Case study Emotional regulation

Emotion regulation is a significant concept in social psychology and also in personality (Gross & John, 2003; Gross, 2002; Feldman Barrett, Gross, Christensen, & Benvenuto, 2001). Personal differences occurring in it have been correlated to interpersonal performance, well-being and in authenticity (Gross & John, 2003), understanding in relationships that are close (Field, 1994; Gottman, 1994), and open behavior in situations which are broad ranging like athletics (Hanin, 2000) and also the places of work (Fisher & Ashkanasy, 2000; Grandey, 2000). It is contributing to constructive intercultural and intracultural adjustment. The refugees and sojourners having better regulation of emotion are having reduced anxiety, depression, homesickness and culture shock and besides, they are reporting greater degrees of well being, language proficiency, happiness, marital satisfaction and income (Matsumoto et al., 2003; Matsumoto, LeRoux, Bernhard, & Gray, 2004; Matsumoto et al., 2001). These results are capable of being predicted several months following evaluation (Yoo, Matsumoto, & LeRoux, in press; Matsumoto et al., 2003).

There exists two ways through which emotion regulation can be conceptualized (Cole, Martin, & Dennis, 2004; Bridges, Denham, & Ganiban, 2004; Eisenberg & Spinrad, 2004). One way is viewing emotions as controllers of interpersonal and intrapersonal processes, stating the task that emotions are playing in daily life and the transformations that are occurring if an emotion is made active. A second way is viewing emotions as being regulated (Cole et al., 2004). The feeling and also the expression or showing of emotion is some of the major essential experiences of human beings. The procedure is not as straightforward as many may see it due to the fact that not all emotions are suitable for all situations. Emotion regulation can be defined as the process by which people filter their emotions so that they can be able to control how they are feeling and as a result, communicate the feelings that are felt. Emotion regulation is greatly dependent not only on the culture that one is living in but also the precise social background of the situation. Hence, emotion regulation is an essential part of emotional intelligence and social tradition.

Definition

The exact meaning of emotion regulation has developed for over 30 years. Starting with the term emotion, it is describing a comprehensive reaction to a probable individual goal. The reaction entails an experience which is subjective, an activity or behavior that is physiological. Emotions are allowing humans to straighten their concentration to vital situations and also motivating individuals to react by action. Emotion regulation, hence, is influencing the intensity or presence of emotions to enhance responses that are capable of producing contextually appropriate and productive action. Emotion regulation may of being automatic, it is also controllable.

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Similarly, regulation may be defined as a process commencing by the identification of the situation, and continuing by the direction of attention towards the identified situation and afterwards evaluating the situation, and later culminating in a behavioral response (Gross & Thompson, 2007). Besides, it can be defined as the capability to modify and manage a person’s emotional reactions so as to attain outcomes that are goal directed.

The benefits of emotional regulation

Helps leaders to make better decisions

A research proved that only 100 minutes training of mindfulness in a single week resulted to approximately 30% to 50% decrease in the levels of cortisol, an indicator of stress, against a group that is in charge (Tang and Posner, 2008). Earlier, it was normally understood that the advantages that came from mindfulness were taking considerably longer. Mindfulness is capable of giving leaders great benefits in the direction of emotional regulation which is capable of helping the leaders to make much better decisions.

Influences the development of children

The prototypes of emotional regulation that are set early in life are capable of influencing consequent development up to adult functioning. Emotional regulation is correlated with the improvement of intimacy, trust and connection with other people. The emotions of parents and their behavior are interacting with the behavior and emotions of their children (Schor, 1991)

The significance of emotion regulation during the early childhood can’t be overstated. Pediatricians and professionals who are dealing with child development are in critical positions to put to it that the blow of dangers on children is received with interventions, so as to uphold a fit developmental course. Although the pediatrician is capable of providing some interventions to the families, it is evenly significant that talents are developed to effectively recognize problems early and submit families for appropriate interventions. The models of emotion regulation that are recognized early in life are capable of influencing successive outcomes, and consequently deserve attention, and, if necessary, involvement, from the people who are interested in optimizing the development of the infants and the children.

