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Knowing what you're feeling and knowing what to do about it: Mapping the relation between emotion differentiation and emotion regulation

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Cognition and Emotion
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Individuals differ considerably in their emotion experience. Some experience emotions in a highly differentiated manner, clearly distinguishing among a variety of negative and positive discrete emotions. Others experience emotions in a relatively undifferentiated manner, treating a range of like-valence terms as interchangeable. Drawing on self-regulation theory, we hypothesised that indivi-duals with highly differentiated emotion experience should be better able to regulate emotions than individuals with poorly differentiated emotion experience. In particular, we hypothesised that emotion differentiation and emotion regulation would be positively related in the context of intense negative emotions, where the press for emotion regulation is generally greatest. To test this hypothesis, parti-cipants' negative and positive emotion differentiation was assessed using a 14-day diary protocol. Participants' regulation of negative and positive emotions was assessed using laboratory measures. As predicted, negative emotion differentiation was positively related to the frequency of negative emotion regulation, particularly at higher levels of emotional intensity.
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Knowing what you’re feeling and knowing what to do
about it: Mapping the relation between emotion
differentiation and emotion regulation
Lisa Feldman Barrett
Boston College, Chestnut Hill, USA
James Gross
Stanford University, Palo Alto, USA
Tamlin Conner Christensen and Michael Benvenuto
Boston College, Chestnut Hill, USA
Individuals differ considerably in their emotion experience. Some experience
emotions in a highly differentiated manner, clearly distinguishing among a variety
of negative and positive discrete emotions. Others experience emotions in a
relatively undifferentiated manner, treating a range of like-valence terms as
interchangeable. Drawing on self-regulation theory, we hypothesised that indivi-
duals with highly differentiated emotion experience should be better able to
regulate emotions than individuals with poorly differentiated emotion experience.
In particular, we hypothesised that emotion differentiation and emotion regulation
would be positively related in the context of intense negative emotions, where the
press for emotion regulation is generally greatest. To test this hypothesis, parti-
cipants’ negative and positive emotion differentiation was assessed using a 14-day
diary protocol. Participants’ regulation of negative and positive emotions was
assessed using laboratory measures. As predicted, negative emotion differentiation
was positively related to the frequency of negative emotion regulation, particularly
at higher levels of emotional intensity.
COGNITION AND EMOTION, 2001, 15 (6), 713–724
Correspondenc e should be addressed to Lisa Feldman Barrett at Department of Psychology,
Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA, 02467; e-mail: barretli@bc.edu
Portions of this article were presented at the bi-annual meeting of the International Society for
Research on Emotion, WuÈrzburg, Germany, 1998, and at the annual meetin g of the Society for
Experimental Social Psychology, Lexington, KY, 1998. Preparation of this article was facilitated by
a grant from the National Science Foundation to Li sa Feldman Barrett (SBR 9727896) and by a grant
from the National Institute of Mental Health to James Gross (MH58147).
#2001 Psychology Press Ltd
http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/pp/02699931.html DOI:10.1080/02699930143000239
At times, we know exactly how we feel: we are angered by blocked goals,
saddened by a loss, or afraid of an impending challenge. At such times, we
represent our feelings in a precise and differentiated fashion. Knowing how we
feel helps to inform us about the significance of the immediate situation, to work
out what we should do next, and to indicate what, if anything, we should do
about changing how we feel. At other times, however, our feelings are a
hopeless muddle. At such times, we represent our feelings in a global fashion,
and resort to describing our feelings as generally pleasant or unpleasant. Not
knowing precisely how we feel, it’s that much harder to use our feelings as
information about our current situation (Schwarz & Clore, 1983, 1996), to work
out what to do next, and to figure out how to go about modifying how we feel.
Emotion differentiation
Just as there are differences in emotional differentiation within any one person
across situations (Feldman Barrett & Aronson, 1998), so too there are differ-
ences in emotional differentiation between individuals (Feldman, 1995; Feldman
Barrett, 1998). Some individuals tend to parse their emotional experience in a
discrete, differentiated fashion. In intensive repeated-measure studies, such as
those afforded by experience-sampling procedures, these individuals display
more distinctive representations of their felt experience across time. They evi-
dence smaller correlations between negative states, such as anger, sadness, and
nervousness, or between different positive states, such as happiness, relaxation,
and enthusiasm.
In contrast, other individuals represent their emotional experiences in an
undifferentiated fashion along a single pleasant-unpleasant dimension. These
individuals evidence large positive correlations between self-reports of similarly
valenced emotional states across episodes. Such correlations suggest that at any
given time, these individuals are not distinguishing between different emotional
experiences, but rather they are using emotion language to represent the general
pleasantness or unpleasantness of their feelings.1One important implication of
differences in emotion differentiation is that individuals who have highly dif-
ferentiated emotion experiences may have more highly activated discrete
emotion knowledge during the representation process than individuals with
global emotion experiences. The emotion knowledge includes the abstract cause
of an experience (i.e., we become angry with someone, afraid of something, sad
about something), its relational context, the expected bodily sensations, its
expressive modes (i.e., display rules for expression), and sequences of action to
take to enhance or reduce the experience (i.e., plans of emotion regulation;
Mesquita & Frijda, 1992; Shweder, 1993). These mental representations func-
1Emotion differentiation is defined by associations, rather than absolute co-occurrence of level,
in self-reports of emotional experience.
