Is Emotional Regulation Effective Everywhere? |
What Is Emotion Regulation?
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On some levels, we don't just feel emotions, we "do" them.
Emotional regulation is important. Reappraisal and suppression are two common forms of regulation.
A meta-analysis found cultural differences in how effective regulation is in reducing psychopathology.
Contrary to notions that emotions sweep over us and we have no agency in how they manifest, we play a role in aspects of their emergence and impact. Psychologists such as Ben-Ze’ev criticized the position that “emotions are reduced to fleeting, unreliable feelings over which we have little control and no responsibility… it is assumed that we do not choose our emotions and are not responsible for them” (Ben-Ze’ev, 1997, p.198), while Mesquita and colleagues called for a shift “toward how different cultures ‘do’ emotions and away from which emotions they ‘have’” (Mesquita et al., 2016, p.31).
How exactly do we “do” emotions? It is important to note that functions of certain emotions do seem to contain aspects that are universal. Ekman’s work on facial expressions is perhaps the most famous example of this; a sad face will be recognized as such in almost all places and across time. However, a growing body of research indicates that we play an active role in our emotional experiences, and even more so, our appraisal of our emotions and consequent responses to them. Emotional regulation is a key aspect of daily life, and we could only imagine how society would disintegrate if we had zero control over our emotions.
Two of the most common means of emotional regulation are suppression of emotions, or reappraising them. Suppression involves muffling or subduing an emotion, or delaying its manifestation, while reappraising centers on consciously reinterpreting how we are judging an emotion. A common example of reappraisal is the instruction to the anxious to instead recognize this feeling as brimming with potential for excitement. It is usually said that suppressing emotion is harmful, while reappraising emotion is helpful.
But do these techniques for managing emotion catalyze universal harm or benefit? A meta-analysis published by Nature Human Behaviour in 2025 suggests their value varies from culture to culture. The meta-analysis drew from 249 articles, which included 150,474 participants across 37 countries and regions. All continents were represented, except for Africa and Antarctica.
The authors of the study note the need to challenge the usual “WEIRD” focus of psychological research, but go further in also challenging the typical cultural binary that psychologists employ, usually in the form of Eastern versus Western, collectivist versus individualist, or European versus Asian, cultural approaches, or variants of these. Drawing from the work of Hofstede, the authors employed a more dynamic approach to culture that recognized intra-regional cultural differences, for example, Chinese culture being more tolerant of ambiguity when compared with Japanese culture.
The authors noted that while research tended to describe emotional reappraisal as adaptive, some dissent was presented in findings that reappraisal is beneficial when control over the environment is low, i.e., when there are less options for changing the actual catalyst of the (negative) emotion. For those who can actually affect change, doing so is likely to be more adaptive than reappraising.
The authors examined impacts of reappraisal and suppression on psychopathology and positive functioning. Psychopathology was examined by way of negative affect, distress, social anxiety, anxiety, and depression. Positive functioning included well-being, positive affect, and life satisfaction.
Overall analyses run by the authors did show associations between reappraisal propensity and positive function (r = 0.28), and were negatively associated with psychopathology (r=-0.21). Conversely, suppression propensity was negatively associated with positive function (r=-0.13), and positively associated with psychopathology (r=0.17). I2 values ranged from 7.6-19.7%, which indicated low explanatory power. All analyses mentioned here were significant to the level of p