one

difference to our findings that is significant. There was an outlier in the suppression and negative

feelings relationship. This could be attributed to the self-report measures, and also that we did

not employ peer ratings when studying a participants use of reappraisal and suppression, and

emotional expression. Peer ratings could reduce the effects of faking good or bad in response to

questions regarding cognitive reappraisal and suppression. There were some limitations to this

study. The results can only be generalized to the population of students taking research methods,

as all the participants were students of the research methods class. Furthermore, there was a

relatively small sample size of only 52 students. Furthermore, this study utilized only college-

aged students who participated as a part of their academic grade. This represents a convenience

sample with a restriction of range in regards to the average ages of those measured. The
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restriction of range could question the statistical validity of our findings. This also might have

affected the self-report results with a possibility of faking good or bad.

While this study presented similar results to that of Gross and John (2003), further

research into the effects of suppression and reappraisal on the experience of positive and

negative emotions is still needed. Future studies should include a larger sample size with greater

variance between participants and types of measurements used. From this study, however, it is

apparent that reappraisal is an affective strategy of emotional regulation that maintains positive

emotional experience and expression, while suppression is detrimental to positive emotional

experience, but not expression.

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References

Geisler, F. M., Schröder-Abé, M. (2015). Is emotion suppression beneficial or harmful? It

depends on self-regulatory strength. Motivation and Emotion, 39, 553-562. doi:

10.1037/t00437-000

Gross, J. J. (2014). Emotion regulation: Conceptual and empirical foundations. In J. J. Gross, &

J. J. Gross (Eds.), Handbook of emotion regulation (2nd ed.) (pp. 3-20). New York, NY,

US: Guilford Press.

Gross, J. J., & John, O. P. (2003). Individual differences in two emotional regulation processes:

Implications for affect, relationships, and well-being. Journal of Personality and Social

Psychology, 85, 348-362. doi: 10.1037/0022-3514.85.2.348

Gross, J.J, & John, O.P. (1997). Revealing feelings: Facets of emotional expressivity in self-

reports, peer ratings, and behavior. Journals of Personality and Social Psychology, 72,

435-448. doi: 10.1037/0022-3514.72.2.435

Kalokerinos, E. K., Greenaway, K. H., & Denson, T. F. (2015). Reappraisal but not suppression

downregulates the experience of positive and negative emotion. Emotion, 15, 271-275.

doi: 10.1037/emo0000025

Watson, D., Clark, L.A., & Tellegen, A. (1988). Development and validation of brief measures

of positive and negative affect: The PANAS scales. Journal of Personality and Social

Psychology, 54, 1063-1070. doi: 10.1037/0022-3514.54.6.1063

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Table 1

Effects of Reappraisal and Suppression on Emotional Expression and Feeling

Emotion Regulation Strategies

Reappraisal Suppression

Positive Emotion

Feelings (PANAS) .62** -.23

Expression (BEQ) .22 -.34*

Negative Emotion

Feelings (PANAS) -.31* -.36**

Expression (BEQ) -.05 -.56**

Note. PANAS= Positive and Negative Affect Schedule; BEQ = Berkeley Expressivity
Questionnaire. *p < .05; ** p < .01