714 FELDMAN BAR RETT ET AL.
tion like culturally constructed internal guides or working models of emotional
episodes (Saarni, 1993). Thus, individual differences in emotion differentiation
may provide important clues regarding the extent to which discrete emotion
knowledge is activated during the process of experiencing emotion.
Emotion differentiation and emotion regulation
If greater emotion differentiation is associated with more highly activated dis-
crete emotion knowledge, emotion differentiation should have implications for
emotion regulation. This is because discrete emotion concepts provide a wealth
of information regarding the behavioural repertoire for dealing with the
experience and coping with the larger situation. If this information is highly
accessible in those who generate differentiated conscious emotional experiences
(because the knowledge contained in those concepts is activated), but not in
those with relatively undifferentiated emotional experiences, individuals with
highly differentiated emotion experience should be at an advantage in regulating
their emotions.
We might expect this differentiation-regulation relationship to be strongest in
the context of intense negative emotions, where the press for emotion regulation
is greatest. Although individuals report regulating both positive and negative
emotions (Parrott, 1993), the greatest call for emotion regulation typically comes
when there are high levels of negative emotions such as anger, sadness, and fear.
Negative emotional experiences have great informational value in signalling the
need to change or adjust one’s current state or activity (Pratto & John, 1991).
Moreover, failure to respond to a negative signal can be very costly because an
individual may not take steps to avoid potential harm (Quigley & Feldman
Barrett, 1999). In contrast, positive emotions appear to motivate an individual to
broaden and build, that is, to explore new intellectual and social pursuits and
store resources for future negative events that require regulatory attempts (see
Fredrickson, 1998, for a review). Failure to capitalise on a positive signal may
prove costly in the long run, but is unlikely to have the immediate effects
associated with failure to regulate a negative emotional episode.
All negative emotion does not require regulation, however. Intense emotional
experiences are more motivationally relevant (Frijda, 1986; Smith & Pope,
1992) and likely signal the need for active coping (Lazarus, 1991) more so than
do less intense experiences. Although many individuals experience their emo-
tions intensely, not everyone can identify what they are feeling with precision
and clarity (Gohm & Clore, 2000). On average, individuals who are aware that
they feel intensely negative may be more motivated to regulate their experience,
but their ability to determine that they are angry, sad, or afraid should facilitate
their regulatory attempts.
Given the particular press to regulate intense negative emotions, we reasoned
that those who could regulate intense negative emotions would do so, and that
EMOTION DIFFERENTIATIO N AND REGULATION 715
individuals with high levels of negative emotion differentiation who also
experienced intense emotional states should therefore report the greatest levels
of negative emotion regulation.
OVERVIEW OF THE PRESENT S TUDY
To test our hypothesis that emotion differentiation should be positively related to
emotion regulation, we assessed emotion differentiation and sampled broadly
from a theoretically defined set of emotion regulatory strategies. To assess
emotion differentiation, we asked participants to complete daily diaries for two
weeks concerning their most intense emotion experiences. Emotion differ-
entiation and intensity indices were computed from these experience-sampling
data. To assess emotion regulation, we asked participants to indicate the extent
to which they had regulated their negative and positive emotion over a two week
period. To ensure that there were no artifactual dependencies between our
measures of emotion differentiation and emotion regulation, we used a recall-
based measure of emotion regulation, and obtained this measure prior to the
experience-sampling period used to estimate emotion differentiation.
Our specific prediction was that individuals who reporte d intense negative
emotions, and who showed high levels of negative emotion differentiation in
their diary reports, would report the greatest negative emotion regulation
METHOD
Participants
A total of 53 participants (19 men) completed diary ratings and three laboratory
sessions. The majority of participants (90.5%of final sample) completed at least
three-quarters of their diaries over the observation week. On average, partici-
pants completed 13 of the 14 diaries (SD = 2.21) with a minimum of 5 and a
maximum of 14. All participants received course credit and tickets for a US$50
lottery for their participation.2
Measures
Emotion differentiation. We adapted the Rochester Interaction Record
(RIR; Reis & Wheeler, 1991) to assess the nature of participants’ most intense
emotional experience of the day. Participants rated their most intense emotional
2Participants were removed from the sample if: (1) they did not complete the experience-
sampling portion of the study (9 participants), (2) they reported using memory to complete more than
30%of their diaries (13 participants), or (3) if they did not complete enough diaries to produce
variation in their emotion ratings (6 participants). Remove d participants did not display a consistently
different pattern of responses on any variable s of interest when compared to those who were retained
in the final sample.
