JAMES J. GROSS

One of life's great challenges is successfully regulating emotions. Do some  emotion regulation strategies have more to recommend them than others? According  to Gross's ~1998, Review of General Psychology, 2, 271–299! process model of  emotion regulation, strategies that act early in the emotion-generative process  should have a different profile of consequences than strategies that act later  on. This review focuses on two commonly used strategies for down-regulating  emotion. The first, reappraisal, comes early in the emotion-generative process.  It consists of changing the way a situation is construed so as to decrease its  emotional impact. The second, suppression, comes later in the emotion-generative  process. It consists of inhibiting the outward signs of inner feelings.  Experimental and individual-difference studies find reappraisal is often more  effective than suppression. Reappraisal decreases emotion experience and  behavioral expression, and has no impact on memory. By contrast, suppression  decreases behavioral expression, but fails to decrease emotion experience, and  actually impairs memory. Suppression also increases physiological responding for  suppressors and their social partners. This review concludes with a  consideration of five important directions for future research on emotion  regulation processes.