EARLY CAREER AWARD
Emotion regulation: Affective, cognitive,
and social consequences
JAMES J. GROSS
Department of Psychology, Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA
Abstract
One of life’s great challenges is successfully regulating emotions. Do some emotion regulation strategies have more to
recommend them than others? According to Gross’s ~1998, Review of General Psychology, 2, 271–299! process model
of emotion regulation, strategies that act early in the emotion-generative process should have a different profile of
consequences than strategies that act later on. This review focuses on two commonly used strategies for down-regulating
emotion. The first, reappraisal, comes early in the emotion-generative process. It consists of changing the way a
situation is construed so as to decrease its emotional impact. The second, suppression, comes later in the emotiongenerative
process. It consists of inhibiting the outward signs of inner feelings. Experimental and individual-difference
studies find reappraisal is often more effective than suppression. Reappraisal decreases emotion experience and
behavioral expression, and has no impact on memory. By contrast, suppression decreases behavioral expression, but
fails to decrease emotion experience, and actually impairs memory. Suppression also increases physiological responding
for suppressors and their social partners. This review concludes with a consideration of five important directions for
future research on emotion regulation processes.
Descriptors: Emotion, Regulation, Suppression, Reappraisal
Emotions represent the “wisdom of the ages” ~Lazarus, 1991,
p. 820!, providing time-tested responses to recurrent adaptive problems.
Importantly, however, emotions do not force us to respond in
certain ways, they only make it more likely we will do so. This
malleability permits us to regulate our emotions. When afraid, we
may run, but do not always do so. When angry, we may strike, but
do not always do so. And when amused, we may laugh, but do not
always do so. How we regulate our emotions matters: Our wellbeing
is inextricably linked to our emotions.
The study of emotion regulation has roots that go back over a
century to early psychoanalytic theorizing about the nature of
psychological defenses ~Breuer & Freud, 189501957; Freud, 1946!.
A second—and related—tributary has been the stress and coping
tradition ~Lazarus, 1966; Lazarus & Folkman, 1984!. Together,
these pioneering theoretical efforts laid the groundwork for contemporary
empirical work on emotion regulation in both children
~Thompson, 1991! and adults ~Gross, 1998b!. In the following
sections, I first discuss definitional issues associated with emotion
regulation, and present a process model of emotion regulation that
provides an overarching conceptual framework. This framework
suggests that different forms of emotion regulation should have
different consequences. In the subsequent sections, I then focus on
the affective, cognitive, and social consequences of two commonly
used forms of emotion down-regulation. The first, reappraisal,
involves changing how we think about a situation in order to
decrease its emotional impact. The second, suppression, involves
inhibiting ongoing emotion-expressive behavior. Finally, I suggest
several directions for future research.
Emotion and Emotion Regulation
Emotions arise when something important to us is at stake. Sometimes,
emotions are triggered virtually automatically, such as when
we recoil fearfully from a snake ~LeDoux, 1995!. At other times,
emotions arise only after considerable meaning analysis, such as
when we grow angry after hearing a belittling comment made
about a friend ~Frijda, 1986!. In either case, emotions call forth a
coordinated set of behavioral, experiential, and physiological response
tendencies that together influence how we respond to perceived
challenges and opportunities.
This article is based on an Early Career Award address given at the
Society for Psychophysiological Research in October, 2000. This article
reviews the recipient’s research on emotion regulation, and draws most
heavily upon Gross ~2001! and Gross and John ~in press!. The research
described in this article was supported by Grant MH58147 from the
National Institute of Mental Health and Grants BCS-93679 and SBR-
9728989 from the National Science Foundation. The author gratefully
acknowledges the influence of his graduate mentor, Robert Levenson, with
whom this work was begun. The author also thanks Oliver John and
members of the Stanford Psychophysiology Laboratory ~http:
00www-psych.stanford.edu0;
psyphy0! for their ongoing contributions to
this program of research.
Address reprint requests to: James Gross, Department of Psychology,
Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305-2130. E-mail: james@psych.
stanford.edu.
Psychophysiology, 39 ~2002!, 281–291. Cambridge University Press. Printed in the USA.
Copyright © 2002 Society for Psychophysiological Research
DOI: 10.1017.S0048577201393198
281
Our emotional responses often dovetail nicely with the demands
of our varying life circumstances. At such times, our emotions
serve us well ~Tooby & Cosmides, 1990!. However, emotional
responses can also mislead us, particularly when contemporary
physical and social environments differ dramatically from those
that shaped our emotions over the millennia ~Gross, 1999a!. At
such times, our emotional responses may do far more harm than
good. When our emotions seem to be ill-matched to a given
situation, we frequently try to regulate our emotional responses so
that they better serve our goals.
Emotion Regulation
Emotion regulation refers to the processes by which we influence
which emotions we have, when we have them, and how we
experience and express them ~Gross, 1998b!. Because emotions
are multicomponential processes that unfold over time, emotion
regulation involves changes in “emotion dynamics” ~Thompson,
1990!, or the latency, rise time, magnitude, duration, and offset of
responses in behavioral, experiential, or physiological domains.
Emotion regulation also involves changes in how response components
are interrelated as the emotion unfolds, such as when
increases in physiological responding occur in the absence of overt
behavior.