716 FELDMAN BAR RETT ET AL.
experience each day for 14 days using a series of nine affect terms on a 5-point
Likert scale (0 = not at all, 4 = very much). From these ratings we computed one
positive and one negative emotion differentiation index. The positive emotion
differentiation index was computed by calculating the correlations between the
experience of happiness,joy,enthusiasm, and amusement across time for each
participant. These emotions were chosen because they represented a range of
prototypical pleasant emotional states. Large correlations reflect large degrees of
co-occurrence, and little differentiation in these emotional states, whereas
smaller correlations reflect smaller degrees of co-occurrenc e and more
differentiation (Feldman Barrett, 1998). Fisher r-to-ztransformations were
performed on all correlations before additional analyses were completed. One
set of correlations was computed and averaged for each participant. A similar
procedure was followed for the negative emotion differentiation index (using the
terms nervous,angry,sad,ashamed , and guilty). Coefficient alphas for the
emotion differentiation indices indicated that individuals who displayed a large
correlation between one pair of positive emotions did so for the others as well, a
for positive emotion differentiation = .83, p<.01. A similar situation occurred
for negative emotions, afor negative emotion differentiation = .73, p<.01.
Negative emotion differentiation indices ranged from r=¡.17 to r= .78, with a
mean of r= .33 and a standard deviation of 0.28. Positive differentiation indices
ranged from r= .23 to r= .93, with a mean of r= .74 and a standard deviation of
.32. Unlike previous findings (Feldman Barrett, 1998), the two differentiation
indices were not correlated, r=¡.10, r.s.
Emotion intensity. A momentary intensity index was derived for each
participant by taking the sum of pleasant emotions for days when positive affect
was the dominant subjective state and of unpleasant emotions on days when
negative affect was the dominant state (e.g., Diener, Larsen, Levine, & Emmons,
1985; Larsen & Diener, 1987). Emotion intensity ranged from 0.63 to 2.64, with
a mean of 1.91 and a standard deviation of 0.45. Intensity was moderately
correlated with both the negative (r= .47, p<.01) and the positive (r= .30, p<
.05) emotion discrimination indices.
Emotion regulation. Participants indicated the extent to which they engaged
in nine forms of emotion regulation over the previous two weeks using a 7-point
Likert scale (1 = not at all, 7 = a great deal). Items were carefully chosen to
represent five theoretically defined points in the emotion generative process that
are particularly important to emotion regulation: situation selection, situation
modification, attentional deployment (rumination and distraction), cognitive
change (reappraisal and talking to others), and response modulation (suppression,
masking, and self-soothing) (Gross, 1998). For each of these eight regulation
strategies, participants rated separately the degree to which they had used this
strategy to regulate positive and negative emotions. Items were summed to
EMOTION DIFFERENTIATIO N AND REGULATION 717
compute one two-week experience regulation index for positive emotion and one
for negative emotion. Both scales were internally consistent, afor positive
regulation strategies = .78, p<.01; afor negative regulation strategies = .80,
p<.01. The two indices were moderately correlated, r= .41, p<.01, but as
expected, participants reported regulating their negative emotions more than their
positive emotions, M= 22.08 versus M= 16.17, t(51) = 9.18, p<.01.
Procedure
Participants attended three laboratory sessions. During the first session, parti-
cipants were introduced to the study as an investigation of how college students
think and feel about their daily life experiences. Participants completed a series
of questionnaire measures during the first session. Next, participants were asked
to keep a detailed record of their most intense emotional experience for a 14-day
period. Participants were given detailed procedures for completing the diaries,
and all items on the diary form were carefully defined. In addition to oral
instructions, participants received written instructions to which they could refer
during the course of the study. Participants took home a practice diary, along
with another set of questionnaire measures, including the regulation ques-
tionnaire. During the second laboratory session, participants returned their
completed questionnaires, and reviewed their practice diary with the experi-
menter. Participants were then given 14 days worth of diaries. They returned
their diaries three times during each recording week, and received extra lottery
tickets for returning their forms on time. Participants who did not return their
forms on time were telephoned within 24 hours and reminded to return the
forms. During the third laboratory session, the experimenter interviewed parti-
cipants about their reactions to the study. Participants indicated whether they
had completed any diaries from memory and, if they had, the percentage of
forms that they had completed from memory. The experimenter stressed that
participants would not be penalised in any way (i.e., they would still receive
credit and lottery tickets) if they had not followed instructions, and that we were
simply interested in obtaining an accurate picture of their data.
RESULTS
We hypothesised that emotion differentiation should be related to emotion
regulation, particularly for negative emotions, and for those who have a pro-
pensity to experience intense emotional states. To test this hypothesis, we
regressed the emotion regulation indices onto emotion differentiation, emotion
intensity, and their cross-product using ordinary least squares (OLS) multiple
regression procedures. One analysis was conducted using the negative emotion
indices (negative emotion differentiation and regulation), and one used the
positive emotion indices (positive emotion differentiation and regulation). All
predictor variables were centred (Aiken & West, 1991).
