Emotion Regulation: How People Manage What They Feel

Emotion regulation is the set of processes by which people influence which emotions they have, when they have them, and how they experience and express them. James Gross (1998) defined it this way in his integrative review, and organized it as a process model: regulation can happen at five points in the emotion-generative process — choosing the situation, modifying it, directing attention, changing thoughts about it, and modulating the response. The practical question is not whether people regulate emotions — everyone does, constantly — but which strategies help, which cost more than they give, and when each one fits.

This article is educational, not therapy or treatment advice. It describes what research says about common regulation strategies. If emotions are seriously distressing, overwhelming, or interfering with daily life, a qualified professional is the right next step, not a summary of regulation research.

Table of Contents

The Process Model: Five Points of Intervention

Gross’s (1998) process model follows an emotion from trigger to response. Situation selection comes first: you choose whether to enter or avoid a situation — skipping a gathering you know will be hostile, or seeking out a friend when you need support. Situation modification changes a situation you are already in: lowering the music so conversation is possible, or asking a colleague to discuss a disagreement privately rather than in a meeting. Attentional deployment directs focus within a situation: concentrating on one friendly face during a stressful talk, or distracting yourself during a painful wait. Cognitive change reinterprets a situation’s meaning: viewing a job rejection as information about fit rather than a verdict on your worth. Response modulation acts after the emotion is underway: slowing your breathing, or suppressing the outward display of what you feel.

The first four are antecedent-focused — they act before the emotional response has fully formed. Response modulation is response-focused — it acts after. That timing distinction turns out to matter enormously, because strategies that act early generally change the feeling itself, while strategies that act late mostly change its display, at a cost.

Reappraisal: Changing the Interpretation

Cognitive reappraisal — changing how you think about a situation to alter its emotional impact — is the most studied and most consistently supported strategy. Gross (2002) reviewed experimental and individual-difference studies and found that reappraisal typically decreases both the experience of negative emotion and its outward expression, without impairing memory. People who habitually use reappraisal, in Gross and John’s (2003) five studies, experienced and expressed more positive emotion and less negative emotion, reported better interpersonal functioning, and reported greater well-being.

Reappraisal works because it intervenes at the appraisal stage, which is where the emotion’s meaning is set. If a colleague’s curt email is reinterpreted from “they disrespect me” to “they are rushed today,” the anger often fades on its own rather than needing to be suppressed. The strategy is not positive thinking: a reappraisal has to be believable to work, and reinterpreting a genuinely harmful situation as harmless is denial, not regulation. The skill lies in finding a plausible alternative reading, not any comforting one.

Suppression: Hiding the Display

Expressive suppression — inhibiting the outward signs of an emotion while it is underway — is common and understandable, especially where display rules demand it. But Gross (2002) found its profile is much worse than reappraisal’s: suppression decreases behavioral expression, yet fails to decrease the experience of negative emotion, impairs memory for the situation, and increases physiological responding — for the suppressor and for their social partner. Gross and John (2003) found the same pattern in everyday habits: habitual suppressors experienced and expressed less positive emotion, experienced more negative emotion, and reported worse interpersonal functioning.

That does not make suppression useless. Sometimes hiding a reaction is exactly right — during a negotiation, a ceremony, or a moment when expressing anger would cause harm. The research point is narrower: suppression is a display strategy, not a feeling strategy. It manages what others see, not what you feel, and it charges a cognitive and social price. Used occasionally and deliberately, that price may be worth paying; used as a default way of handling feelings, it tends to leave the feeling intact while taxing memory and relationships.

Other Strategies: Selection, Attention, and the Body

Situation selection is powerful but easy to overuse. Avoiding every anxiety-provoking situation regulates feeling in the short term while shrinking life in the long term — the avoided situation never gets a chance to prove less threatening than feared. The healthy version is selective: choosing situations wisely, not withdrawing broadly. Situation modification is usually cheaper: small changes to a situation — timing, setting, company — often change its emotional character without avoidance.

