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

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. 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.