718 FELDMAN BAR RETT ET AL.
Negative emotion differentiation
As predicted, individuals with more highly differentiated and more intense
negative emotional experience reported greater emotion regulation. The nega-
tive differentiation—intensity cross-product term was significantly related to the
negative regulation strategy index, b=¡8.47, B=¡.34, t= 2.34, p<.02,
indicating that greater negative emotion differentiation was associated with
greater emotion regulation, especially as emotion intensity increased. This
means that individuals who had smaller correlations among negative emotional
states, indicating more differentiation, reported more frequent regulation of
negative emotions using a range of strategies. This was particularly true for
individuals who both differentiated among emotions and experienced relatively
intense emotions.
In addition, the negative emotion differentiation term was significantly
related to the negative regulation index, b=¡5.90, B=¡.40, t= 2.75, p<.01.
In regression equations with interaction terms in which the predictor variables
have been centred, the lower order regression coefficients are not main effects,
but instead represent the effect of the predictor on the criterion at the mean of the
other predictor variable. Thus, those individuals at an average level of emotional
intensity and who had smaller correlations among negative states, indicating
more differentiation, also reported more frequent negative emotion regulation
using a range of strategies than did those with larger correlations between
negative emotional states. The emotional intensity term was significantly related
to the negative regulation index (b= 2.76, B= .31, t= 1.96, p<.05), indicating
that individuals at an average level of negative differentiation and who evi-
denced intense emotional states reported more frequent negative emotion
regulation than did those with less intense emotional states.
The relations among negative differentiation, intensity, and emotion regula-
tion are graphically presented in Figure 1. Figure 1 shows the simple regression
lines for the association between negative emotion differentiation and emotion
regulation at one standard deviation below, at the mean, and one standard
deviation above the mean of intensity (Aiken & West, 1991). As predicted, those
low in granularity (with large correlations between ratings of negative emotional
states) did not differ in their regulation by intensity. Those high in differentiation
(with small correlations between negative emotional states) reported increased
emotion regulation as the intensity of their experience increased.
Positive emotion differentiation
As predicted, positive emotion differentiation was unrelated to emotion regu-
lation. Neither positive emotion differentiation, nor the intensity-differentiation
cross-product were significantly related to the positive emotion regulation
strategy index (b=¡2.63, B=¡.19, t= 1.34, p<.19, and b= 2.89, B= .12, t=
EMOTION DIFFERENTIATIO N AND REGULATION 719
0.80, p<.43, respectively). Emotional intensity was significantly related to the
regulation strategy index for individuals who evidenced an average level of
positive emotion differentiation (b= 3.67, B= .39, t= 2.60, p<.01), indicating
that individuals characterised by intense emotional experience reported using a
greater number of emotion regulation strategies.
DISCUSSION
Although it has been argued previously that awareness of affective experience is
likely related to emotion regulation and self-regulation in general (Swinkels &
Giuliano, 1995), the present study provides the first empirical evidence, to our
knowledge, that characteristics of represented emotional experience is related to
emotion regulation. As predicted, individual differences in the propensity to label
negative emotional experiences in a discrete and granular fashion were associated
with increased negative emotion regulation by using a range of strategies, par-
ticularly for those individuals who experience their emotion at greater intensity.
Positive emotion differentiation was not related to any of the regulation variables.
This study is important on several counts. First, it replicates previous studies
indicating there is great variability in the representation of emotional experiences
as discrete (Feldman, 1995; Feldman Barrett, 1998) and verifies that this variation
is related to other aspects of emotion life. Second, it indicates that emotion
Figure 1. Simple Regression Lines for the Association Between Negative Emotion Differentiation
and Emotion Regulation at Different Levels of Emotional Intensity. Negative emotion differentiation
is indexed as one standard deviation below the mean (high differentiation), at the mean (averag e
differentiation), and one standard deviation above t he mean (low differentiation), of the average
correlation between negativ e emotion ratings.
720 FELDMAN BAR RETT ET AL.
regulation must be considered separately for positive and negative emotion. This
is likely because negative emotions are more heavily regulated in our current
cultural context. Global measures of emotion regulation (i.e., a strategy index that
did not separate positive and negative emotion, as well as broad statements about
emotion regulation more generally) were not related to emotional differentiation
in the present study. By extrapolation, it would be interesting to see whether
emotional differentiation is more strongly related to those specific negative
emotions that are more highly regulated (e.g., anger) when compared to those
negative emotions that are not modified as frequently (e.g., sadness).
These findings are consistent with two broad perspectives in the emotion
literature. First, they are consistent with an affect-as-information perspective.
According to that perspective, specific emotional states have more adaptive
value than global affective states, in part, because experiences of specific, dif-
ferentiated emotional states are less subject to misattribution errors (Clore &
Parrott, 1991; Keltner, Locke, & Audrain, 1993; Schwarz, 1990; Schwarz &
Clore, 1996). One of the principal distinguishing features of a discrete emotional
state, in comparison to a globa l affective state, is that emotions are typically
associated with a causal object, whereas global affect ive states are not (affect is,
of course, caused, but an object is not attributed to the feeling state; Russell &
Feldman Barrett, 1999). Identification of the source of an emotional state has
important consequences (Johnson, Hashtroudi, & Lindsay, 1993; Johnson,
Nolde, & De Leonardis, 1996). This study has reinforced this claim by showing
that emotion differentiation is correlated with emotion regulation.