Attentional deployment includes distraction, which is genuinely useful for short, intense episodes (a medical procedure, a bout of pain) but unhelpful as a permanent answer, since the situation waits unchanged. It also includes concentration — deliberately focusing on the least distressing part of a situation — and mindfulness-style attention, which observes feelings without immediately acting on them. Response modulation beyond suppression includes physiological strategies: slow breathing, progressive muscle relaxation, and exercise all change the body’s arousal directly, which is why they help even though they do not change the situation’s meaning.

What Works When: Fit Matters More Than Rankings

No strategy is best in every case, and the research supports a fit principle. Reappraisal works well when you have time and cognitive resources and the situation genuinely admits another interpretation. Suppression fits brief, high-stakes displays. Distraction fits short, unchangeable episodes. Situation selection fits recurring, avoidable triggers — but not feared situations that need confronting. Breathing and relaxation fit high-arousal moments when thinking clearly is hard.

Two further findings qualify any simple ranking. First, flexibility beats any single strategy: people who can switch strategies as situations change fare better than people locked into one approach, however good it is. Second, goals matter: regulating to feel better immediately and regulating to achieve a longer-term aim (having a hard conversation well, performing under pressure) can call for different strategies. The question is never just “what works?” but “what works here, for this feeling, for this purpose?”

Common Mistakes in Managing Emotions

The most common mistake is confusing suppression with regulation — believing that because an emotion is hidden, it has been handled. A second is treating all negative emotions as problems to eliminate: sadness after a loss, fear before a real risk, and anger at a genuine wrong carry information, and regulating them away entirely means losing the signal. A third is applying one strategy everywhere: reappraising everything can become avoidance of facts, and distracting from everything can become a life of postponed confrontations.

A subtler mistake is regulating the wrong part. If the real problem is a situation — an exploitative job, a harmful relationship — no amount of reappraisal fixes it; the effective regulation is situation modification or selection, including leaving. Emotion regulation is a toolkit for managing responses, not a substitute for changing circumstances that should change.

Key Takeaways

Emotion regulation means influencing which emotions you have, when, and how you experience and express them (Gross, 1998).
The process model offers five intervention points: situation selection, situation modification, attentional deployment, cognitive change, and response modulation (Gross, 1998).
Reappraisal — changing a situation’s interpretation — typically reduces negative feeling and expression without impairing memory (Gross, 2002).
Habitual reappraisers report more positive emotion, better relationships, and greater well-being; habitual suppressors report the reverse (Gross & John, 2003).
Suppression hides expression but does not reduce feeling, impairs memory, and raises physiological responding (Gross, 2002).
No single strategy fits every case: fit to the situation, the feeling, and the goal matters more than any ranking, and flexibility beats rigidity.

References

Gross, J. J. (1998). The emerging field of emotion regulation: An integrative review. Review of General Psychology, 2(3), 271–299. https://doi.org/10.1037/1089-2680.2.3.271
Gross, J. J. (2002). Emotion regulation: Affective, cognitive, and social consequences. Psychophysiology, 39, 281–291. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0048577201393198
Gross, J. J., & John, O. P. (2003). Individual differences in two emotion regulation processes: Implications for affect, relationships, and well-being. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85(2), 348–362. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.85.2.348

Keep Exploring

What is emotion regulation?

The processes by which people influence which emotions they have, when they have them, and how they experience and express them (Gross, 1998).

What is the difference between reappraisal and suppression?

Reappraisal changes how you interpret a situation before the emotion fully forms, which usually reduces the feeling itself; suppression hides the outward display after the emotion is underway, which usually leaves the feeling intact (Gross, 2002).

Is suppression always bad?

No. It is useful for brief, high-stakes moments when displaying an emotion would cause harm. Its costs — unchanged feeling, impaired memory, higher physiological arousal — make it a poor default strategy (Gross, 2002).

Does emotion regulation mean getting rid of negative emotions?

No. Negative emotions carry information, and the goal is usually to manage their intensity, duration, and expression so they inform rather than overwhelm — not to eliminate them.

What is the best emotion regulation strategy?

There is no single best one. Reappraisal is the most broadly supported, but fit matters: the right strategy depends on the situation, the feeling, the time available, and the goal, and flexible switching beats any fixed approach.