Maya Tamir
Biographic Data
| ID | 85632 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Maya Tamir |
| GIVEN NAMES | Maya |
| FAMILY NAME | Tamir |
| SIGNATURE | TAMIR M |
| AFFILIATIONS | Hebrew University of Jerusalem |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-2675-8042 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 72 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 230 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 72 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2002 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 9 |
Motivational Intensity in Emotion Regulation
Changing how we feel can be adaptive, but it is also difficult and may require effort. There is research on what people want to achieve in emotion regulation (motivational content), but there is little research on how intensely people pursue what they want to achieve (motivational intensity). We tested the role of motivational intensity in emotion regulation, by assessing (Studies 1–2, N s = 160 and 157) and manipulating (Study 3, N = 250) it in …
Depressed individuals want to feel more unpleasant emotions in daily life, but try harder to decrease them
Prior research has demonstrated that depressed individuals want to feel relatively more intense sadness and less intense happiness than nondepressed individuals do. However, it has rarely been tested whether these differences extend to daily life and how they might be related to attempts to regulate emotions. We assessed what depressed ( n = 58) and nondepressed ( n = 62) individuals wanted to feel in daily life and how much they tried to regulat…
Rumination in Daily Life Is Linked to Poorer Psychological Health in the United States Than in Japan
Rumination has been linked to worse psychological health. Yet, some cross-cultural research suggests that associations between trait rumination and psychological health may be stronger in Western than East Asian cultures. This investigation tested, for the first time, whether using rumination to regulate emotions in daily life is differentially linked to psychological health in different cultural contexts. In two preregistered studies that involv…
Do unto others: People use similar strategies to regulate their own emotions and the emotions of others
Do people use similar strategies to regulate their own emotions (i.e., intrapersonal or self-oriented emotion regulation) and to regulate the emotions of others (i.e., interpersonal or other-oriented emotion regulation)? By answering this question, we try to shed light on why people regulate the emotions of others the way they do. We reasoned that because people imagine themselves as the target when deciding how to regulate others' emotions (Ball…
Trait emotion differentiation is associated with more instrumental emotion regulation motives when people feel negative in daily life
Emotion differentiation-the ability to precisely label emotions-reflects a nuanced understanding of one's emotional experiences. Researchers posit that this nuance may be associated with knowing how one can use their emotions. As a result, we hypothesize emotion differentiation may be linked with holding instrumental emotion regulation motives, which involve regulating emotions to attain their benefits beyond solely feeling better or worse. In th…
A meta-analytic review of cultural variation in affect valuation
What affective states do people ideally want to feel and why? In Affect Valuation Theory, Tsai et al. (2006) proposed and observed that (a) how people would ideally like to feel (their "ideal affect") differs from how they actually feel (their "actual affect"), and (b) cultural factors shape people's ideal affect even more than their actual affect. In this individual participant data meta-analysis, we reexamined these two premises in a combined d…
Emotion Regulation Versus Mood Regulation
Emotions and moods have been distinguished in the literature. If they are distinct, we may expect emotion regulation and mood regulation to be distinct too. We show that although emotion regulation and mood regulation are considered theoretically distinct, they are often confounded empirically. We review characteristics proposed to distinguish emotions from moods by different theoretical approaches to emotion. We also review challenges to these p…
Motivated to feel better and doing something about it: Cross-cultural differences in motivated emotion regulation during Covid-19
Emotion regulation is linked to adaptive psychological outcomes. To engage in such regulation, people must be motivated to do it. Given that people in different countries vary in how they think about unpleasant emotions, we expected motivation to decrease unpleasant emotions to differ across countries. Furthermore, given that emotion regulation strategies operate in the service of motivation, we expected people who are less motivated to decrease …
Better relationships do not always feel better: Social relationships interact in predicting negative emotions in early adolescence
How negatively young adolescents feel is central to their well-being. Intuitively, better social relationships should be linked to less negative emotions. This study tested this assumption, using a sample of over 80,000 young adolescents from 32 countries (ages 10-12). Inconsistent with the notion that better social relationships are always related to better emotional experiences, we found that links between negative emotions and adolescents' rel…
Knowing me, knowing you: Are people good at regulating their emotions good at regulating another’s emotions