Second, our findings are consistent with an emotional intelligence perspective.
Emotional intelligence is broadly defined as the ability to perceive emotions in
self and other, to reflectively regulate emotions, and to access and generate
emotional experiences to inform adaptation (Salovey & Mayer, 1990; Salovey &
Sluyter, 1997). Recently, the concept of emotional intelligence has come under
scrutiny, with some researchers claiming that the construct does not have validity
(Davies, Stankov, & Roberts, 1998). Taken together, however, emotion differ-
entiation and the aspects of emotion regulation assessed in the present study seem
to comprise two important components of the emotional intelligence concept, and
in the process support its validity (Feldman Barrett & Gross, 2000). Those
individuals with the ability to distinguish among negative emotional states and
subsequently regulate their emotions may prove more ‘‘emotionally intelligent’’
than those who have less differentiated emotion representations.
Limitations
One important caveat is that the analyses presented in this study were correla-
tional, and therefore no causal connection between emotion differentiation and
emotion regulation can be assumed. The findings are certainly consistent with
the hypothesis that emotion differentiation sets the stage for emotion regulation,
EMOTION DIFFERENTIATIO N AND REGULATION 721
but they do not conclusively demonstrate this. It is also possible that more
frequent emotion regulation allows for finer grained differentiation. Indeed,
participants reported emotional experiences in their daily diaries that could have
been the result of, rather than the input to, regulatory attempts. Individuals who
are well-practised at emotion regulation may experience the automatic activa-
tion of a rich network of semantic and affective representations (comprised of
both linguistic labels and organised personal experiences) that are easily
accessible due to repeated use. Such individuals may be able to easily represent
their emotional experience in a finely differentiated way without effort or intent.
Future dire ctions
These findings suggest a number of interesting next steps. First, it will be
important to replicate the differentiation-regulation relationship both with a
broader range of participants (other than healthy college students) and using
experimental methodology (by manipulating emotion differentiation and
examining the impact of such manipulations on emotion regulation ease and
success). Second, it would be important to determine whether emotion differ-
entiation is related to regulation efficacy (i.e., to more adaptive use of regulation
strategies). Our focus in this report was on emotion regulation frequency , but in
future studies, it will be important to assess whether emotion differentiation is
reliably associated with the use of particular emotion regulation strategies.
Third, it would be important to consider whether the differentiation-regulation
link occurs only for consciously mediated states, or whether it also exists for
automatically generated and regulated states. Finally, it would be important to
develop and extend this view to develop a broader conceptualisation of the
processes that link emotional differentiation to emotion regulation. The current
findings are consistent with the view that both emotion differentiation and
emotion regulation are influenced by a combination of accessible emotion
knowledge (as evidenced by differentiation in conscious emotional experience)
and the motivation to use that knowledge (as evidenced by the propensity to
experience intense emotional states). The differentiation-regulation link also
may be due to underlying differences in the availability of complex emotion
knowledge, as well as the cognitive resources to use the knowledge in any given
instance (Feldman Barrett & Gross, 2000).
Manuscript received 25 January 2000
Revised manuscript received 2 April 2001
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724 FELDMAN BAR RETT ET AL.
... An increasing number of studies have found the critical role of EG in emotion regulation. EG influenced how people understand their emotions and their strategies for emotion regulation [14,15]. People with a high degree of EG demonstrated higher emotion regulation capacities [14]. ...
... EG influenced how people understand their emotions and their strategies for emotion regulation [14,15]. People with a high degree of EG demonstrated higher emotion regulation capacities [14]. It can also facilitate psychosocial adjustment against the negative impact of emotions [16]. ...
Preprint
BACKGROUND Emotional granularity is closely associated with emotional regulation and well-being outcomes. However, it is rarely considered when developing digital mental health interventions, which may limit the accuracy of diagnosis and treatment in such interventions. OBJECTIVE This study aims to explore the potential of emotion word ratings to inform the design of digital mental health interventions and clinicians’ interpretation of patients’ self-reports. METHODS 30 participants’ ratings of emotion words were analysed from previous studies of emotion granularity and categorisation. Each participant’s ratings were plotted into a circumplex of emotions. Patterns of divergence between individuals’ self-reported ratings and normative reference data were calculated to show the range of emotion perception. RESULTS The analysis of ratings of emotion words demonstrated the potential of visualising individual emotion ratings to explore opportunities for tailoring content in digital interventions. Large variations were identified in people’s ratings of emotion words in both valence and arousal dimensions. CONCLUSIONS This work raises the awareness of a gap in the current design of digital mental health interventions and highlights the importance of understanding individual differences in emotion perception and experience for more personalised guidance in these interventions. CLINICALTRIAL This study has been registered at https://osf.io/2nc6d.
... tions (Klein et al., 2022). Emotion differentiation-how well emotions are distinctively labelled-is expected to facilitate emotion regulation, because knowing what one feels informs ways of regulating one's emotions (Barrett et al.., 2001;Berking et al., 2014;Schwarz & Clore, 1983). Based on this assumption, fluctuating levels of emotion differentiation within an adolescent should introduce subsequent variability in the use of emotion regulation strategies and, sequentially, changes in emotion intensity (Kashdan et al., 2015). ...
