Cognitive Reappraisal is More Effective for Regulating Emotions than Moods

Cognitive reappraisal is one of the most commonly used and effective emotion regulation strategies. This is partly because reappraisal targets a key characteristic of emotion – namely, what an emotion is about (i.e., intentionality). It is commonly assumed that whereas emotions have intentionality because they are about something, mood states do not have intentionality because they are typically not about anything in particular. Given that reappraisal targets intentionality, and mood states theoretically lack intentionality, we hypothesized that reappraisal would be less effective in regulating moods than in regulating emotions. We tested this hypothesis in two studies, one in which we assessed naturally occurring experiences and regulation in daily life (Study 1, N=184), and another in which we manipulated experiences and regulation in a controlled experiment (Study 2, N=65). In both studies, we compared the effects of cognitive reappraisal with those of distraction, which is another effective emotion regulation strategy that does not target intentionality. As expected, cognitive reappraisal, but not distraction, was more effective in regulating emotions than moods. These findings suggest that the regulation of emotions may differ from the regulation of moods and that strategies that may be effective in regulating one type of affective state may be less effective in another.

Samuel Meyers, Danfei Hu, Maya Tamir