Three aspects of this conception of emotion regulation deserve
comment. First, although individuals often try to decrease negative
emotion, there is more to emotion regulation than this. Individuals
increase, maintain, and decrease negative and positive emotions
~Parrott, 1993!. Second, many examples of emotion regulation are
conscious, such as deciding to change an upsetting topic, or biting
one’s lip when angry. However, emotion regulation may also occur
without conscious awareness, such as when one exaggerates one’s
joy upon receiving an unattractive present ~Cole, 1986!, or when
one quickly shifts attention away from something upsetting ~Boden
& Baumeister, 1997!. Third, emotion regulation is neither inherently
good nor bad. The same strategies that permit medical professionals
to operate successfully ~Smith & Kleinman, 1989! may
also neutralize empathic distress in torturers ~Bandura, 1977!.
A Process Model of Emotion Regulation
One particularly vexing problem in studying emotion regulation is
finding a way of organizing the potentially limitless number of
emotion regulation strategies. Our approach has been to develop a
process model of emotion regulation that shows how specific
strategies can be differentiated along the timeline of the unfolding
emotional response ~Gross, 1998b; 2001!. The fundamental claim
of this model is that emotion regulation strategies differ in when
they have their primary impact on the emotion-generative process,
as shown in Figure 1.
At the broadest level, we can draw a distinction between
antecedent- and response-focused emotion regulation strategies.
Antecedent-focused strategies refer to things we do before the
emotion response tendencies have become fully activated and have
changed our behavior and peripheral physiological responding. An
example of antecedent-focused regulation is seeing a job interview
as an opportunity to learn more about the company, rather than as
a pass–fail test. Response-focused strategies refer to things we do
once an emotion is already underway, after the response tendencies
have been generated. An example of response-focused regulation
is keeping one’s anxiety from showing as one leaves a child at
kindergarten for the first time.
Five more specific families of emotion regulation strategies can
be located within this broad scheme ~for a more detailed discussion
of these regulation strategies, see Gross, 1998b!. The first of these
strategies is situation selection, denoted in Figure 1 by the solid
line toward situation one ~S1! rather than situation two ~S2!.
Situation selection refers to approaching or avoiding certain people,
places, or things so as to regulate emotion. For example, you
may decide to have dinner with a friend who always makes you
laugh the night before a big exam ~S1!, rather than going to the
last-minute study session with other nervous students ~S2!. Often,
Figure 1. A process model of emotion regulation. According to this model, emotion may be regulated at five points in the emotion
generative process: ~1! selection of the situation; ~2! modification of the situation; ~3! deployment of attention; ~4! change of cognitions;
and ~5! modulation of experiential, behavioral, or physiological responses. The first four of these are antecedent focused, the fifth is
response focused. The number of response options shown at each of these five points is arbitrary, and the heavy line indicates the
particular option selected in the example given in the text. Two specific emotion regulation strategies—reappraisal and suppression—
are the primary focus of this review. Adapted from Gross ~2001!.
282 J.J. Gross
situation selection involves complex trade-offs between short- and
long-term emotional benefits. For example, a shy person’s efforts
to decrease anxiety by avoiding social situations may provide
short-term relief at the cost of longer term social isolation ~Leary,
1986!.
Once selected, a situation may be tailored so as to modify its
emotional impact, creating either S1x, S1y, or S1z. This constitutes
situation modification, which has also been referred to as problemfocused
coping ~Lazarus & Folkman, 1984! or as primary control
~Rothbaum, Weisz, & Snyder, 1982!. For example, continuing
with the example of the exam, if you are talking with your friend
the night before a big exam, and he asks whether you are ready for
the exam, you can make it clear that you would rather talk about
something else. Here too, considerable guesswork is often involved
as one judges the likely impact of one’s efforts to change a
situation.
Third, situations have different aspects ~e.g., a1, a2, a3, a4, a5!,
and attentional deployment is used to select which of the many
aspects of the situation you focus on. An example is distracting
yourself from a conversation that has taken an upsetting turn by
counting ceiling tiles ~Nix, Watson, Pyszczynski, & Greenberg,
1995!. Attentional deployment also includes efforts to concentrate
particularly intensely on a particular topic or task ~see Csikszentmihalyi,
1975!, or to get to the bottom of a problem by ruminating
about it ~Nolen-Hoeksema, 1993!.
Once you have focused on a particular aspect of the situation,
cognitive change refers to selecting which of the many possible
meanings ~e.g., m1, m2, m3! you will attach to that aspect. For
example, you might remind yourself that “it’s only a test” ~m2!,
rather than seeing the exam as a measure of your value as a human
being ~m1!. Cognitive change is often used to decrease the emotional
response. However, it also may be used to magnify the
emotional response, and even to change the emotion itself ~e.g.,
transforming anger at a bully into pity!. The personal meaning that
is assigned to the situation is crucial because it powerfully influences
which experiential, behavioral, and physiological response
tendencies will be generated in that particular situation.
Finally, response modulation refers to attempts to influence
emotion response tendencies once they already have been elicited.
Response modulation is illustrated in Figure 1 by decreasing expressive
behavior ~Ϫ!. In our example of the exam, response
modulation might take the form of hiding your embarrassment
after miserably failing the exam. Other targets of response modulation
include the experiential and physiological components of
emotion. As is widely appreciated, drugs may be used to target
physiological responses such as cardiac hyperreactivity ~beta blockers!;
drugs also may be used to target affective states such as
anxiety and depression.
Consequences of Emotion Regulation
It is clear that there are many, many different ways a person can go
about regulating emotion. One pressing question is whether some
emotion regulation strategies have more to recommend them than
others. Are there better and worse ways to regulate emotion?