... Two studies that investigated this association between individuals gave an inconclusive picture. One daily diary study found that individuals with higher differentiation of negative emotions showed greater average use of emotion regulation strategies compared to those with lower emotion differentiation (Barrett et al.., 2001), but an ESM study that examined separate strategies found that high differentiators used less social sharing compared to low differentiators (Kalokerinos et al., 2019). Additionally, this ESM study revealed no significant associations between emotion differentiation and five other strategies examined (e.g., distraction). ...
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Emotion differentiation—distinctively labeling emotions—is theorized to guide adolescents in regulating emotions amid changing daily life situations. Momentary fluctuations in emotion differentiation are expected to introduce variability in using emotion regulation strategies, leading to sequential emotion intensity changes. Using five experience sampling datasets (N = 750, aged 11–25, 59.17% female, 25,834 observations) that repeatedly assess emotion differentiation and emotion regulation variability, we examined their interaction and impact on emotion intensity. Surprisingly, moments of heightened emotion differentiation were followed by more stable use of regulation strategies (lower variability), while moments of higher emotion regulation variability were followed by less emotion differentiation. Both heightened differentiation and regulation variability preceded contra-hedonic outcomes, such as increased negative emotions and decreased positive emotions. These findings were robust across different types of emotion regulation variability (intensity or switching) and valences of emotions (positive or negative). In the short term, emotion differentiation predicts reduced regulation variability and may bring unpleasant changes in emotion intensity.
... Emotional awareness is the ability to recognize and understand one's emotions, while self-reflection involves evaluating emotional responses to improve regulation (Barrett et al., 2001;Cole et al., 2004). This test measures how well childrearers recognize their emotions during childcare and reflects on how these emotions affect their caregiving. ...
Research
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The Emotion Regulation Index for Childrearing (ERIC) is a psychological tool designed to assess an individual's capacity to manage their emotions effectively within childrearing contexts. It focuses on the crucial role of emotional regulation in caregiving, acknowledging that the ability to control and respond to one's emotions directly influences the quality of care provided and the emotional environment created for children. The tool evaluates various facets of emotional regulation, including self-awareness, impulse control, the ability to reframe stressful situations, attuned communication, and emotional resilience. By measuring these aspects, the ERIC aims to provide insights into how caregivers manage stress, handle challenging situations, and maintain emotional stability in their interactions with children. Ultimately, this assessment can serve as a valuable resource for enhancing childrearing practices, promoting healthier caregiver-child relationships, and fostering a positive emotional climate that supports the well-being and development of both caregivers and children. This tool can be utilized by institutions, professionals, and individuals involved in child development, such as parents, doctors, teachers, and social workers, to identify areas for support and growth in emotional regulation skills, ultimately benefiting the children in their care.
... Having a sophisticated understanding of emotions is an adaptive skill that affords better emotion regulation, workplace outcomes, and well-being in adults (Barrett et al., 2001;Erbas et al., 2019;O'Boyle et al., 2011). In children, emotion understanding is thought to be a key facet of adaptive emotional functioning (Milojevich et al., 2021). ...
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Emotion understanding and emotion regulation play important roles in children’s development, but we have only a limited understanding of how these constructs are socialized. Constructionist theories suggest that as children engage in interactions with caregivers, they learn to associate words naming emotion categories with conceptual representations of specific emotions, leading to greater emotion understanding. In this preregistered study, we posit emotion word knowledge as a key feature of emotion understanding. Using path analysis with a cross-sectional sample of 252 mainly low socioeconomic status children (aged 4–8 years) and their caregivers collected between 2018 and 2024, we examined indirect effects of implicit parental emotion socialization (difficulties with emotion regulation and emotional expressivity) on children’s emotion regulation through children’s emotion word knowledge. While parental difficulties with emotion regulation and expressivity were unrelated to children’s emotion word knowledge, child emotion word knowledge predicted parent reports of children’s adaptive emotion regulation. In addition, we observed an indirect effect of children’s verbal intelligence on adaptive emotion regulation through children’s emotion word knowledge. In contrast, we observed a direct effect of parental difficulties with emotion regulation on children’s dysregulation. These findings align with constructionist theories underscoring the importance of emotion word knowledge for the development of emotion regulation skills and begin to shine light on how family contexts might support children’s development of emotion word knowledge.
... Emotional granularity or emotion differentiation is the ability to generate nuanced and differentiated emotional experiences and distinguish between like-valenced emotional states (Barrett et al., 2001;Kashdan et al., 2015;Seah & Coifman, 2022). Individuals with high granularity tend to experience distinct emotions in a context-specific manner (e.g., feeling sad, but not angry), whereas individuals with low granularity tend to have more diffuse affective emotional experiences (e.g., feeling bad). ...
