Emotion Experience and Expression Goals Shape Emotion Regulation Strategy Choice

Abstract

Research has begun to investigate how goals for emotion experience—how people want to feel—influence the selection of emotion regulation strategies to achieve these goals. We make the case that it is not only how people want to feel that affects strategy selection, but also how they want to be seen to feel. Incorporating this expressive dimension distinguishes four unique emotion goals: (1) to experience and express emotion; (2) to experience but not express emotion; (3) to express but not experience emotion; and (4) to neither experience nor express emotion. In six experiments, we investigated whether these goals influenced choices between six common emotion regulation strategies. Rumination and amplification were selected most often to meet Goal 1—to experience and express emotion. Expressive suppression was chosen most often to meet Goal 2—to experience but not express emotion. Amplification was chosen most often to meet Goal 3—to express but not experience emotion. Finally, distraction was chosen most often to meet Goal 4—to neither experience nor express emotion. Despite not being chosen most for any specific goal, reappraisal was the most commonly selected strategy overall. Our findings introduce a new concept to the emotion goals literature and reveal new insights into the process of emotion regulation strategy selection.