To address this question, we have conducted a series of experimental
and individual-difference studies that have focused on just
two of these many forms of regulation. Both involve the downregulation
of emotion, which is a common and valued emotionregulatory
goal. The first is cognitive reappraisal, which is a type
of cognitive change, and thus antecedent focused. Reappraisal is
defined as construing a potentially emotion-eliciting situation in
nonemotional terms. The second is expressive suppression, which is
a type of response modulation, and thus response focused. Suppression
is defined as inhibiting ongoing emotion-expressive behavior.
By comparing two emotion regulation strategies, we can ask
whether different emotion regulation strategies indeed produce
different profiles of consequences. By including a “no regulation”
condition as a control condition, we can compare each regulation
strategy to whatever participants do when they are not told to
regulate. It is worth noting that because participants in the “no
regulation” condition are in fact free to regulate if they so choose,
a comparison between one of the regulation conditions and the
control condition provides a quite conservative test of the hypothesized
consequences of these forms of emotion regulation.
Our aim in this research has been to coordinate experimental
and individual-difference studies in order to better understand the
differing consequences of two important forms of emotion regulation
~Gross & John, in press!. In our experimental studies, we
have explicitly manipulated reappraisal and suppression. In our
individual-difference studies, we have used questionnaire measures
that assess the use of reappraisal and suppression. The logic
of this comparative design hinges on the premise that whereas
antecedent-focused forms of emotion regulation ~such as reappraisal!
principally concern whether or not emotion response tendencies
are triggered, response-focused strategies ~such as
suppression! concern how emotion response tendencies are modulated
once they have been triggered. In the sections that follow, I
review our findings concerning the affective, cognitive, and social
consequences of reappraisal and suppression.
Affective Consequences
One major aim of emotion regulation, naturally enough, is to
modify emotional responding. Do reappraisal and suppression differ
in their affective consequences? Based on our process model of
emotion regulation, efforts to down-regulate emotion through reappraisal
should alter the trajectory of the entire emotional response,
leading to lesser experiential, behavioral, and physiological
responses. Suppression, by contrast, should decrease expressive
behavior, but should not decrease emotion experience, and might
even increase physiological responses due to the effort associated
with inhibiting ongoing emotion-expressive behavior. To what
extent have these predictions been born out by prior research?
In an influential set of laboratory studies, Lazarus and colleagues
provided the first evidence that reappraisal-like processes
could influence emotional responding ~Lazarus & Opton, 1966!. In
one representative study, Lazarus showed students a filmed circumcision
ritual and manipulated the accompanying soundtrack
~Lazarus & Alfert, 1964!. Some participants heard a soundtrack
that had been designed to minimize the negative emotional impact
of the film by denying the pain involved in the surgery and
emphasizing its joyful aspects. Other participants heard no sound
track at all. Compared with the no soundtrack condition, participants
who heard the soundtrack had lower skin conductance levels
and more pleasant mood ratings. These findings suggest that leading
participants to view the film less negatively decreased the
stressfulness of what otherwise would have been a quite distressing
experience. However, methodological features of this study
such as differing delays across conditions between baselines and
film viewing, as well as subsequent failures of replication ~e.g.,
Steptoe & Vogele, 1986!, leave some doubt as to whether reappraisal
can in fact “short-circuit” the emotional response.
Findings concerning emotion suppression also have been mixed.
The individual-difference literature has shown that emotionally
Emotion regulation 283
inexpressive individuals often are more physiologically reactive
than expressive individuals ~e.g., Buck, 1979; Jones, 1935, 1950,
1960; Notarius & Levenson, 1979!. One interpretation of this
finding is that inexpressive individuals suppress their emotions,
which leads to increased physiological responding. However, as
Cacioppo and colleagues have argued, there are many other ways
to interpret this correlational finding ~Cacioppo et al., 1992!. In the
experimental literature—dubbed the facial feedback literature—
two studies have shown that holding a fixed facial position that
prevented smiling led to decreased amusement while reading cartoons
~McCanne & Anderson, 1987; Strack, Martin, & Stepper,
1988!. A third study showed that suppressing pride-expressive
behavior decreased pride experience ~Stepper & Strack, 1993!.
Other research reports have examined the physiological consequences
of suppression. Compared to subjects who responded
spontaneously, Bush, Barr, McHugo, and Lanzetta ~1989! found
that subjects instructed to inhibit their expressive behavior had
similar heart rates but lower self-reports of amusement during a
filmed comedy routine. Zuckerman, Klorman, Larrance, and Spiegel
~1981! found that subjects instructed to respond with neutral
facial expressions to pleasant and unpleasant films had lesser
increases in a composite measure of physiological arousal than
subjects instructed to respond naturally. Taken together, these findings
concerning suppression suggest decreases in positive emotion
experience, but the physiological effects of suppression are not
clear.
Affective Consequences of Reappraisal and
Suppression: Experimental Data
To test whether reappraisal and suppression have different consequences
for behavioral, experiential, and physiological responses,
we used a short film that showed an arm amputation to elicit
disgust ~Gross, 1998a!. We administered specific instructions to
participants who had been randomly assigned to one of three
experimental conditions. In the first, subjects were asked to think
about what they were seeing in such a way that they did not feel
anything at all ~reappraise!. In the second, subjects were asked to
hide their emotional reactions ~suppress!. In the third, subjects
simply watched the films ~control!.
Results indicated that suppression and reappraisal could indeed
be distinguished. Suppression decreased disgust-expressive behavior,
and increased sympathetic activation of the cardiovascular and
electrodermal systems ~Figure 2!. Like suppression, reappraisal
decreased expressive behavior. Unlike suppression, however, reappraisal
had no observable consequences in terms of sympathetic
activation of the cardiovascular or electrodermal systems. Whereas
suppress participants showed greater increases in sympathetic activation
than watch or reappraise subjects, these latter two groups
did not differ from one another. Also unlike suppression, reappraisal
decreased disgust experience, whereas suppression had no
effect on disgust experience.
