How to Bite Your Tongue Without Blowing Your Top: Implicit Evaluation of Emotion Regulation Predicts Affective Responding to Anger Provocation
Open accessAbstract
People frequently have to control their emotions to function in life. However, mounting evidence suggests that deliberate emotion regulation often is costly. This presents a dilemma: Is it better to let emotions go or to pay the price of exerting costly control? In two studies, the authors explore whether emotion regulatory processes associated with implicit positive evaluation of emotion regulation might provide the benefits of successful emotion regulation without the costs. In Study 1, the authors introduce a measure of implicit evaluation of emotion regulation (ER-IAT). Study 2 examined whether this measure is associated with actual emotional responses to an anger provocation. It was found that greater ER-IAT scores were associated with lesser anger experience, fewer negative thoughts, lessened self-reported effortful emotion regulation, and an adaptive pattern of cardiovascular responding. These findings suggest that implicit positive evaluation of emotion regulation is associated with successful, automatic, and physiologically adaptive down-regulation of anger.
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Positive implicit evaluation of emotion regulation is associated with less negative affect and more adaptive cardiovascular responding to an anger provocation, without greater effortful or deliberate engagement of emotion regulation strategies.
“Using this measure, positive implicit evaluation of emotion regulation has been shown to be associated with less negative affect and more adaptive cardiovascular responding to an anger provocation, without greater effortful or deliberate engagement of emotion regulation strategies.”
From Gender Differences in Emotion Regulation: An fMRI Study of Cognitive Reappraisal (2008) · cites this paper as Mauss, Evers, Wilhelm, & Gross, 2006
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- Authors
- Mauss, I. B., Evers, C., Wilhelm, F. H., & Gross, J. J.
- Affiliations
- University of Denver (US)
- University of Amsterdam (NL)
- University of Basel (CH)
- Stanford University (US)
- Venue
- Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 2006-05
- Volume
- 32
- Issue
- 5
- Pages
- 589-602
- ISSN
- 0146-1672 (ISSN-L)
- 1552-7433
- OpenAlex
- W2034545593
- Cited by
- 184
- References
- 19
- Citations by year
- 2026: 3 · 2025: 7 · 2024: 6 · 2023: 11 · 2022: 6 · 2021: 5 · 2020: 8 · 2019: 10 · 2018: 7 · 2017: 11 · 2016: 4 · 2015: 13 · 2014: 13 · 2013: 13 · 2012: 8
- FWCI
- 14.69
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- doi.org
- Locations
- Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- edoc (University of Basel) (acceptedVersion)
- edoc (University of Basel)
- Funders
- National Institute of Mental Health (MH 58147)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Emotions and Moral Behavior
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neural and Behavioral Psychology Studies
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Anxiety, Depression, Psychometrics, Treatment, Cognitive Processes
- Keywords
- emotion regulation, Implicit Association Test, anger, negative automatic thoughts
- MeSH terms
- Adaptation, Psychological, Adolescent, Adult, Anger, Arousal, Awareness, Defense Mechanisms, Female, Humans, Individuality, Inhibition, Psychological, Internal-External Control, Male, Motivation, Personality Inventory, Psychometrics, Psychophysiology, Repression, Psychology, Students, Reproducibility of Results, Expressed Emotion
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