SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY

At the University of Texas

Emotions and Emotion Regulation

Emotions are so central to the human condition that it's hard to fathom what life would be like without them. We'd feel no love when we saw our romantic partner; no anxiety when we gave an important speech; no joy when we received a job promotion; and no sadness when we lost a good friend to illness. Philosophers have long appreciated the importance of emotions. Foremost among them was William James (1902), who suggested that "no one portion of the universe would…have importance beyond another; and the whole character of its things and series of its events would be without significance, character, expression, or perspective" without emotions (p. 150).

Until relatively recently, emotions were neglected by research psychologists, many of whom argued that they are too complex and ethereal to study empirically. Thankfully, that sentiment has changed dramatically over the past two decades. Theoretical developments and methodological innovation have given rise to a burgeoning scientific literature on emotion. At UT, several faculty and their students are conducting research on the specific causes and consequences of emotions, as well as how people can willfully control them.

Jane Richards and her students have been focusing primarily on (a) emotion regulation, and (b) emotion-expressive behavior (i.e., nonverbal, paralinguistic, and verbal cues). With respect to emotion regulation, these are the kinds of questions they are working on: How do people willfully control (i.e., regulate) the extent to which their emotions are experienced or expressed? How do various forms of emotion regulation influence physical or cognitive performance under stressful circumstances? With respect to emotion-expressive behavior, Richards and her students are tackling questions such as these: Do jurors judge emotionally expressive criminal defendants differently from stoic defendants? Do certain ways of expressing emotion influence the extent to which others want to be our friends or lovers? Do people use facial displays of emotion to form sweeping generalizations about each others' competencies and motives? The broader aim of this research program is to clarify the social functions of emotions and the cultural norms that influence the extent to which they are experienced or expressed in everyday life.

Jamie Pennebaker and his students have been studying how writing about emotionally upsetting events influences health and emotional well-being. They are also examining how extreme emotions may influence language patterns in a wide array of contexts. Using "linguistic fingerprinting," for example, Pennebaker and his students are finding that certain language patterns are predictive of depression and suicide attempts.

Sam Gosling and his students are involved in several projects that examine how physical spaces reflect emotionally-relevant personality traits, such as extraversion and neuroticism. For example, in their study of office workers, results showed that people who tend to be emotionally positive in-general (i.e., extraverts) created spaces that were particularly warm, decorated, and inviting. Gosling and his students are also interested in links between emotion and music by asking: Do music genres differ in terms of their psychological characteristics? (e.g., Are some genres more relaxing or angry than other genres?) Do the characteristics of certain music genres overlap with the characteristics of the people who enjoy listening to them? (e.g., Do happy people listen to happy music?)

Bill Swann and his students have made a practically and theoretically important distinction between verbal and nonverbal expressivity. They have discovered that people differ with respect to how "blirtatious" they are during social interactions. High blirters tend to provide verbal responses with great rapidity and effusiveness whereas low blirters do not. Swann and his students have conducted studies suggesting that our level of blirtatiousness has significant implications for how we feel during tense social situations. Research on blirtatiousness also suggests why some romantic couples have a hard time getting along with each other. For example, couples in which the woman is a high blirt and the man is a low blirt are particularly likely to have negative feelings about their relationship.