One concern regarding the finding that reappraisal decreased
negative emotion experience is that it might be due to demand
characteristics. After all, in the reappraisal condition participants
were asked to feel less emotion. However, the finding that reappraisal
decreases emotional responding has been replicated using a
behavioral measure ~the magnitude of a startle response to a loud
noise burst! as an index of emotional state ~Jackson, Malmstadt,
Larson, & Davidson, 2000!.
Related studies have examined the boundary conditions of the
effects of suppression. For example, Gross and Levenson ~1997!
examined a second negative emotion—sadness—as well as a posFigure
2. Affective consequences of reappraisal and suppression. Mean change in finger pulse amplitude for the three instructional
groups. Note that the ordinate’s scale is orientated so that increased sympathetic activation is upward. Used with permission from Gross
~1998a!.
284 J.J. Gross
itive emotion, namely amusement. Consistent with expectations,
suppressing sadness and amusement led to increased sympathetic
activation of the cardiovascular system, as indexed by changes in
finger pulse amplitude, finger temperature, and pulse transit times
to the finger and ear. Similarly, Harris ~2001! has found that
suppressing visible signs of embarrassment leads to enhanced
blood pressure responses, but does not affect emotion experience
reports.
It is noteworthy that whereas suppressing negative emotionexpressive
behavior has no discernible impact on negative emotion
experience ~e.g., disgust, sadness, embarrassment!, suppressing
positive emotion-expressive behavior does have an impact on
positive emotion experience ~e.g., amusement!. Gross and Levenson
~1997! found a suppression effect for amusement experience
both in a context that predominantly elicited amusement ~an amusement
film! and in a context in which there were lower levels of
amusement ~a sadness film that evoked a bit of secondary amusement!.
This finding jibes with prior scattered reports from the
facial feedback tradition that inhibiting amusement ~e.g., McCanne
& Anderson, 1987; Strack, Martin, & Stepper, 1988! and pride
~e.g., Stepper & Strack, 1993! expressive behavior leads to decreases
in the self-reports of these positive emotions. It is not yet
clear why the effects of suppression on emotion experience vary
for positive and negative emotions. It seems likely, however, that
a complete analysis of the experiential effects of suppressing
negative versus positive emotions will require consideration of
individual differences in sensitivity to facial feedback ~Duclos &
Laird, 2001!.
If the experiential and physiological effects we have described
really are the result of suppressing ongoing emotion-expressive
behavior, suppressing nonemotional behavior should have no such
consequences. To test this critical boundary condition, we examined
participants’ responses during a neutral film ~Gross & Levenson,
1997!. This film produced low levels of self-reported emotion
and nonemotional expressive behavior such as lip biting and yawning.
As expected, suppression decreased nonemotional behavior,
and no differences were found between suppress and watch subjects
for any of the physiological or experiential variables. This
finding shows that the physiological impact of emotion suppression
grows out of the counterpoising of attempts to inhibit expression
against strong impulses to express. Absent a stimulus that
produces impulses to express, behavioral inhibition has relatively
little impact on physiological responding.
One puzzle is what to make of prior studies that have examined
the physiological effects of emotion suppression and failed to find
increased sympathetic activation. Methodological differences may
be responsible for some of these differences. With respect to the
single study of suppression in the context of both positive and
negative emotions, ~a! analyses were conducted using a composite
measure of physiological arousal that included skin conductance
and heart rate, ~b! suppression subjects knew they were being
videotaped and spontaneous subjects did not, and ~c! results were
presented collapsed across positive and negative film conditions
~Zuckerman et al., 1981!. Given known differences in responding
across response systems and emotional contexts, any one or more
of these methodological differences might account for differences.
It is less clear how to reconcile present findings with studies
showing that inhibiting one’s expressive behavior while waiting
for a painful shock decreases physiological responding ~Lanzetta,
Cartwright-Smith, & Kleck, 1976!. One possibility is that although
pain is often richly imbued with emotion, the suppression of pain
behaviors per se ~at least in Lanzetta’s experimental context! does
not produce the same consequences as emotion suppression. If so,
this study provides further evidence that concealing nonemotional
behaviors ~such as gross motor activity associated with pain! fails
to produce the physiological tug of war that leads to the increased
sympathetic activation that has been observed repeatedly in studies
of emotion suppression.
Affective Consequences of Reappraisal and
Suppression: Individual-Difference Data
Laboratory findings concerning the differential impact of reappraisal
and suppression suggest the possibility that individual differences
in these two emotion regulation strategies should have
discernible affective consequences. Based on our model of emotion
regulation and on the experimental literature, we hypothesized
that individuals who habitually suppress should have lesser negative
and positive emotion-expressive behavior. Given the apparently
asymmetric relations between emotion experience and emotion
expression for negative versus positive emotions, we further hypothesized
that individuals who habitually suppress should have
comparable levels of negative emotion experience, but lesser positive
emotion experience. By contrast, we expected that individuals
who habitually reappraise should have lesser negative emotion
experience and expression, and greater positive emotion experience
and expression.
