Explicit and Implicit Emotion Regulation

Abstract This chapter describes the emotion regulation framework and illustrates how different combinations of emotion regulation goals and emotion change processes yield the four classes of emotion regulation strategies: explicit controlled, implicit automatic, implicit controlled, and explicit automatic. It reviews neural and behavioral features of each of the four classes of emotion regulation. Explicit‐controlled emotion regulation strategies are supported by increased engagement of prefrontal and cingulate cortical brain systems involved in cognitive control, with different combinations of systems recruited depending on the specific strategy. The chapter summarizes the systems involved in implicit‐controlled regulation, but future work is needed to understand the neural systems that support implicit regulation goals. It considers the framework to guide discussion of three different directions for future work: further unpacking the nature of the underlying neural systems, understanding the temporal dynamics of regulation, and elucidating factors that influence regulation success.