Effective regulation of affect: An action control perspective on emotion regulation

By Thomas Llewelyn Webb, Inge Schweiger Gallo, E. Miles, Peter M. Gollwitzer, P. Sheeran. 2012

216 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The present review adopts an action control perspective on emotion regulation, contextualising the gap between emotion control goals (e.g., I want to remain calm) and emotional outcomes (e.g., anger, anxiety, and aggression) in terms of the broader literature on goal pursuit. We propose that failure to effectively regulate emotions can result from difficulties with the self-regulatory tasks of (i) identifying the need to regulate, (ii) deciding whether and how to regulate, and (iii) enacting a regulation strategy. Next we review evidence that a technique traditionally associated with regulating behavioural goals (forming implementation intentions or “if-then” planning) can help to overcome these difficulties. Meta-analysis indicated that forming implementation intentions is effective in modifying emotional outcomes, with a large effect relative to no regulation instructions (k = 21, N = 1306 d + = 0.91, 95% CI = 0.61 to 1.20) and a medium-sized effect relative to goal intention instructions (k = 29, N = 1208, d + = 0.53, 95% CI = 0.42 to 0.65). Our conclusion is that research on emotion regulation might benefit from an action control perspective and the interventions that this perspective offers.

Subfields: Applied Psychology, Clinical Psychology, Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/9251b887f764dacf6272b3c2e6b9eb55163be49b

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In Applied Psychology

In Clinical Psychology

In Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

Citations in the corpus

Coping, Emotion Regulation and Psychopathology in Childhood and Adolescence: A Meta-Analysis and Narrative Review (2017, background): “Several reviews have examined the associations between coping and emotion regulation and symptoms of psychopathology in adults (e.g., Aldao et al., 2010; Nolen-Hoeksema, 2012; Webb et al., 2012).”