Ochsner’s (2008) model of emotional and social processing is positing that emotion regulation, recognition and attention processes are unified sets of skill. They are all necessary for winning social sentimental functioning.

It is a significant factor in personality and social psychology

As stated above, emotion regulation is a significant notion not only in personality but also in social psychology (Gross, 2002; Feldman Barrett, Gross, Christensen, & Benvenuto, 2001; Gross & John, 2003). Personal differences occurring in it have been associated with interpersonal functioning, in authenticity besides well-being (Gross & John, 2003), understanding in relationships that are close (Field, 1994; Gottman, 1994), and also civic behavior in situations which are wide ranging like athletics (Hanin, 2000) and also the place of work (Grandey, 2000;Fisher & Ashkanasy, 2000).

It is contributing to constructive intercultural and intracultural adjustment. Refugees and sojourners having better emotion regulation are having decreased culture shock, anxiety, depression, and homesickness. Besides, they report improved degrees of well being, happiness, marital satisfaction, income and language proficiency (Matsumoto et al., 2003; Matsumoto, LeRoux, Bernhard, & Gray, 2004; Matsumoto et al., 2001).

Comprehending emotion regulation commences with a single model of arousal of emotion. Despite the fact that numerous theories are in existence, they are suggesting that a stimulus is initially reviewed and that this assessment later results into an emotion (Ellsworth & Scherer, 2003). The emotion that has been aroused afterwards makes active thinking, the feeling of states, physiology and behaviors that are expressive.

Gross (2001) acknowledged five points during which emotions are capable of being regulated: selection of situations, modification of situations, deployment of attention, cognitive alteration, and the modulation of behavioral, empirical or physiological reactions.

Extraversion is similarly connected with not only the experience (Schimmack et al., 2002) but also expression of constructive emotions (Emmons & Diener, 1985, 1986; Ruch, 1993; Costa & McCrae, 1980; Pavot, Diener, & Fujita, 1990). The aspects of extraversion are including gregariousness, warmth, assertiveness, excitement seeking, positive emotions and activity (McCrae et al., 2005; McCrae & Costa, 1999). A number of these facets are interrelated with emotion regulation, particularly regarding the significant aspects of it. Consequently, extraversion is supposed to be negatively correlated with suppression.

Emotional regulation is associated with other traits

There might be an association between emotion regulation and other traits. For instance, amicability may probably be connected to how persons are expressing unconstructive emotions (McCrae & Costa, 1997). Agreeableness and conscientiousness has been correlated with positive emotions (McCrae & Costa, 1991; Costa & McCrae, 1980) and honesty has also been linked with the capability to recognize emotions (Terracciano, Merritt, Zonderman, & Evans, 2003; Matsumoto et al., 2000), which is supposed to be associated with emotion regulation. The proof for these relationships, nonetheless, is greatly weaker than that for extraversion and neuroticism. Furthermore, dependable country differences both on extraversion and neuroticism are in existence (McCrae, 2002; McCrae et al., 2005). These dissimilarities have been related to country-level disparities in emotion regulation (Matsumoto et al., 2005a) and avoidance of doubt (Hofstede & McCrae, 2004). Therefore, extraversion and neuroticism are the personality characters that are very applicable to emotion regulation.

Important in intercultural adjustment

Prior studies have constantly shown that emotion regulation is a vital predictor of intercultural adjustment. The Emotional intelligence theory is suggesting that before people are capable of regulating emotions, there is need for them to recognize the emotions. Therefore, the ability of emotion recognition is capable of predicting intercultural adjustment. Recognition of emotion predicts positive adjustment while the recognition of fear, contempt and sadness predicts negative adjustment.

High emotion regulation is one of the most significant forecaster of constructive intercultural adjustment (Matsumoto et al., 2001, 2003). It is vital for constructive adjustment due to the fact that controlling individual’s negative emotions evoked at the times of stress and conflict , which are expected both in intercultural and also intracultural life, are capable of allowing an individual to be excessively controlled by negative emotions and also instead think rationally and clearly, which later on paves the way for the use of the other psychological talents that are significant for intercultural adjustment, like flexibility, openness, and also critical thinking (Matsumoto et al., 2001, 2003). The significance of regulation of emotions in intercultural adjustment has also been supported in several other studies.

