By Maia ten Brink, Ph.D. and James J. Gross, Ph.D.

So far, this blog series has focused on how to regulate our emotions so as to feel better, but is that always the goal? Sometimes people might not want to feel better. This is because people experience all kinds of emotion goals, not just the goal to feel better.

Imagine there's a desirable opportunity at work to take on a leadership role for a new project that you are really passionate about. You tell your manager you think you'd be a perfect fit, but they express doubt that you are skilled enough for it and tell you not to waste your time reaching beyond your level. On the drive home, you listen to some rage-filled rock music. Later, you tell your partner about how hurt and angry you were that your manager didn't believe in your leadership capability. Your partner counsels you to simply let the negative comments roll off your back, but you don't want to – you want to make your manager eat their words.

Emotion researchers have found that people often have a range of emotion goals. Hedonic emotion goals are what we usually think of as default: a goal to feel pleasant emotions and to not feel unpleasant emotions However, people can have instrumental goals, which are goals to feel useful emotions to achieve another goal. This means that, perhaps counterintuitively, people can sometimes want to feel unpleasant emotions (termed “contra-hedonic” states). Sometimes emotions can serve both hedonic and instrumental goals at the same time.

Feeling hurt after hearing your manager’s comments and leaning into that feeling by listening to music that matches your emotional state could serve a hedonic goal because it feels good to validate your emotions. Feeling anger could serve an instrumental goal because you might channel your motivation into working hard, landing the role, and proving your manager wrong.........

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