Sometimes we regulate our emotions, and other times we need to regulate the emotions of others. In this investigation, we tested whether the ability to regulate one's own emotions and the ability to regulate other's emotions are related. We assessed regulators' self-oriented emotion regulation ability by measuring their own emotional experiences in a self-oriented emotion regulation task. We assessed regulators' other-oriented emotion regulation …
Stuck with the foot on the pedal: Depression and motivated emotion regulation in daily life
According to cybernetic approaches, emotion regulation is motivated by the desire to reduce discrepancies between experienced and desired emotions. Yet, this assumption has rarely been tested directly in healthy or unhealthy populations. In two ecological momentary assessment studies, we monitored motivated emotion regulation in daily life in participants who varied in the severity of their depressive symptoms (Study 1; N = 173) and in clinically…
The Apple Doesn’t “Feel” Far From the Tree: Mother–Child Socialization of Intergroup Empathy
Like adults, children experience less empathy toward some groups compared with others. In this investigation, we propose that mothers differ in how much empathy they want their children to feel toward specific outgroups, depending on their political ideology. We suggest that how mothers want their children to feel (i.e., the motivation for their child’s empathy), in turn, is correlated with children’s actual experience of empathy toward the outgr…
What do I want to feel? Emotion goals in childhood, adolescence, and adulthood
Beliefs about emotion utility can influence context-sensitive emotion goals (i.e., desired emotional responses). Although key for emotion regulation, emotion goals have been overlooked in children and adolescents. In 2018–2019 results of Studies 1 and 2 showed that children (N = 192, Mage = 8.65, 47% girls, 96% White) were less motivated by and found anger less useful in confrontation than adolescents (N = 192, Mage = 12.96, 50% girls, 93% White)…
Flexibility or instability? Emotion goal dynamics and mental health
Emotion goals (i.e., what people want or do not want to feel) have important implications for emotional and mental health because they can shape whether, when, and how people regulate their emotions. Although research has shown that emotion goals vary across individuals and situations, we know relatively little about the dynamic changes in emotion goals in daily life and their potential implications. Given the dynamic features of emotions and emo…
Judging emotions as good or bad: Individual differences and associations with psychological health
People differ in their initial emotional responses to events, and we are beginning to understand these responses and their pervasive implications for psychological health. However, people also differ in how they think about and react to their initial emotions (i.e., emotion judgments). In turn, how people judge their emotions-as predominantly positive or negative-may have crucial implications for psychological health. Across five MTurk and underg…
Does interpersonal emotion regulation effort pay off
Interpersonal emotion regulation shapes people's emotional and relational experiences. Yet, researchers know little about the regulation processes that influence these outcomes. Recent works in the intrapersonal emotion regulation space suggest that motivational strength, or effort , people invest in regulation might be the answer. We applied this motivated approach for the first time in the interpersonal space-looking at both intrinsic and extri…
Mothers’ Motivation for Group-Based Empathy in Their Children as a Function of Type and Extent of Group Identification
Parents vary in the extent to which they want their children to feel empathy toward different groups. In the current investigation, we tested whether Jewish–Israeli mothers’ motivation to have their children feel group-based empathy toward members of their ingroup (Jews) and outgroup (Arabs) differed as a function of the types of group identification mothers experience with their own group – namely attachment to and glorification of Israel. We fo…
Emotion regulation strategies and psychological health across cultures
Emotion regulation is important for psychological health and can be achieved by implementing various strategies. How one regulates emotions is critical for maximizing psychological health. Few studies, however, tested the psychological correlates of different emotion regulation strategies across multiple cultures. In a preregistered cross-cultural study ( N = 3,960, 19 countries), conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic, we assessed associations b…
Adherence to emotion norms is greater in individualist cultures than in collectivist cultures
It is generally assumed that there is greater pressure to conform to social norms in collectivist cultures than in individualist cultures. However, most research on cultural differences in social norms has examined norms for behaviors. Here, we examine cultural differences in norms for emotions. Relative to members of collectivist cultures, members of individualist cultures are more attuned to internal states and value them more. Therefore, we pr…
Appraisal and coping predict health and well‐being during the Covid ‐19 pandemic: An international approach
COVID‐19 has had a devastating impact on people worldwide. We conducted an international survey ( n = 3646) examining the degree to which people's appraisals and coping activities around the pandemic predicted their health and well‐being. We obtained subsamples from 12 countries—Bangladesh, Bulgaria, China, Colombia, India, Israel, the Netherlands, Norway, Peru, Portugal, Turkey and the United States. For each, we assessed appraisals and coping s…
Desired sadness, happiness, fear and calmness in depression: The potential roles of valence and arousal