Emotion Regulation and Psychopathology

There is growing indication that emotion regulation is an essential component of numerous forms of psychopathology, like mood disorders and anxiety (Allen, McHugh, & Barlow, 2008) and also an intermediate individuality disorder (Linehan, 1993). Through the viewing of emotion regulation as a probable function of a variety of presentations of clinical symptom, numerous clinical features of psychopathology may be recognized as maladaptive efforts at regulating emotions that are not desirable (Campbell-Sills & Barlow, 2007; Gross and Munoz, 1995). This is highlighting the multidimensional feature of emotion regulation because the road leading to well-being might entail the capacity to take action in an adaptive and efficient way while understanding negative emotions and it also entail the capacity to understand and to be aware of an individual’s emotional responses when they are taking place (Gratz & Roemer, 2004). If there is a scarcity in an individual’s capacity to experience emotions, distinguish the experience from several other emotions, and comprehend the working of the emotional response,then maladaptive labors to keep away from or regulate that experience might be more probable (Cole et al., 1994; Hayes, Wilson, Gifford, Follette, & Strosahl, 1996). The people having intellectual disabilities are reportedly suffering from comorbid psychopathology. Consequently, there has been an argument that mental retardation might be viewed as a threat factor or susceptibility to the development of psychopathology of later times (Masi, 1998). It is probable that this susceptibility is reflecting a more general susceptibility to come up with deficiencies inside the variety of the sizes of emotion regulation.

Disadvantages of emotional regulation

Some Family members are usually reporting that some people are losing their emotion regulation skills and besides that, they are more moody, irritable and also prone to temper crabbiness (Smith, 2003). Neuroticism has been connected to the understanding of negative emotions (Schimmack, Radhakrishnan, Oishi, & Dzokoto, 2002). McCrae and colleagues (McCrae & Costa, 1999; McCrae et al., 2005) have recognized six aspects of neuroticism: vulnerability, anger, hostility, anxiety, self-consciousness, depression and impulsivity. Some are referring directly to emotion regulation such as impulsivity, while other people are referring to the possible sentimental penalties of emotion regulation such as depression and anxiety to affective -behavioral results of it such as anger and hostility and to its consequences that are self-related cognitive such as self-consciousness and vulnerability.

Emotion regulation and negotiations

Indeed emotion regulation has been studied in the area of negotiations. There are several researches regarding the same. Negotiation can be defined as the means of providing solution to economic and social conflicts. On a number of occasions, it arouses negative emotions. Current theoretical approaches recognize the consequences that mood and emotions are capable of having on negotiations (Bazerman, Curhan, Moore, & Valley, 2000; Morris & Keltner, 2000). Emotions play some roles in negotiations. A study conducted by Allfred et all (1997) states that emotion is should be regulated since it is capable of leading to an increase in conflict.

A different research regarding emotion regulation and negotiations was conducted by Denson and Fabiansson (n.d.). Firstly, they explored why regulation of anger is important regardless of the occasionally positive results of expressing anger during the process of negotiation. Again, they examined the efficiency of several strategies of regulating emotions like rumination, reappraisal and distraction. Besides, they discussed the way these could be used in the context of negotiation. They later gave the results from two experiments by the use of emotion regulation to investigate the impact that the anger regulation strategies were having on emotions that were self-reported and also on hostile behavior in negotiations.

Other people have also looked at the relationship between emotion regulation and negation. For instance, Fabiansson and Denson (2010) critically scrutinized if regulating anger by the use of reappraisal was not only capable of decreasing self-reported anger but also improving the performance of negotiation. Those who participated in the condition of the reappraisal were instructed before the speech duty that their partners were in a somehow bad mood, and also that they should also seem to be in bad moods. The timing was significant because tentatively reappraisal ought to happen prior to the full commencement of an emotional reply so as to change the emotion’s experience (Gross, 1998a). In reality, late re-evaluation is effortful more than early on reappraisal and again, late re-evaluation was less efficient in dropping a sad mood that is induced by film more than late distractions (Sheppes & Meiran, 2007).

