A Current Overview on Emotion Regulation: Contextual Factors

Abstract

Emotion regulation is a transdiagnostic concept which has been frequently studied in the field of psychological health. Although these empirical studies in the relevant literature revealed important findings, it has also been currently mentioned that emotion regulation is mostly studied with certain tools having some limitations but it is not a uniform subject, and there are some contextual factors in emotion regulation which has been considered as having determinative role. In this sense, when we say emotion regulation now, we can refer several contextual factors such as relevant situation/event, emotion that is regulated, interpersonal conditions, spontaneous emergence of emotion regulation strategies, co-occurrence of various regulation methods, efficacy of the strategies and specific time frame of regulation. In this article, it is aimed to first describe emotion regulation which is frequently mentioned in national and international literature, and then, to review recent empirical research findings and to question limitations of traditional approaches toward emotion regulation by examining some salient contextual factors and finally, to present some relevant suggestions based on current approaches.

Keywords

• emotion regulation
• contextual factors in emotion regulation
• interpersonal emotion regulation
• process model
• assessment of emotion regulation