To test these predictions, Gross and John ~in press! used the
Emotion Regulation Questionnaire to assess individual differences
in suppression and reappraisal, and obtained self-ratings of emotion
experience and expression, as well as peer ratings of emotion
expression. As predicted, suppression was associated with lower
levels of positive emotion experience and expression. Relations
between suppression and negative emotion expression also followed
expectations, with suppression being associated with lesser
negative emotion expressive behavior. Findings regarding suppression
and negative emotion experience were mixed, showing either
no effects or positive effects, that is, the more individuals said they
suppressed, the more negative emotion they said they felt. Reappraisal,
by contrast, was associated with greater positive emotion
experience and expression, and lesser negative emotion experience
and expression. As with suppression, self- and peer reports converged
with the results of previous experimental studies.
One important question is whether these affective consequences
are ephemeral—resulting in slight and transient changes
in temporary emotion experience—or whether their effects accumulate
and impact long-term well-being. To assess the impact of
habitual suppression and reappraisal on adaptation, Gross and John
~in press! related their individual-difference measures of these two
emotion regulation strategies to indicators of personal functioning:
life satisfaction, well-being, and depression. In each case, suppression
was associated with negative outcomes, whereas reappraisal
was associated with positive outcomes. Together with the experimental
findings described above, these findings provide strong
evidence that suppression and reappraisal have strikingly divergent
consequences for affective responding.
Cognitive Consequences
Emotions arise when something happens that is important to an
individual. Sometimes, the goals that give rise to emotions are
transient ~e.g., seeing one’s team win a ball game: see Clore,
1994!. At other times, the goals that give rise to emotions derive
from enduring values associated with health, close relationships,
and important work-related projects. In many of these emotionEmotion
regulation 285
eliciting situations, a high level of cognitive performance is desirable
~Richards & Gross, 2000!. Given that emotions often need to
be regulated in such circumstances, how might we expect suppression
and reappraisal to affect an individual’s ability to perform
well cognitively?
Suppression is a form of emotion regulation that requires selfmonitoring
and self-corrective action throughout an emotional
event. Such monitoring requires a continual outlay of cognitive
resources, reducing the resources available for processing events
so that they can later be remembered. Reappraisal, by contrast, is
evoked early on in the emotion generative process. Therefore, this
strategy typically does not require continual self-regulatory effort
during an emotional event. This would make costly self-regulation
unnecessary, leaving memory intact.
Cognitive Consequences of Reappraisal and
Suppression: Experimental Data
We tested these predictions regarding the cognitive consequences
of emotion regulation on memory in a series of interlocking studies
~Richards & Gross, 2000!. In the first study, we focused on
suppression. Participants were shown a short film clip known to
elicit negative emotion. This film depicts a husband who confesses
to his wife that he has had an extramarital affair. A fight ensues,
which is witnessed by their young child, who begins to cry. Half of
the participants were randomly assigned to inhibit emotionexpressive
behavior during the film clip ~suppress!, whereas the
other participants simply watched the film ~control!. To assess the
cognitive impact of suppression, after participants had viewed
the film, we administered a surprise cued-recognition test for
auditory and visual details contained in the film. We also asked
participants how confident they were about each of their responses
to the memory test. As predicted, results indicated that suppression
led to reliable decrements ~compared to the control condition! in
both objective memory and memory confidence ratings.
In a second study, we examined the cognitive consequences of
both suppression and reappraisal ~Richards & Gross, 2000, Study
2!. Our goals in this study were to assess the impact of regulating
differing levels of emotion, and to begin to test the mechanisms by
which emotion regulation might be affecting cognitive performance
on our memory tests. Participants watched a series of slides
that either elicited high or low levels of negative emotion. As in
Study 1, some of the participants were randomly assigned to view
the slides while inhibiting their ongoing emotion-expressive behavior
~suppress!. Others were simply asked to watch the slides
~control!. Still others were randomly assigned to view the slides
with the detached interest of a medical professional ~reappraise!.
As slides were presented, participants were provided with information
about each slide. Then, after slide viewing, participants
were given two types of memory tests. The first—a nonverbal
memory test—involved a series of photo spreads, and a participant’s
task was to identify which of four photos corresponded to a
slide seen in the viewing phase. The second—a verbal memory
test—required that participants write down the information associated
with each slide as it was presented for a second time. As
predicted, suppression participants performed less well on the
verbal memory test than control participants. By contrast, reappraisal
had no impact on verbal memory. Importantly, suppression’s
effect on verbal memory was just as pronounced for the
low-emotion as for the high-emotion slides, suggesting that it is the
process of engaging in suppression that is cognitively costly, rather
than the amount of emotion that is actually suppressed. Interestingly,
suppression had no reliable impact on nonverbal memory,
suggesting that the cognitive costs of suppression are due to the
verbal demands of self-instructions issued during the course of
suppression ~e.g., “I need to keep my face still”!.
Cognitive Consequences of Reappraisal and
Suppression: Individual-Difference Data
To examine whether individual differences in emotion regulation
have the same consequences on memory as our laboratory manipulations,
we examined the impact of individual differences in
reappraisal and suppression on memory ~Richards & Gross, 2000,
Study 3!. We measured individual differences in habitual reappraisal
and suppression using the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire
~Gross & John, in press!. We assessed memory using two
measures that were selected to assess memory for contexts in
which we thought it likely that individual differences in emotion
regulation might be evident. The first was a self-report measure of
memory for conversations ~Herrmann & Neisser, 1978!. The second
was an objectively scored free-recall test for spontaneous
emotion regulation episodes that occurred over a 2-week period
and had been reported daily.
As shown in Table 1, we found that individuals who scored
higher on either of the two suppression scales reported having
worse memory that those who scored lower on these suppression
scales. They also performed worse on an objective memory test in
which they were asked to recall events they had listed in a daily
diary 1 week earlier. By contrast, individual differences in reappraisal
had no effects on either self-reported or objective memory.