This Research is suggesting that the expression of anger as a strategy of negotiation is having imperfect effectiveness. It however suggests that the use of reappraisal for negotiation settings may prove useful in the reduction of aggressive behavior, anger and conflict in the negotiations. Reappraisal is associated with reduced anger as compared to distraction or rumination (Mauss et al., 2007; Fabiansson & Denson, 2010; Ray et al., 2008).

Emotion Recognition in Others

Emotion recognition is defined as the capability to distinguish emotions precisely in music, faces and designs (Mayer, Caruso, & Salovey, 1999). Inter-personal human communication is including both the spoken language and also non-verbal cues like facial expressions, hand gestures and also the pitch of the voice, which are applied to communicate feelings and also to provide feedback.

It is generally accepted from psychological theories that the emotions of human beings are capable of being grouped into six typical emotions: disgust, surprise, happiness, anger, sadness and fear. Facial activity and also the pitch of the speech are playing a big role in the expression of these emotions. The face’s muscles are capable of being altered and the energy and the tone in the generation of the speech is capable of being modified deliberately to communicate several feelings. Human beings are then capable of recognizing these signals even when they are deviously demonstrated, by concurrently giving the information that is acquired by the eyes and the ears. With the basis on psychological studies, which are showing that visual information is capable of modifying the speech’s perception (Nwe, Wei, De Silva, 2001), it is probable to make an assumption that the perception of human emotion is following the same trend. Having been motivated by these hints, De Silva et al. performed experiments, whereby eighteen individuals were needed to be familiar with emotion through the use of acoustic and visual information independently from a database of audio-visual that was documented from two subjects (De Silva, Miyasato, Nakatsu, 1997.). They made a conclusion that a number of emotions are identified better with audio like fear and sadness, while some without video, like happiness and anger. Furthermore, Chen et al. proved that these two modalities are giving corresponding information, through their argument that the system’s performance improved when the two modalities were applied at once (Chen, Huang, Miyasato and Nakatsu, 1998). Despite the fact that numerous automatic systems of emotion recognition have investigated the usage of both facial expressions (Black, and Yacoob, 1995; Essa, 1997; Mase, 1991; Tian, Ying-li, Kanade, and Cohn, 2000; Yacoob, Y., Davis, 1994) and speech (Dellaert, Polzin, Waibel, 1970) to notice human sentimental states, comparatively little efforts have mainly paid attention to emotion recognition through the use of the two modalities (De Silva, Ng, 2000). It is expected that the multimodal approach is capable of giving better performance and also additional robustness if a single of these modalities is got in a very rowdy environment. These preceding studies merged acoustic information and facial expressions both at the level of decision, whereby the yield of the unimodal structure are incorporated by the application of appropriate criteria and at the feature-level, whereby the data from the two modalities are combined prior to classification.

Emotions can be recognized from facial emotional expressions and it is very simple for the four major emotions anger, fear, joy and sadness.

The Interaction of Emotional Regulation and Emotion Recognition

Emotional regulation and emotional recognition are closely related because emotion recognition ability is a very vital precursor to emotion regulation. Due to the fact that emotion regulation has been established to be a significant intercultural adjustment predictor, a very deep comprehension of the concept is capable of being helpful to understand better the relationship that it has with adjustment. A single approach is coming from the framework of emotional intelligence, since emotion regulation is being viewed as a component of emotional intelligence. From definition, emotional intelligence is referring to the capacity to recognize emotions’ meanings and also their relationships and besides to apply them as a foundation in problem solving, reasoning and improving cognitive activities (Mayer, Salovey, Caruso & Sitarenios, 2001). Emotional intelligence is entailing four different skills: regulation of emotion, emotion recognition in others and self, understanding emotions and employment of emotion in the facilitation of thinking (Ciarrochi, Chan & Bajgar, 2001; Mayer et al., 2001).

