Process Model of Emotion Regulation

Process model of emotion regulation, developed in 2007 by Gross & Thompson, according to researchers, is one of the most prominent models of emotional regulation in science. Both the original process model and the extended model do not include the role of sensory experiences in emotion regulation, which it would be based on current understanding. The original five families of strategies to influence emotions at different points in the brain’s emotion generation process:

• Situation selection (approach/avoidance) chooses events or circumstances likely to evoke desired emotions or avoids those likely to evoke undesired emotions.
• Situation modification (changing emotion-eliciting facets) removes or alters aspects of an event/circumstance that contributes to undesired emotions.
• Attentional deployment (attending to different aspects) focuses on the positive aspects of a situation or distracting oneself from negative ones to alter the emotional experience.
• Cognitive change (changing how we think about a situation) reinterprets a situation or changes our expectations to alter how we think about a situation or our emotional response to it.
• Response modulation (changing behaviors caused by a situation) modifies physiological, behavioral, or experiential aspects of triggered emotional response, like suppressing or expressing an emotion.