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Emotional granularity is the ability to experience one’s emotional experiences in a nuanced and specific manner. According to the theory of constructed emotion, between-person differences in emotional granularity are a function of how efficiently individuals categorize affect-related input by means of emotion concepts. We propose that executive functions support the effective coordination of the emotion categorization process, thereby facilitating emotional granularity. In the present study, we empirically examined the associations between three domains of executive functions (i.e., working memory, inhibition, and shifting) and emotional granularity for both negative and positive emotions (negative and positive emotional granularity) in two samples (participants with and without chronic pain). We hypothesized that all three executive function domains would be positively associated with both negative and positive emotional granularity. Participants ( N = 153 individuals without chronic pain, N = 218 individuals with chronic pain) completed an online assessment of executive functions and a 14-day ambulatory assessment of 15 negative and 12 positive emotions (with five prompts per day). Contrary to our expectations, neither the six manifest executive function task scores nor a latent common executive function factor measured by the task scores were significantly positively associated with the negative and positive emotional granularity indices in either sample and in analyses that combined both samples. Our findings suggest that executive functions may play a lesser role for emotional granularity than previously assumed. We discuss alternative operationalizations of executive functions and emotional granularity that might reveal stronger associations between these constructs.
Book
Knowledge of our emotional and bodily states helps us to further know our goals, values, interests, cares, and concerns. The authors first lay out a puzzle as to why bodily and emotional self-knowledge is strongly associated with good mental health and well-being. They solve this puzzle by mapping out connections between bodily states, emotional states, and our goals with an account of emotions as embodied appraisals. Emotions being embodied implies that self-knowledge of our bodily states aids in acquiring knowledge of our emotional states. Emotions as appraisals means that situations are appraised relative to our goals, such that self-knowledge of emotional states aids in acquiring knowledge of our goals, which are not always transparent to us. While emotional self-knowledge can be difficult to acquire, through skilled practice we can improve awareness and knowledge of our emotional and bodily states.
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Distraction (diversion from the emotional experience) has been suggested as generally less effective than reappraisal (engagement with the emotional experience through cognitive reframing) to change one's own and others' emotions. Hence, we examined if a predominant use of distraction over reappraisal in interpersonal emotion regulation can be problematic. In Study 1 (N = 274), we used a difference score to assess individuals' dominant use of distraction over reappraisal. This tendency was linked to more difficulties in identifying and describing feelings and greater experience of personal distress. In Study 2 (N = 121), based on latent class analysis, we identified three classes: Class 1 (23%; who consistently used reappraisal to change others' anger, sadness, or stress/anxiety), Class 2 (48%; who consistently used affective engagement), and Class 3 (19%; who consistently used distraction). Importantly, Class 3 (users of distraction) scored higher in difficulties in emotion identification of themselves and others and experiential avoidance compared to the classes who mainly used affective engagement and reappraisal. The obtained results suggest that the consistent use of diversion over engagement strategies to change others' emotions might be associated with more emotional difficulties in the regulator.
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The beneficial effects of mindfulness have garnered extensive support across numerous investigations. However, the antecedents contributing the fluctuations in state mindfulness remain understudied. Given that the nature of emotion-eliciting situations varies across different contextual dimensions in everyday life, this study employed ambulatory assessment to examine how state mindfulness adapts to diverse contexts and its subsequent emotional ramifications. Participants provided reports on the intensity (Study 1) or controllability (Study 2) of negative emotion-eliciting stimuli, state mindfulness, which was measured by items adapted from the Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ) and concurrent positive and negative affect seven times daily over a week. A two-level mediation analysis elucidated the pathways from contextual factors to state mindfulness and from state mindfulness to affective states. In Study 1, intensity positively correlated with observing, describing and non-reactivity, yet exhibited a negative association with non-judging and acting with awareness. Further, observing was positively linked to both negative and positive affect; describing correlated positively with positive affect; non-judging showed negatively associations with both affective types; non-reactivity was positively related to positive affect; and acting with awareness correlated negatively with negative affect. Intensity had a significant indirect effect on negative affect via observing, non-judging, and acting with awareness, and on positive affect via observing, describing, non-judging, and non-reactivity. In Study 2, controllability showed positive associations with observing, describing, and non-reactivity, a negative association with non-judging, and no significant correlation with acting with awareness. Emotional outcomes mirrored those in Study 1, except that acting with awareness also positively associated with positive affect. Controllability had a significant indirect effect on negative affect via observing and non-judging, and on positive affect via observing, describing, non-judging, and non-reactivity. Variations in state mindfulness reflect differential responses to changing contextual factors, leading to different emotional outcomes. Understanding these dynamic offer additional insights into the cultivation and enhancement of mindfulness practices.
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The view that emotional intelligence should be included within the traditional cognitive abilities framework was explored in 3 studies (total N = 530) by investigating the relations among measures of emotional intelligence, traditional human cognitive abilities, and personality. The studies suggest that the status of the emotional intelligence construct is limited by measurement properties of its tests. Measures based on consensual scoring exhibited low reliability. Self-report measures had salient loadings on well-established personality factors, indicating a lack of divergent validity. These data provide controvertible evidence for the existence of a separate Emotion Perception factor that (perhaps) represents the ability to monitor another individual's emotions. This factor is narrower than that postulated within current models of emotional intelligence.
