Emotion Regulation Across the Life Span: An Integrative Perspective Emphasizing Self-Regulation, Positive Affect, and Dyadic Processes

“In particular, drawing on work by Carver and Scheier (1990), Thompson (1994), Carstensen et al. (1999), and others, Stanton et al. (2002) identified several potential functions that emotional experience and expression may play in coping: processing and expressing emotions may P1: GRA Motivation and…”

“The same question applies to " antecedent emotion regulation " (Gross, 1998) and " proactive coping " (Aspinwall & Taylor, 1997), both of which involve the anticipation and preemptive management of emotional responses by proactively shaping and/or selecting one's environments, behaviors, and…”

“Individuals deploy regulatory strategies to modify the magnitude and/or type of their emotional experience or the emotion-eliciting event (Diamond & Aspinwall, 2003; Gross, 1998).”

“Individuals who possess relatively differentiated knowledge of self and emotion indeed display more efficient emotion regulation, both in childhood (Diamond & Aspinwall, 2003) and adulthood (Barrett, Gross, Conner, & Benvenuto, 2001; Linville, 1985, 1987; Rafaeli-Mor & Steinberg, 2002).”

“Growth in cognitive abilities similarly can enhance the capacity of youths to regulate complicated emotions (Diamond & Aspinwall, 2003) and to select institutions and relationships that best match their goals, values, and abilities (Clausen, 1991).”

“…serve social functions and are central to interpersonal functioning, which suggests that an extension of intrapersonal emotion models may be useful (Diamond & Aspinwall, 2003; Kappas, 1991; Kappas & Descoteaux, 2003; Keltner & Gross, 1999; Keltner & Haidt, 2001; Keltner & Kring, 1998; Parkinson,…”

“Therefore, the interplay of how individuals transition between negative and positive states may be critical in defining successful emotional regulation (Diamond & Aspinwall, 2003).”

“For example, providing support, communicating empathy, or even distracting one’s partner may help both partners return to a more positive mood state (Diamond, 2001; Diamond & Aspinwall, 2003).”

“…of self-regulation are interrelated in complex ways and that multiple dimensions come into play in responding to everyday childhood challenges (Bronson, 2000; Committee on Integrating the Science of Early Childhood Development, 2000; Diamond & Aspinwall, 2003; Fox & Calkins, 2003; Kopp, 1982).”

“…system, which contributes to the excitation of behavioral responses to stress ~e.g., fight or flight! that have a regulatory function on emotion ~Diamond & Aspinwall, 2003; Figueroa & Silk, 1997!. Frequent increases in cortisol over the course of time may affect the 5-HT system by blunting…”

“Single subject paradigms using standardized emotional stimuli afford good experimental control, but they cannot capture the rich interpersonal dynamics that define the contexts in which most emotion regulation occurs (Aldao, 2013; Coan, 2008; Diamond & Aspinwall, 2003; Levenson et al., in press).”

“Why can positive moods be expected to influence performance several weeks later? Diamond and Aspinwall (2003) claimed that positive affective states may enhance effective coping, such as the investigation of alternative behavioral approaches or the facilitation of positive reinterpretation and reframing of one’s probl…”

“In the face of difficulty, children and adolescents use multiple strategies to simultaneously regulate their affect, behavior, and attention (Committee on Integrating the Science of Early Childhood Development, Shonkoff, and Phillips, 2000; Diamond and Aspinwall, 2003; Kopp, 1982).”

“Emotion regulation, as defined by most theorists (e.g., Diamond & Aspinwall, 2003; Gratz & Roemer, 2004; Gross, 1998), comprises the ability to modulate the valence, intensity, or duration of an emotional experience.”

“For the purposes of this review, ER was defined as an internal process through which a person is able to maintain a comfortable state of arousal by modulating one or more aspects of emotion (Blaustein & Kinniburgh, 2010; Diamond & Aspinwall, 2003; McRae et al., 2010).”

“Regulation does not solely operate at the level of the individual, but encompasses interpersonal relationship processes and person-environment processes (Diamond & Aspinwall, 2003; Evans & Wachs, 2009).”

“…a strategy is adaptive or maladaptive (such as the ability to flexibly use different strategies in response to the particular goals of a situation; Diamond & Aspinwall, 2003), one important factor concerns the distinction between themodulation and the avoidance or nonacceptance of an emotion.”

“The degree or type of emotional experience is modified by individuals when they employ emotion regulation strategies (Diamond and Aspinwall, 2003).”

“The study of psychology therefore has a long-standing interest in affect regulation (see for instance Diamond & Aspinwall, 2003; Gross, 2002; Lazarus, 1991; Wegener & Petty, 1994).”