Importantly, these memory findings remained intact when controlling
for neuroticism and social desirability, either of which might
have led to spurious associations between emotion regulation and
memory. These individual-difference findings converge with the
results of our experimental studies, and suggest that whereas suppression
is cognitively costly, reappraisal is not.
Social Consequences
Theorists since Darwin ~187201998! have maintained that emotionexpressive
behavior plays an important role in facilitating social
interactions. This view has been reinforced by recent social funcTable
1. Cognitive Consequences of Reappraisal and
Suppression (Controlling for Neuroticism
and Social Desirability)
Suppression Reappraisal
Memory AEQ ERQ-S ERQ-R
Self-reported Ϫ.31* Ϫ.23* .09
Objective Ϫ.33* Ϫ.27* .05
Note: N ϭ 76. Self-reported memory was measured by the Inventory of
Memory Experiences–Conversations subscale ~Herrmann & Neisser,
1978!; objective memory was assessed by the proportion of emotion
episodes recalled from a daily diary record; AEQ: Ambivalence Over
Emotional Expressiveness Questionnaire ~King & Emmons, 1990!;
ERQ-S: Emotion Regulation Questionnaire–Suppression subscale
~Gross & John, in press!; ERQ-R: Emotion Regulation Questionnaire–
Reappraisal subscale ~Gross & John, in press!. Poorer memory is
denoted by lower memory scores. Predicted correlations are set in
bold. Adapted from Richards and Gross ~2000!.
*p Ͻ .05.
286 J.J. Gross
tional analyses of emotion ~e.g., Campos, Mumme, Kermoian, &
Campos, 1994!. Given the importance of emotion-expressive behavior
in social interaction, what consequences might reappraisal
and suppression have for social functioning?
Based on the studies we have reviewed concerning affective
consequences, suppression seems to be a blunt instrument—one
that decreases both negative and positive emotion-expressive behavior,
thereby masking important social signals that would otherwise
be available to social interaction partners. In addition, the
ongoing requirement of monitoring one’s own facial expressions
and vocal signals could distract the suppressing individual and
make them less responsive to the emotional cues of their partner.
This led us to predict that suppression should have negative social
consequences in casual conversation. By contrast, reappraisal seems
to decrease negative emotion experience and expression while
either having no impact or actually increasing positive emotion
experience and expression. Reappraisal also does not appear to be
as cognitively taxing as suppression, at least as indexed by memory
performance. These findings led us to predict that reappraisal
should have positive social consequences relative to suppression.
Social Consequences of Reappraisal and
Suppression: Experimental Data
To test these predictions, we focused on one important social
context, namely an interaction in which two people discuss an
upsetting topic. We asked unacquainted pairs of women to watch
an upsetting film, and then discuss their reactions ~Butler, Egloff,
Wilhelm, Smith, & Gross, 2002!. Unbeknownst to the other, one
member of each dyad had been asked to either suppress, reappraise,
or interact naturally with her conversation partner. We
expected suppression to decrease both negative and positive emotionexpressive
behavior in the regulator, as well as decreasing her
responsiveness to the emotional cues of her partner. Because
positive emotion expressions and emotional responsiveness are
key elements of social support, and social support decreases physiological
responses to stressors ~Uchino, Cacioppo, & KiecoltGlaser,
1996!, the diminished positive emotion-expressive behavior
and responsiveness shown by suppression participants should produce
large physiological responses in their interaction partners. By
contrast, we expected reappraisal participants to show lesser decreases
in positive emotion-expressive behavior, and little or no
reductions in responsiveness. We therefore expected that the interaction
partners of reappraisal participants would have physiological
responses comparable to those of control participants.
As predicted, partners of suppression participants showed greater
increases in blood pressure than partners of participants who were
either reappraising or acting naturally ~Figure 3!. There were no
blood pressure differences between partners of participants who
were reappraising and partners of participants who were acting
naturally. These findings indicate that interacting with a partner
who shows little positive emotion, and who is unresponsive to
emotional cues, is more physiologically activating than interacting
with a partner who shows greater positive emotion and responsiveness.
It is not yet clear, however, which aspects of the suppression
participants’ behavior mediate these intriguing social
consequences of suppression.
Social Consequences of Reappraisal and
Suppression: Individual-Difference Data
One important question is whether these findings, which were
based on a laboratory interaction between two unacquainted women,
would generalize beyond this context. Would these social consequences
of emotion regulation be discernible using an individualdifference
approach? To find out, Gross and John ~in press! used a
correlational approach to relate individual differences in suppression
and reappraisal to measures of social functioning, including
social support, coping, and being liked by one’s peers. Results
indicated that individuals who habitually suppress were less likely
to share either their negative or their positive emotions with others
than were individuals who reappraised. Suppression also was associated
with poorer social support and lesser use of instrumental
and emotional social support coping. Finally, suppression and
reappraisal were differentially related to both self- and other reports
of how well-liked a person was, so that individuals who
tended to use reappraisal were more likely to be liked than individuals
who tended to use suppression.
Directions for Future Research
Recent theoretical and methodological advances have generated
increased interest in emotion regulation ~Gross, 1999b!. Clearly, a
large number of exciting questions remain to be addressed. Five
directions for future research that seem particularly promising
include: ~1! Broadening the measurement of psychophysiological
consequences of emotion regulation; ~2! expanding the focus to
other theoretically defined forms of emotion regulation; ~3! making
explicit links to the study of psychopathology; ~4! assessing the
longer term health consequences of differing emotion regulation
strategies; and ~5! relating emotion regulation to other important
forms of self-regulation. In the following sections, I describe each
of these in turn.