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One of the functions of automatic stimulus evaluation is to direct attention toward events that may have undesirable consequences for the perceiver’s well-being. To test whether attentional resources are automatically directed away from an attended task to undesirable stimuli, Ss named the colors in which desirable and undesirable traits (e. g., honest, sadistic) appeared. Across 3 experiments, color-naming latencies were consistently longer for undesirable traits but did not differ within the desirable and undesirable categories. In Experiment 2, Ss also showed more incidental learning for undesirable traits, as predicted by the automatic vigilance (but not a perceptual defense) hypothesis. In Experiment 3, a diagnosticity (or base-rate) explanation of the vigilance effect was ruled out. The implications for deliberate processing in person perception and stereotyping are discussed.
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Research on emotions and several happiness scales suggest that positive and negative affect are strongly inversely correlated. However, work on subjective well-being indicates that over time, positive and negative affect are independent across persons. In order to reconcile this inconsistency, two dimensions are proposed for personal affective structure: the frequency of positive versus negative affect and the intensity of affect. Subjects in three studies completed daily and momentary reports on their moods. In support of the intensity dimension, the correlations between positive and negative intensity were strong and positive in all three studies. The intensities of specific emotions across persons were also highly correlated. Across the three studies the frequency and intensity of affect varied independently. Although average levels of positive and negative affect showed low correlations, this relation became strongly inverse when intensity was partialed out. Thus the intensity dimension helps explain the relative independence of positive and negative affect. In addition, emotional intensity is offered as a new personality dimension that manifests interesting characteristics.
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This investigation examined the influence of emotional attributions on the relevance of current feelings to judgments of personal satisfaction. In the first three studies, subjects were led to make different attributions for their naturally occurring feelings and then asked to judge their personal satisfaction. Satisfaction was higher after situational and specific attributions than after general and self-referential attributions, but only in domains that were unrelated to the causes to which subjects attributed their feelings. Study 4 tested whether affective states such as emotions with clearly defined causes are less relevant to judgments of life satisfaction than more diffuse states such as moods. Satisfaction was elevated after a laboratory mood induction only when subjects were led to focus on their moods in ways characteristic of emotional states (by articulating specific causes and labels for their feelings). These studies illuminate the role of emotional attribution in judgements of personal satisfaction.
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This article presents a framework for emotional intelligence, a set of skills hypothesized to contribute to the accurate appraisal and expression of emotion in oneself and in others, the effective regulation of emotion in self and others, and the use of feelings to motivate, plan, and achieve in one's life. We start by reviewing the debate about the adaptive versus maladaptive qualities of emotion. We then explore the literature on intelligence, and especially social intelligence, to examine the place of emotion in traditional intelligence conceptions. A framework for integrating the research on emotion-related skills is then described. Next, we review the components of emotional intelligence. To conclude the review, the role of emotional intelligence in mental health is discussed and avenues for further investigation are suggested.
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Increasing interest in individual differences related to emotion is evident in the recent appearance of a large number of self-report instruments designed to assess aspects of the feeling experience. In this article, the authors review a sample of 18 of these scales and report technical information on each (e.g., length, format, reliability, construct validity, and correlates). They propose that this domain of individual differences can be usefully structured into five conceptual categories, including measures of absorption, attention, clarity, intensity, and expression. The measures were administered to a sample of individuals, and the coherence of the proposed categories was examined through hierarchical cluster analyses. The results confirmed the proposed structure of this domain of individual difference measures. The authors argue for the usefulness of an individual differences approach to theory testing and specify some of the information-processing roles that might be played by the categories of individual differences found in the data.
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The construct of mood awareness is presented as a form of attention directed toward one's mood states. Two dimensions of mood awareness were investigated through the development and validation of the Mood Awareness Scale. Mood monitoring refers to a tendency to scrutinize and focus on one's moods, whereas mood labeling refers to the ability to identify and categorize one's moods. The role of these two dimensions in self-reported affective experience was explored in four studies using various measures of personality, affect, and mood regulation. Mood monitoring predicted the experience of negative affect, neuroticism, intense affective reactions, and greater rumination on negative mood. Mood labeling predicted the experience of positive affect, extraversion, high self-esteem, and greater satisfaction with social support. The usefulness of these dimensions for predicting affective outcomes is discussed.
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This investigation examined the influence of emotional attributions on the relevance of current feelings to judgments of personal satisfaction. In the first three studies, subjects were led to make different attributions for their naturally occurring feelings and then asked to judge their personal satisfaction. Satisfaction was higher after situational and specific attributions than after general and self-referential attributions, but only in domains that were unrelated to the causes to which subjects attributed their feelings. Study 4 tested whether affective states such as emotions with clearly defined causes are less relevant to judgments of life satisfaction than more diffuse states such as moods. Satisfaction was elevated after a laboratory mood induction only when subjects were led to focus on their moods in ways characteristic of emotional states (by articulating specific causes and labels for their feelings). These studies illuminate the role of emotional attribution in judgments of personal satisfaction.