Emotion recognition is theoretically more crucial than the regulation of emotions due to the fact that regulation is possible only after the occurrence of recognition (Izard, 2001; Lane, 2000; Mayer et al., 2001). Therefore recognition has to be a forerunner for regulation. When emotions are not recognized, there will be nothing to be regulated. If emotion recognition is a vital predecessor to emotion regulation, and due to the fact that emotion regulation is predicting intercultural alteration, therefore emotion recognition ought to forecast adjustment. Earlier researches have provided great support for this idea. Recognition of emotions has been connected to adjustment-related constructs like such, examples are conduct disorder, emotional interruption, despair, social anxiety, ineffectiveness, academic attainment, fame, competency, great function in social surroundings on numerous populations like children who are psychologically treated, non-clinical children, immature delinquents, big people, schizophrenics, and also those having learning disabilities (Monfries & Kafer, 1987; Nowicki & Carton, 1997; Turk & Cornish, 1998; Nowicki & Duke, 1994; Izard, 2001; McClure & Nowicki, 2001; McCown, Johnson, & Austin, 1986; McKenzie, Matheson, McKaskie, Hamilton, & Murray, 2000).

Despite the fact that a number of studies have demonstrated that emotion recognition is connected to adjustment, none of the studies has critically assessed this connection in sojourners. a relationship like such could be having significant implications for advancing intercultural adjustment since recognition of emotions is a skill which is capable of being taught (Ekman & Matsumoto, 2004; McKenzie et al.,2000). It is capable of providing significant hypothetical insights into the tasks of processes that are emotion-related, away from regulation of emotion, that control adjustment. Both emotion recognition and regulation are predicting positive and long-term adjustment. Emotion regulation and recognition are positively related. Both are playing a joint role in predicting adjustment.

Literature review

Several researches have been conducted regarding emotional recognition and emotional regulation. Emotion regulation is referring to all the processes through which people influence the emotions that they are having, the time they are having them, and the manner they express and experience these emotions’ (Gross, 1998).

Due to the fact that Emotion regulation and regulation are significant concepts in social psychology and also in personality (Gross & John, 2003; Gross, 2002; Feldman Barrett, Gross, Christensen, & Benvenuto, 2001), personal differences occurring in them have been correlated to interpersonal performance, well-being and in authenticity (Gross & John, 2003), understanding in relationships that are close (Field, 1994; Gottman, 1994), and open behavior in situations which are broad ranging like athletics (Hanin, 2000) and also the place of work (Fisher & Ashkanasy, 2000; Grandey, 2000). They are contributing to constructive intercultural and intracultural adjustment. Refugees and sojourners having better recognition and regulation of emotion are having reduced anxiety, depression, homesickness and culture shock and besides, they are reporting greater degrees of well being, language proficiency, happiness, marital satisfaction and income (Matsumoto et al., 2003; Matsumoto, LeRoux, Bernhard, & Gray, 2004; Matsumoto et al., 2001). These results are capable of being predicted several months following evaluation (Yoo, Matsumoto, & LeRoux, in press; Matsumoto et al., 2003). There exists two ways through which emotion recognition and regulation can be conceptualized (Cole, Martin, & Dennis, 2004; Bridges, Denham, & Ganiban, 2004; Eisenberg & Spinrad, 2004). One way is viewing emotions as controllers of interpersonal and intrapersonal processes, stating the task that emotions are playing in daily life and the transformations that are occurring if an emotion is made active. A second way is viewing emotions as being regulated (Cole et al., 2004). The feeling and also the expression or showing of emotion is some of the major essential experiences of human beings.

Conclusion

Over the last years, there has existed an explosion of study on emotion detection or recognition and regulation (Zeng, Pantic, Roisman, Huang (2009). Nonetheless, this line of study has revealed a distinctive approach that focuses on the way to not only detect but also how to regulate emotions. This paper has critically looked at emotional regulation, its benefits and disadvantages and also its application in the field of negotiations. Similarly, this paper has in a detailed way looked at recognition of emotions in others and also its application in the field of negotiations. The relationship that exists between emotion recognition and emotion regulation has also been looked at.

There is only one limitation of studying emotion recognition and regulation. Basically, the recognition accuracy is a vital issue in the technique of detection, however, researchers ought to ask first the reason why and the kind of emotions that they ought to take into considerations in their precise research field. Basically, majority of the researchers have majorly depended on the basic six emotions of Ekman (Ekman, 1992). It is a famous emotion taxonomy and robustly used across several cultures. This taxonomy is working well for general recognition tasks.