Emotion Regulation: Why Beliefs Matter

Emotion regulation research is flourishing. However, enthusiasm for this topic has outpaced conceptual clarity, resulting in a maelstrom of disparate findings. In the present review, we bring together two conceptual frameworks that we believe may be useful in organizing existing findings and suggesting directions for future research. The first considers individuals' fundamental beliefs about emotion and the pervasive role they play in emotion regulation. The second identifies how emotion regulation unfolds across time (Gross, 2015). We bring these two frameworks together to highlight how individuals' beliefs about emotion influence each step in the emotion regulation process: identifying a need to regulate, selecting regulation strategies, implementing regulation, and monitoring one's regulatory success. At each stage, we consider both how individuals' beliefs shape the emotion regulation they apply to themselves (intrinsic emotion regulation), and also the emotion regulation they apply to others (extrinsic emotion regulation). We conclude by highlighting several promising directions for future research.