The Social Regulation of Emotion: An Integrative, Cross-Disciplinary Model

doi:10.1016/j.tics.2015.09.003

Trends in Cognitive Sciences

Volume 20, Issue 1, January 2016, Pages 47-63

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2015.09.003 Get rights and content

Trends

Successfully regulating emotions has been linked to numerous advantageous outcomes, including improved mental and physical health, as well as enhanced social functioning.

While research on emotion regulation has advanced markedly in the past few decades, most work has focused on the self-regulation of emotion (that is, how people regulate their own emotions).

There is a growing recognition that enhanced understanding of the social regulation of emotion (how people regulate the emotions of others) is also vitally important.

Research insights into the social regulation of emotion often occur in diverse disciplines, and a cross-disciplinary model would promote the integration of findings from across separate fields of study.

Research in emotion regulation has largely focused on how people manage their own emotions, but there is a growing recognition that the ways in which we regulate the emotions of others also are important. Drawing on work from diverse disciplines, we propose an integrative model of the psychological and neural processes supporting the social regulation of emotion. This organizing framework, the ‘social regulatory cycle’, specifies at multiple levels of description the act of regulating another person's emotions as well as the experience of being a target of regulation. The cycle describes the processing stages that lead regulators to attempt to change the emotions of a target person, the impact of regulation on the processes that generate emotions in the target, and the underlying neural systems.

Section snippets

Beyond the Individual: The Social Regulation of Emotion

Whether we are angry about a disagreement at work, struggling after a breakup, or saddened by the loss of a loved one, the ability to regulate our emotions is essential for maintaining mental health, social functioning, and physical well-being. The past twenty years have seen enormous growth in research on emotion regulation [1]. For the most part this work has focused on the ability of an individual to self-regulate their emotions. Experiments have examined how specific regulatory strategies

The SRC

To date, emotion regulation research has focused primarily on how people manage their own emotions. While the majority of self-regulatory attempts occur in social contexts [26] and have ramifications for social functioning (Box 1), self-regulation is distinct from the social regulation of emotion. Social regulation occurs when one person seeks to alter the emotional responses of another person. Instead of merely suggesting regulatory strategies to others, social emotion regulators pursue

Social Regulation from the Perspective of the Regulator

Regulators engage a complex set of cognitive and affective processes to infer the emotions of a target, to decide whether to regulate, weigh potential strategies, and ultimately implement one (Figure 2, Key Figure). While no studies have directly examined relevant neural systems in the context of social regulation per se, for each stage we discuss likely neural systems supporting the SRC (Figure 3).

Social Regulation from the Perspective of the Target

In the SRC (Figure 2), targets engage a sequence of processing steps to generate the emotional response that in turn initiates their dynamic interplay with regulators. Because this emotion-generation sequence has been well-studied and described elsewhere [1], we will discuss its elements briefly and focus on ways in which emotion generation differs in the context of social regulation as compared to self-regulation. Perhaps the most important differences revolve around how targets attend to and

Concluding Remarks and Future Directions

Drawing on research from multiple fields, the present review proposes an integrative and comprehensive framework of the social regulation of emotion that can organize and guide behavioral and neuroscience research. This working framework posits a dynamic, interactive SRC as a model of the social regulation of emotion. The value of the SRC derives in part from the common language and reference frame it provides for multiple disciplines – ranging from developmental, social, and organizational

Acknowledgments

Completion of the manuscript was supported by grants AG043463 from NIA, HD069178 from NICHD, and MH090964 from NIMH awarded to K.O.

