On the rationality of emotion regulation

Abstract

Much of the recent work in psychology (and affective science) has shown that humans regulate their emotions nearly constantly, sometimes well and sometimes poorly. I argue that properly regulating one's emotions displays emotional rationality, and failing to do so displays emotional irrationality. If an agent feels an emotion that is obviously problematic for the agent to feel and she is aware that it is problematic, then the agent ought to regulate her emotions in future similar situations. To capture this aspect of emotional rationality, I introduce the concept of imprudence, which is meant to capture a familiar way that we assess each other's emotions, despite the fact that it has yet to be a factor in the literature on emotions in philosophy, psychology, or affective science.

There Are No Irrational Emotions

“…14 14 Similarly, Kerr, 2021, holds that emotional rationality is just a matter of how well one exercises one's emotional capacities to pursue one's practical interests or goals, including one's capacity to regulate one's emotions. Despite substantive differences between Kerr's general approach to rationality and my own, I take my argument to apply to Kerr's view insofar as the conjuncts of rationality as justification basing are at least plausible necessary conditions for rational mental states, if not necessary and jointly sufficient.…”

“…21 21 Kerr, 2021, holds that one is imprudent (and thus irrational) when one fails to regulate one's emotions despite having evidence that one's emotions belong to a harmful pattern that one can change. I agree that we are sometimes irrational when we fail to regulate our emotions (Section 5.2).…”