Emotion regulation flexibility

Abstract

Our environment is in constant flux, and in response, our emotions change dynamically (Kuppens & Verduyn, 2017). Thus, when seeking to influence our emotions, we must also dynamically tune our emotion-regulation efforts. This means that successful regulation does not involve merely using particular adaptive strategies, but rather, flexibly picking the right strategy to suit ever-changing situational demands (Bonanno & Burton, 2013). This means that emotion regulation researchers must understand flexibility, often defined as systematic variation in emotion regulation processes in synchrony with the context (Aldao et al., 2015). In this chapter, we first discuss variability as a precursor to flexibility, then introduce the components of emotion regulation flexibility, and finally discuss challenges and future research directions.

Self‐control: An integrative framework

“…Although essential for regulatory flexibility, research so far has been rather silent on the role of context. This is likely because measuring regulatory flexibility is incredibly difficult (Kalokerinos & Koval, 2022). Further compounding this issue are individual differences in how researc12738hers operationalize regulatory flexibility, especially at the empirical level.…”

“…The selection stage highlights how people can use a wide range of self‐control strategies. However, a person's capacity to regulate depends on their strategy repertoire, or the strategies a person generally has at their disposal in the pursuit of a particular goal (Bonanno & Burton, 2013; Kalokerinos & Koval, 2022). This concept is best described as a “toolbox” approach to self‐control—much like a carpenter needs to have different tools to carry out their work successfully, strategy repertoire represents a person's regulatory “toolbox” and the individual strategies represent the “tools” they use to pursue their goals.…”

“…Although most research focuses on repertoire size, it is also important to consider composition. In fact, research suggests that the composition of a person's strategy repertoire likely carries more weight than size alone (Grommisch et al., 2020; see Kalokerinos & Koval, 2022).…”

Strategy-situation fit as currently operationalized in daily life may not explain variance in affective well-being

“…In conclusion, despite the popularity and importance of strategy-situation fit and ER flexibility in current conceptualizations of ER (Aldao et al, 2015;Bonanno & Burton, 2013;Kalokerinos & Koval, 2024), which has spilled over into other (related) areas of research such as self-regulation (e.g., Bürgler et al, 2021;, the current evidence and methods for assessing strategy-situation fit in everyday life fail to provide support for this notion. Given that the current method for assessing it has empirical and conceptual problems that limit its validity, we offered some suggestions for moving forward in future research.…”

“…According to Aldao et al (2015), an ER strategy is used flexibly (a) when it is used in accordance with variations in a context and (b) when this variation is adaptive, i.e., is associated with greater well-being. Thus, individuals need to first identify the environmental demands of a situation, i.e., context sensitivity, in order to then select a strategy that best suits these demands (Bonanno & Burton, 2013), which has been termed strategy-situation fit (e.g., Kalokerinos & Koval, 2024). 1 Indirect evidence for this notion comes from research showing the importance of variability between ER strategies for individuals' well-being, with greater ER variability being associated with lower levels of negative affect (Blanke et al, 2020;Wenzel, Blanke, et al, 2022).…”