“This notion is consistent with the theory that emotion regulation not only operates within the individual, but also involves interpersonal social interaction processes (Diamond & Aspinwall, 2003).”

“…– and their adaptive regulation – offers a number of promising lines of inquiry with respect to attachment issues, specifically given the well-documented psychosocial, cognitive, and even physiological benefits associated with positive emotional experience (reviewed in Diamond & Aspinwall, 2003).”

“Moreover, low FTP workers will show more passive coping styles in response to environmental stimuli, while high FTP workers show active coping styles (Aspinwall, 2005; Diamond & Aspinwall, 2003).”

“…in which caregivers are sensitive to infants’ cues, and infants provide clearer and clearer messages to their caregiver, thus resulting in good communication about how to cope with challenging and potentially threatening encounters (Diamond & Aspinwall, 2003; Lewis & Ramsay, 1999; Sroufe, 1996).”

“…Niven, Totterdell, & Holman, 2009) and unconsciously (e.g., Parkinson, 2011), and appear to influence the well-being of the regulated person (e.g., Diamond & Aspinwall, 2003), the regulating person (e.g., Niven, Totterdell, Holman, & Headley, 2012), and the relationship between them (e.g., Lakey…”

“…older adults have fewer daily stressors and interpersonal tensions (Almeida & Horn, 2004; Birditt, Fingerman, & Almeida, 2005; Stawski, Sliwinski, Almeida, & Smyth, 2008) and manage their environments in ways that maximize positive emotions (Aspinwall & Taylor, 1997; Diamond & Aspinwall, 2003).”

“Although the experience and regulation of emotion has generally been considered a personal phenomenon, there is growing recognition of the importance of interpersonal relationships for the amplification and repair of emotional states (Diamond and Aspinwall, 2003).”

“…studies with humans have revealed a significant relationship between different domains of self-regulation, such as EFs; social, emotional, and cognitive competence; and physiological measures of stress reactivity and HPA activity (see Blair, 2010, for a review; see also Diamond & Aspinwall, 2003).”

“Older adults also seem to engage in more proactive emotion regulation (i.e., antecedentfocused; Gross 1998), for instance, through selecting particular environments and social partners (Aspinwall and Taylor 1997; Diamond and Aspinwall 2003).”

“…of family interactions, other regulatory skills that might be taught include conscious control of emotions and responses (Cummings & Schatz, 2012; Diamond & Aspinwall, 2003) and repairs in dyadic interactions, both of which are related to abuse potential (Skowron, Kozlowski, & Pincus, 2010) and…”

“…information-seeking may include social referencing, in which infants study their caregivers for signs communicating the severity and emotional signifi cance of novel or stressful events (Diamond & Aspinwall, 2003 ; Hornik, Risenhoover, & Gunnar, 1987 ; Lewis & Ramsay, 1999 ; Sorce et al., 1985 ).”

“Emotion regulation is a complex and dynamic process that broadly refers the modification of biological, subjective, and expressive components of emotional experience (Thompson 1994) and requires flexibility in adapting to changing circumstances (Diamond and Aspinwall 2003; Gray et al. 2002; Keltner and Gross 1999).”

“In contrast, clinical dyad members displayed a concordant actor (within-person) effect, becoming simultaneously physiologically and behaviorally dysregulated.”

“…with both EF and IQ as well as with academic achievement (Blair et al., 2008; Calkins,Graziano, Berdan,Keane,&Degnan, 2008; Calkins&Hill, 2007; Diamond & Aspinwall, 2003; Eisenberg et al., 2005; Harrist & Waugh, 2002; Klebanov, Brooks-Gunn, McCarton, & McCormick, 1998; Kochanska, Murray, &…”

“Given past findings of a strong relationship between NA and both emotion dysregulation (Diamond & Aspinwall, 2003) and anxiety disorder-related psychopathology (Brown, Chorpita, & Barlow, 1998), the NA scale was included as a potential covariate in this study to ensure that any observed…”

“…greater life satisfaction and social relationships are associated with positive emotional experiences, which prior work suggests might counter negative self-beliefs and induce behavioral flexibility, resilience, and emotion regulation efforts (Diamond & Aspinwall, 2003; Garland et al., 2010).”

“Thus, craving can be conceptualized as a biobehavioral phenomenon because it involves integrated psychological and physiological processes, some of which occur in conscious awareness, while others occur outside of conscious awareness (Diamond and Aspinwall 2003; Forgas 2008; Gross 1998; Verheul et al. 1999).”