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Social support offers protection from depression and anxiety, possibly through its beneficial effects upon cognitive reappraisal. The present study evaluates potential mechanisms of social support, utilizing a reappraisal task in 121 undergraduates elevated on neuroticism. Participants were instructed to reinterpret stressful images with (Social Condition) and without (Solo Condition) the reminder of a social support figure. Aversiveness, negative affect, and positive affect ratings, as well as written reappraisal responses, were collected trial-by-trial. Results indicated that participants reported lower aversiveness and negative affect and higher positive affect when reinterpreting images in the Social Condition compared to the Solo Condition. Analyses of adherence ratings of written reappraisals revealed that participants generated reinterpretations more in the Social Condition than in the Solo Condition. Exploratory mediation analyses indicated that Condition was indirectly associated with reappraisal efficacy as measured by aversiveness and affect ratings through reappraisal adherence. Results suggest that cognitive reappraisal with the influence of social support may be more effective than cognitive reappraisal without such social influence, and thus may be a suitable target for interventions for depression and anxiety.
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Emotion regulation is particularly important for adolescents as they undergo normative developmental changes in affective systems and experience heightened risk for psychopathology. Despite a high need for emotion regulation during adolescence, commonly studied emotion regulation strategies like cognitive reappraisal are less beneficial for adolescents than adults because they rely on neural regions that are still developing during this period (i.e., lateral prefrontal cortex). However, adolescence is also marked by increased valuation of peer relationships and sensitivity to social information and cues. In the present review, we synthesize research examining emotion regulation and peer influence across development to suggest that sensitivity to peers during adolescence could be leveraged to improve emotion regulation for this population. We first discuss developmental trends related to emotion regulation at the level of behavior and brain in adolescents, using cognitive reappraisal as an exemplar emotion regulation strategy. Next, we discuss social influences on adolescent brain development, describing caregiver influence and increasing susceptibility to peer influence, to describe how adolescent sensitivity to social inputs represents both a window of vulnerability and opportunity. Finally, we conclude by describing the promise of social (i.e., peer-based) interventions for enhancing emotion regulation in adolescence.
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Trends in Cognitive Sciences

Feature ReviewSpecial Focus on EmotionThe Social Regulation of Emotion: An Integrative, Cross-Disciplinary Model

Trends

Section snippets

Beyond the Individual: The Social Regulation of Emotion

The SRC

Social Regulation from the Perspective of the Regulator

Social Regulation from the Perspective of the Target

Concluding Remarks and Future Directions

Acknowledgments

Trends Cogn. Sci.

Adv. Exp. Soc. Psychol.

J. Exp. Soc. Psychol.

Res. Organ. Behav.

Trends Cogn. Sci.

Neuroimage

Curr. Opin. Neurobiol.

J. Exp. Soc. Psychol.

J. Exp. Soc. Psychol.

Neuroimage

Neuron

Neuropsychologia

Curr. Opin. Neurobiol.

Trends Cogn. Sci.

Neuropsychologia

Trends Cogn. Sci.

J. Exp. Soc. Psychol.

Hum. Res. Manag. Rev.

Neuron

Trends Cogn. Sci.

Emotion regulation: conceptual and empirical foundations

Emotion regulation: current status and future prospects

Psychol. Inquiry

Cognitive reappraisal of emotion: a meta-analysis of human neuroimaging studies

Cereb. Cortex

The social origins of self-regulation

Regulation of distress and negative emotions: a developmental view

Dev. Psychol.

Emotion regulation in couples

Development and validation of the Interpersonal Emotion Management Scale

J. Occup. Organ. Psychol.

How to win friendship and trust by influencing people's feelings: an investigation of interpersonal affect regulation and the quality of relationships

Hum. Relations

Building genuine trust through interpersonal emotion management: a threat regulation model of trust and collaboration across boundaries

Acad. Manag. Rev.

The neuroscience of empathy: progress, pitfalls and promise

Nat. Neurosci.

A biopsychosocial approach to arousal regulation

J. Soc. Clin. Psychol.

Cognitive, social, and physiological determinants of emotional state

Psychol. Rev.

Unskilled and unaware of it: how difficulties in recognizing one's own incompetence lead to inflated self-assessments

J. Pers. Soc. Psychol.

The neural basis of mood-congruent processing biases in depression

Arch. Gen. Psychiatry

Stress signalling pathways that impair prefrontal cortex structure and function

Nat. Rev. Neurosci.

Functional imaging studies of emotion regulation: a synthetic review and evolving model of the cognitive control of emotion

Ann. N. Y. Cogn. Neurosci.

Cognitive emotion regulation fails the stress test

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

Brain mechanisms of social threat effects on working memory

Cereb. Cortex

Dynamic mapping of human cortical development during childhood through early adulthood

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

An application of prefrontal cortex function theory to cognitive aging

Psychol. Bull.

Dysfunction of the prefrontal cortex in addiction: neuroimaging findings and clinical implications

Nat. Rev. Neurosci.

A Classification of controlled interpersonal affect regulation strategies

Emotion

Reconceptualizing emotion regulation

Emotion Rev.

Emotion regulation in everyday life

Invisible support and adjustment to stress

J. Pers. Soc. Psychol.

Stress, social support, and the buffering hypothesis

Psychol. Bull.

Emotion regulation and psychopathology

Annu. Rev. Clin. Psychol.

Feature Review
Special Focus on Emotion
The Social Regulation of Emotion: An Integrative, Cross-Disciplinary Model