The Psychophysiology of Emotion Regulation
Suppression decreases whatever behavioral response tendencies
arise with a particular emotion in a given context, and heart rate
generally follows body movement ~Gross, 1998a; Gross & Levenson,
1993, 1997!. Suppression also increases electrodermal responding
and blood pressure, and decreases finger pulse amplitude,
finger temperature, and pulse transit times. These latter changes
cohere theoretically, and can be described in terms of “increased
sympathetic activation of the cardiovascular system.” To date, this
has been a useful level of abstraction. In future research, it will be
important to more precisely specify these changes by using additional
measures of sympathetic activation of the cardiovascular
system ~e.g., preejection time; Cacioppo, 1994! as well as other
peripheral responses ~e.g., hypothalamo-pituitary-adrenocortical
axis; Kirschbaum & Hellhammer, 1994!.
It also will be important to examine theoretically defined patterns
of central nervous system activation associated with reappraisal,
suppression, and other forms of regulation ~e.g., prefrontal
cortex; Davidson, 2000!. In one recent study, for example, we used
fMRI to examine the neural bases of reappraisal ~Ochsner, Bunge,
Gross, & Gabrieli, 2002!. Participants either were asked to reappraise
negative scenes ~drawn from the International Affective
Picture System, or IAPS; Lang, Ohman, & Vaitl, 1988! or to let
themselves respond emotionally to them. Comparison of these two
conditions showed that reappraisal led to increased activation of
lateral prefrontal regions important for cognitive control, and to
decreases in activation of the amygdala and medial orbitofrontal
cortex, two regions important for different kinds of emotion processing.
Studies such as these promise a clearer understanding of
the bidirectional links between limbic centers that generate emotion
and cortical centers that regulate emotion, helping us move
beyond simple models of top down control ~Head, 1921; Jackson,
Emotion regulation 287
1884! to models that emphasize emotional tuning of higher brain
centers ~Derryberry & Tucker, 1992! as well as top down control.
Expanding the Focus to Other Forms
of Emotion Regulation
The process model of emotion regulation shown in Figure 1 makes
the prediction that strategies that act at different points in the
emotion generative process should have importantly different affective,
cognitive, and social consequences. To test this prediction,
we have focused on two commonly used forms of emotion downregulation.
One is a type of cognitive change ~reappraisal!, and the
other is a type of response modulation ~suppression!.
One clear direction for future research is testing whether other
forms of cognitive change and response modulation have similar
consequences. It also will be important to examine differences
among the antecedent-focused strategies of situation selection,
situation modification, cognitive change, and attentional deployment,
as well as differences among the response-focused strategies.
A systematic analysis of the commonalities and differences
among these diverse forms of emotion regulation as they are
employed in different contexts holds out promise for increased
understanding both of specific regulatory strategies and of the
emotion generative process itself.
Emotion, Emotion Regulation, and Psychopathology
Emotion dysregulation is a prominent feature of many forms of
psychopathology ~American Psychiatric Association, 1994!. Indeed,
by one count, over half of the nonsubstance related Axis I
clinical disorders and all of the Axis II personality disorders involve
some form of emotion dysregulation ~Gross & Levenson,
1997!. Unfortunately, however, links between affective science
and clinical science are still in their early stages. This means that
there is considerable uncertainty about how emotions are disrupted
in different forms of psychopathology, and what clues such disruptions
might provide to the nature of the emotion regulatory
deficits.
One important direction for future research is thus to extend
laboratory research on emotion and emotion regulation to clinical
populations. Promising candidates can be drawn from throughout
the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric
Association ~1994!. For example, individuals with Major Depressive
Disorder have decreased emotional reactivity while viewing
negative and positive emotional films ~Rottenberg, Kasch, Gross,
& Gotlib, in press!. Can such deficits be conceptualized in terms of
emotion regulatory processes? Another promising example of clinical
extensions of basic research on emotion regulation may be
found in schizophrenia. Individuals with schizophrenia have decreased
emotion-expressive behavior compared with controls, but
comparable levels of emotion experience ~Kring & Neale, 1996!.
Patients with schizophrenia also have well-characterized deficits in
social functioning, and lead those interacting with them to feel
uncomfortable ~Krause, Steimer, Sanger-Alt, & Wagner, 1989!.
Might an analysis of the social consequences of emotion suppression
help to shed light on the social difficulties associated with
schizophrenia? These questions provide a glimpse of just how rich
the marriage of affective science and the study of psychopathology
promises to be.
Emotion Regulation and Physical Health
It has long been suspected that the emotion regulation required by
civilization may come at a steep price ~Mauss & Gross, in press!.
In the popular literature, this price has often been represented in
terms of the adverse consequences emotion inhibition may have
for physical health ~e.g., Martin, 1998!. In the scientific literature,
too, there have been reports linking emotion inhibition to a variety
of diseases ranging from asthma ~Florin, Freudenberg, & Hollaender,
1985! to cancer ~Greer & Watson, 1985!. Recently, particular
attention has been given to the role of emotion and emotion
regulation in cardiovascular diseases, which represent the single
most important source of disability and mortality worldwide ~Guyton
& Hall, 1997; Murray & Lopez, 1997! and typify the slowdeveloping,
multifactorial disease processes that are most influenced
by psychosocial factors ~Depue & Monroe, 1986; Sapolsky, 1998!.
