Automatic versus Effortful
Emotion Regulation
Many of the examples of emotion regulation
that come to mind-and the majority of examples
offered so far in this chapter-involve
effortful and conscious attempts to downregulate
negative emotion. As we have discussed,
however, emotion regulation can occur
anywhere in the 2 x 2 matrix formed by crossing
negative and positive emotion (say, as columns)
with up- and down-regulation (say, as
rows). Each of these dimensions can be further
fleshed out, too. Additional columns can be
added for those who prefer to think in discreteemotion
terms (e.g., pride, amusement, sadness,
disgust), and additional rows for those
wanting to do fuller justice to the complexities
of the temporal dynamics of emotion (e.g.,
maintaining emotion). This sounds complicated
enough-even before we recall the many
families of regulation strategies that are used to
achieve each of these types of change in emotion
described by our 2 (or more) x 2 (or more)
matrix-and we may be tempted to stop here.
But one other dimension of variation has recently
begun to be explored systematically, and
this concerns variation in whether a given
episode of emotion regulation is relatively
effortful and conscious or relatively