Prior research has shown that clinically depressed individuals are somewhat more motivated to feel sadness and less motivated to feel happiness than nondepressed individuals are. However, what underlies these patterns is not yet clear, as people may be motivated to experience positive (vs. negative) valence, high (vs. low) arousal, or discrete emotions. To test these possibilities, we assessed the motivation to experience emotions that capture di…
On the relationship between valence and arousal in samples across the globe
Affect is involved in many psychological phenomena, but a descriptive structure, long sought, has been elusive. Valence and arousal are fundamental, and a key question-the focus of the present study-is the relationship between them. Valence is sometimes thought to be independent of arousal, but, in some studies (representing too few societies in the world) arousal was found to vary with valence. One common finding is that arousal is lowest at neu…
Effortful Emotion Regulation as a Unique Form of Cybernetic Control
Emotion regulation is important for psychological well-being, yet we know relatively little about why, when, and how hard people try to regulate emotions. This article seeks to address these motivational issues by considering effortful emotion regulation as a unique form of cybernetic control. In any domain of self-regulation, emotions serve as indices of progress in regulation and inform the expected value of regulation. In emotion regulation, h…
Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid! Motivated Intergroup Emotion Regulation
Group-based emotions can shape group members’ behaviors and intergroup relations. Therefore, we propose that people may try to regulate emotions of outgroup members to attain ingroup goals. We call this phenomenon “motivated intergroup emotion regulation.” In four studies, conducted in both hypothetical and real-world contexts, we show that deterrence and reconciliation goals influence how fearful or calm people want outgroup members to feel, res…
Religiosity and Desired Emotions: Belief Maintenance or Prosocial Facilitation
We assessed how religiosity is related to desired emotions. We tested two competing hypotheses. First, religiosity could be associated with a stronger desire for emotions that strengthen foundational religious beliefs (i.e., more awe and gratitude and less pride). Second, religiosity could be associated with a stronger desire for emotions that promote prosocial engagement (e.g., more love and empathy and less anger and jealousy). Two cross-cultur…
A Dark Side of Happiness? How, When, and Why Happiness Is Not Always Good
Happiness is generally considered a source of good outcomes. Research has highlighted the ways in which happiness facilitates the pursuit of important goals, contributes to vital social bonds, broadens people's scope of attention, and increases well-being and psychological health. However, is happiness always a good thing? This review suggests that the pursuit and experience of happiness might sometimes lead to negative outcomes. We focus on four…
The social costs of emotional suppression: A prospective study of the transition to college
There is growing interest in understanding how emotion regulation affects adaptation. The present study examined expressive suppression (which involves inhibiting the overt expression of emotion) and how it affects a critical domain of adaptation, social functioning. This investigation focused on the transition to college, a time that presents a variety of emotional and social challenges. Analyses focused on 2 components of suppression: a stable …
Implicit theories of emotion: Affective and social outcomes across a major life transition
The authors demonstrate that people differ systematically in their implicit theories of emotion: Some view emotions as fixed (entity theorists), whereas others view emotions as more malleable (incremental theorists). Using a longitudinal and multimethod design, the authors show that implicit theories of emotion, as distinct from intelligence, are linked to both emotional and social adjustment during the transition to college. Before entering coll…
Tracking technologies and urban analysis: Adding the emotional dimension
Interpersonal instrumental emotion regulation
The psychology of subjective well-being
Desired emotions across cultures: A value-based account
Values reflect how people want to experience the world; emotions reflect how people actually experience the world. Therefore, we propose that across cultures people desire emotions that are consistent with their values. Whereas prior research focused on the desirability of specific affective states or 1 or 2 target emotions, we offer a broader account of desired emotions. After reporting initial evidence for the potential causal effects of values…
Don't worry, be happy? Neuroticism, trait-consistent affect regulation, and performance
People regulate their affect either to feel good or to achieve instrumental success. The present experiments show that when driven by performance goals, people can be motivated to experience unpleasant affect when it is trait-consistent, because of its instrumental benefits (e.g., M. Tamir & M. D. Robinson, 2004). In 4 studies, individuals high in neuroticism were more likely than those low in neuroticism to choose to increase their level of worr…
The epistemic benefits of trait-consistent mood states: An analysis of extraversion and mood
One must consider both trait and state affect to predict individual differences in emotional processing. The present results document a novel trait-state interaction that is consistent with proposals concerning the epistemic functions of affect (A. R. Damasio, 1994). Four studies tested the effects of extraversion and mood on motivation-relevant processing. Study 1 measured naturally occurring mood, whereas Studies 2-4 manipulated mood. Extravert…