“Indeed, as Diamond and Aspinwall (2003) note, “Optimal emotion regulation is not a developmental task to be mastered at a certain age . . . but rather a ‘moving target’ that is continually sensitive to changing goals and contexts” (p. 149).”

“Past research shows that emotion regulation strategies including expression are differentially effectual; the same regulatory strategies are not equally effective for all persons (Diamond & Aspinwall, 2003).”

“…coping, especially personal resources, or they can feed forward into subsequent stressful encounters by influencing future demands, as described by “proactive” or “preventative” coping and “anticipatory” or “antecedent-focused” self-regulation (Aspinwall & Taylor, 1997; Diamond & Aspinwall, 2003).”

“Awareness of emotional reactions, challenging situations, and motivational conditions is a premise for groups to activate regulation on a social plane (Diamond and Aspinwall, 2003; Op’t Eynde and Turner, 2006; Järvenoja et al., 2015).”

“Presumably, parents who are not attuned to their children’s emotions can miss chances to respond not only to the child’s distress but also to their signs of positive emotions (Diamond and Aspinwall 2003).”

“Normative stress regulation thus always involves the effective coregulation of stress in relation to attachment figures (Diamond & Aspinwall, 2003; Luyten, Mayes, Fonagy, & van Houdenhove, Figure 1.”

“This has led some to argue that stress, emotion regulation, and self-regulation should be considered as integrated processes, thereby allowing us to more accurately understand the ways emotions and goal-pursuits influence one another (Diamond & Aspinwall, 2003).”

“Additionally, partners may explicitly attempt to regulate each other’s emotions, whereby one partner is motivated to change the other’s affective state (Diamond & Aspinwall, 2003; Zaki & Williams, 2013).”

“In other words, individuals develop regulatory strategies to modify the magnitude and/or type of their emotional experience or the emotion-eliciting event (Diamond & Aspinwall, 2003; Gross, 1998).”

“Several volitional strategies to regulate emotions have been specified, including altering attention a situations, reinterpreting the meaning of situations (e.g., McRae et al., 2010), and change the nature of situations (e.g., Diamond and Aspinwall, 2003).”

“…attenuated among individuals with lower vagal tone (Hypothesis 3a) or greater vagal reactivity (Hypothesis 3b), based on the expectation that deficits in affect regulation should hamper individuals’ ability to mobilize and benefit from positive emotions and experiences (Diamond & Aspinwall, 2003).”

“In the absence of caregivers who model appropriate emotion regulation strategies children are less likely to fully develop their own skills in this area (Diamond & Aspinwall, 2003).”

“Results provide preliminary support to theoretical models (Diamond & Aspinwall, 2003; Fruzzetti et al., 2005) and prior research (Shenk & Fruzzetti, 2011) examining the role of family-level determinants, specifically validating and invalidating behaviors, of emotion dysregulation and corresponding…”

“The ability to successfully regulate emotion has important implications for adaptive functioning across the life span (Diamond & Aspinwall, 2003).”

“As such, they can be thought of as ‘‘biobehavioural’’ phenomenon because they involve integrated psychological and physiological processes, occurring both within, and outside of conscious awareness (Diamond & Aspinwall, 2003; Forgas, 2008; Gross, 1998; Verheul, van den Brink, & Geerlings, 1999).”

“As previous authors have noted, self-regulation results from interactions between such aspects and their interdependent development (e.g., Bell and Deater-Deckard, 2007; Casey and Caudle, 2013; Diamond and Aspinwall, 2003; Posner and Rothbart, 2000).”

“Across development stages and into adulthood, as negative emotion regulation becomes more effectively used and controlled (see Diamond & Aspinwall, 2003), higher cardiac vagal control may predict decreased negative facial expression as a result of increased spontaneous self-regulation (Demaree et…”

“We chose to adopt a longitudinal approach because emotion regulation processes are not dependent solely on situations but also rely on genuine interactions between the individual and his or her environment (Diamond & Aspinwall, 2003).”

“…Park et al., 2012; Rivard & Cappeliez, 2007; Santoro et al., 2014) but none of these examined age as a moderator of the effects of appraisal and coping, despite the fact that coping is a dynamic processes that evolves over the lifespan (Diamond & Aspinwall, 2003; Skinner & Zimmer-Gembeck, 2011).”

“Rumination is considered a maladaptive attempt to cope with distress, widely investigated as a potential emotion regulation method, or a possible strategy to cope distressing emotions [82,83].”

“We also investigated dyadic links within the couple because recent work on emotion regulation has suggested the importance of including dyadic factors in the study of distress reactions (Diamond and Aspinwall, 2003; Kiecolt-Glaser and Newton, 2001).”