Our laboratory studies to date have focused on the acute physiological
consequences of reappraisal and suppression. However,
because there appear to be consistent individual differences in
emotion regulation styles, we might expect that such differences
should have cumulative effects. For example, each time emotion is
suppressed, physiological responses are magnified. Any one physiological
response of increased intensity is unlikely to have deleFigure
3. Social consequences of reappraisal and suppression. Mean change in systolic and diastolic blood pressure for individuals
whose conversation partners were asked to reappraise the situation, act naturally, or suppress their emotions. Adapted from Butler et al.
~2002!.
288 J.J. Gross
terious consequences. But if such responses recur day after day
after day, there might be adverse health consequences. A recent
study illustrates how such a hypothesis might be tested. Heart
attack survivors were divided into four groups, depending on their
scores on measures of distress and the tendency to inhibit emotion
~Denollet et al., 1996!. The subgroup scoring high on both distress
and inhibition had a significantly higher death rate ~27%! than
other patients ~7%!.
Emotion Regulation and Other Forms of Self-Regulation
Emotions are by no means the only impulses we regulate. We also
regulate other affective processes such as moods ~Carver & Scheier,
1990!, motivational impulses such as sex and hunger ~Baumeister
& Heatherton, 1996!, and cognitive processes such as thoughts
~Wegner, 1994!. Are impulses to respond—and the processes by
which they are modulated—crucially similar, as suggested by
Block and Block’s ~1980! conception of ego control and by recent
discussions of impulsivity ~Newman et al., 1993!? Or are each of
these forms of self-regulation importantly distinct, with different
triggers, mechanisms, and outcomes?
At present, it seems wise to maintain distinctions among various
forms of affect regulation. For example, how we go about
improving a bad mood ~e.g., exercise, improved diet! may or may
not be how we go about altering our emotional experiences and
expressive behavior ~e.g., keeping a still face!. It also seems
reasonable to maintain distinctions between processes that regulate
emotion, on the one hand, and those that regulate thoughts ~e.g.,
Wegner & Bargh, 1998! or well-learned operant responses ~e.g.,
Logan, Schachar, & Tannock, 1997! on the other. Presumably, the
coordinated set of response tendencies postulated in emotion is
absent in some other forms of self-regulation, but the implications
of such differences need to be investigated. It is less clear whether
processes that regulate emotion should be distinguished from those
that regulate hunger, thirst, aggression, and sexual arousal ~Buck,
1985!. Diverse forms of self-regulation result in similar kinds of
“ego depletion,” which suggests that a common resource may be
consumed in diverse forms of regulation ~Baumeister, Bratslavsky,
Muraven, & Tice, 1998!. However, the evidence we have reviewed
concerning the affective, cognitive, and social consequences of
reappraisal and suppression suggests caution in too quickly lumping
together diverse forms of self-regulation. One clear priority for
future research is to examine other forms of self-regulation that—
like emotion regulation—shape the trajectory from impulse to
action.
Concluding Comment
It is often necessary to down-regulate negative emotions. Road
rage, office rage, and even air rage are now regularly in the news,
providing compelling anecdotal evidence of the damage that is
done by failures to regulate negative emotions such as anger. The
grim statistics on spousal, child, and elder abuse stand as a further
testament to the serious harm that can come from dysregulated
emotions. However, there are many ways to go about regulating
emotions, and it is far from clear which strategies work best when
it is necessary to regulate emotions.
Using a process model of emotion regulation as an overarching
framework, I have shown that suppression decreases not only
negative but also positive emotion-expressive behavior. Worse,
suppression appears to have little impact on negative emotion
experience, while decreasing positive emotion experience. Suppression
also is associated with increased sympathetic activation of
the cardiovascular system that appears to be out of keeping with
metabolic demand. By contrast, reappraisal decreases negative
emotion experience and expression, while increasing positive emotion
experience and expression. Unlike suppression, reappraisal is
not associated with increased sympathetic activation. Suppression
also consumes cognitive resources, impairing memory for information
presented during the emotion regulation period. Reappraisal,
by contrast, appears to have no such cognitive consequences.
Even in the social domain, suppression appears to have less desirable
consequences than reappraisal. Compared to reappraisal,
suppression leads individuals to share less of their positive and
negative emotions, resulting in weakened social support, and even
being less liked. Also unlike reappraisal, suppression leads to
increased blood pressure in social partners.
An analysis of these two forms of regulation consistently seems
to favor reappraisal over suppression. However, it is important to
note that reappraisal may not always be preferable to suppression.
There may be times when it would be very difficult to reappraise,
and suppression is the only way to regulate negative emotions that
have arisen. Furthermore, it may be maladaptive to change one’s
accurate construal of a situation that compromises important goals,
and far better to work to change the situation than to reappraise.
After all, emotions comprise integrated packages of response tendencies
that help to coordinate adaptive behavior in the face of
challenge ~Levenson, 1994!. If these response tendencies are habitually
and inflexibly overridden, an individual’s ability to manage
these challenges successfully may be significantly compromised.
Thus, if one has a bad feeling about one’s surroundings, but one
inhibits the tendency to withdraw that is associated with fear, one
may take unwise risks. Similarly, if one is upset at how one is
being treated, but inhibits one’s anger, one’s treatment is unlikely
to improve. What seems likely to prove essential is having a rich
palette of emotion regulatory response options that can be flexibly
employed, with a clear appreciation of the relative costs and
benefits of using any given regulatory strategy in a particular
situation.
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~Received September 19, 2001; Accepted December 7, 2001!
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