Neuroticism as Mental Noise: A Relation Between Neuroticism and Reaction Time Standard Deviations
Those higher in neuroticism are often more variable in their behavior and experience. On the basis of this observation, the authors hypothesized that the trait of neuroticism might be correlated with the variability of performance pertaining to relatively basic cognitive operations. Three studies involving 242 college undergraduates supported this prediction in that neuroticism correlated positively with the variability of performance across tria…
What we want is what we get: Group-based emotional preferences and conflict resolution
Imagine yourself facing someone who might attack your group--if you could control your emotions, how would you want to feel toward that person? We argue that the goals people have for their group dictate how they want to feel on behalf of their group. We further propose that these group-based emotional preferences, in turn, influence how people actually feel as group members and how they react to political events. We conducted 9 studies to test o…
Emotion regulation strategies and psychological health across cultures
Emotion regulation is important for psychological health and can be achieved by implementing various strategies. How one regulates emotions is critical for maximizing psychological health. Few studies, however, tested the psychological correlates of different emotion regulation strategies across multiple cultures. In a preregistered cross-cultural study ( N = 3,960, 19 countries), conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic, we assessed associations b…
Knowing Good From Bad: The Paradox of Neuroticism, Negative Affect, and Evaluative Processing
There are pragmatic benefits to trait-consistent mood states, especially when people are evaluating new objects within the environment (M. Tamir, M. D. Robinson, & G. L. Clore, 2002). The present studies, involving both naturally occurring (Studies 1 and 2) and manipulated (Study 3) mood states, demonstrated such trait-consistent interactions within the context of neuroticism and negative mood states. Individuals high in neuroticism were faster t…
When we want them to fear us: The motivation to influence outgroup emotions in collective action
Prior work has shown that the experience of group-based emotions can motivate disadvantaged group members to engage in collective action. In the current research, we tested whether such action can also be driven by the motivation to induce certain emotions among the outgroup to the extent that disadvantaged group members believe this would help them attain their social change goals. We tested this hypothesis in three studies (two correlational an…
Religion and Anti-Immigration Sentiments in Context: Field Studies in Jerusalem
Political and social changes in the past decade have rendered questions about religion and immigration more salient than ever. However, we know very little about the potential impact of religion as it operates in the real world on attitudes toward immigrants. In this investigation, we tested whether and how contextual religious cues in the public sphere might affect tolerance toward immigrants. In two studies, we compared the effects of a religio…
Religiosity and Emotion Regulation
People higher (vs. lower) in religiosity differ in the emotions they typically experience, but do they also differ in how they deal with their emotions? In this investigation, we systematically tested links between religiosity and elements of emotion regulation, including beliefs regarding the controllability of emotion, the motivation to feel better, and the tendency to use specific emotion regulation strategies (e.g., cognitive reappraisal, rum…
Emotions and the big picture: The effects of construal level on emotional preferences
Rationalizing Conflict: The Polarizing Role of Accountability in Ideological Decision Making
How does accountability impact political decisions? Though previous research on accountability has demonstrated its potential effects in the realms of business, elections, and more, very little research has explored the effect of citizen accountability in highly ideological, intractable, and political conflicts. This article addresses this issue, looking at the unique interaction between accountability and ideology on Israeli citizens’ political …
Adherence to emotion norms is greater in individualist cultures than in collectivist cultures
It is generally assumed that there is greater pressure to conform to social norms in collectivist cultures than in individualist cultures. However, most research on cultural differences in social norms has examined norms for behaviors. Here, we examine cultural differences in norms for emotions. Relative to members of collectivist cultures, members of individualist cultures are more attuned to internal states and value them more. Therefore, we pr…
When there’s a will, there’s a way: Disentangling the effects of goals and means in emotion regulation
Emotion regulation involves activating an emotion goal (e.g., decrease negative emotions) and using an emotion regulation strategy (e.g., cognitive reappraisal) to pursue it. We propose that activating emotion goals and implementing means can independently affect emotion regulation. People are not always motivated to regulate emotions or to regulate them in a prohedonic manner. Therefore, activating prohedonic emotion goals is consequential. Furt…
Nonconscious goals can shape what people want to feel
Trait as Default: Extraversion, Subjective Well-Being, and the Distinction Between Neutral and Positive Events
On the basis of prior work suggesting that trait self-knowledge serves a "fill-in" function when event-specific information is missing (M.D. Robinson & G. L. Clore, 2002a), we sought to demonstrate that extraversion is a more reliable predictor of subjective well-being (SWB) judgments among certain individuals than among others. Four studies involving a total of 260 participants revealed that the extraversion-SWB relation was relatively weaker am…
The epistemic benefits of trait-consistent mood states: An analysis of extraversion and mood
One must consider both trait and state affect to predict individual differences in emotional processing. The present results document a novel trait-state interaction that is consistent with proposals concerning the epistemic functions of affect (A. R. Damasio, 1994). Four studies tested the effects of extraversion and mood on motivation-relevant processing. Study 1 measured naturally occurring mood, whereas Studies 2-4 manipulated mood. Extravert…
Trait as Default: Extraversion, Subjective Well-Being, and the Distinction Between Neutral and Positive Events
On the basis of prior work suggesting that trait self-knowledge serves a "fill-in" function when event-specific information is missing (M.D. Robinson & G. L. Clore, 2002a), we sought to demonstrate that extraversion is a more reliable predictor of subjective well-being (SWB) judgments among certain individuals than among others. Four studies involving a total of 260 participants revealed that the extraversion-SWB relation was relatively weaker am…
The psychology of subjective well-being
Knowing Good From Bad: The Paradox of Neuroticism, Negative Affect, and Evaluative Processing
There are pragmatic benefits to trait-consistent mood states, especially when people are evaluating new objects within the environment (M. Tamir, M. D. Robinson, & G. L. Clore, 2002). The present studies, involving both naturally occurring (Studies 1 and 2) and manipulated (Study 3) mood states, demonstrated such trait-consistent interactions within the context of neuroticism and negative mood states. Individuals high in neuroticism were faster t…
Integrating The Diverse Definitions of Happiness: A Time-Sequential Framework of Subjective Well-Being
Don't worry, be happy? Neuroticism, trait-consistent affect regulation, and performance
People regulate their affect either to feel good or to achieve instrumental success. The present experiments show that when driven by performance goals, people can be motivated to experience unpleasant affect when it is trait-consistent, because of its instrumental benefits (e.g., M. Tamir & M. D. Robinson, 2004). In 4 studies, individuals high in neuroticism were more likely than those low in neuroticism to choose to increase their level of worr…
Neuroticism as Mental Noise: A Relation Between Neuroticism and Reaction Time Standard Deviations
Those higher in neuroticism are often more variable in their behavior and experience. On the basis of this observation, the authors hypothesized that the trait of neuroticism might be correlated with the variability of performance pertaining to relatively basic cognitive operations. Three studies involving 242 college undergraduates supported this prediction in that neuroticism correlated positively with the variability of performance across tria…
You May Worry, But Can You Recognize Threats When You See Them?; Neuroticism, Threat Identifications, and Negative Affect
The present studies sought to investigate the hedonic consequences of threat‐identification skills at low and high levels of neuroticism. Such skills were assessed in terms of both speed (Study 1) and accuracy (Study 2) of identifying threatening objects in cognitive tasks. As predicted, threat‐identification skills interacted with trait neuroticism in predicting subjective experiences. Specifically, individuals high in neuroticism experienced lo…
Business or pleasure? Utilitarian versus hedonic considerations in emotion regulation
It is widely accepted that emotions have utilitarian as well as hedonic consequences. Nevertheless, it is typically assumed that individuals regulate emotions to obtain hedonic, rather than utilitarian, benefits. In this study, the authors tested whether individuals represent the utility of pleasant and unpleasant emotions and whether they would be motivated to experience unpleasant emotions if they believed they could be useful. First, findings …
Implicit theories of emotion: Affective and social outcomes across a major life transition
The authors demonstrate that people differ systematically in their implicit theories of emotion: Some view emotions as fixed (entity theorists), whereas others view emotions as more malleable (incremental theorists). Using a longitudinal and multimethod design, the authors show that implicit theories of emotion, as distinct from intelligence, are linked to both emotional and social adjustment during the transition to college. Before entering coll…
Hedonic and Instrumental Motives in Anger Regulation
What motivates individuals to regulate their emotions? One answer, which has been highlighted in emotion-regulation research, is that individuals are motivated by short-term hedonic goals (e.g., the motivation to feel pleasure). Another answer, however, is that individuals are motivated by instrumental goals (e.g., the motivation to perform certain behaviors). We suggest that both answers have merit. To demonstrate the role instrumental goals may…
What Do People Want to Feel and Why?: Pleasure and Utility in Emotion Regulation
It is typically assumed that people always want to feel good. Recent evidence, however, demonstrates that people want to feel unpleasant emotions, such as anger or fear, when these emotions promote the attainment of their long-term goals. If emotions are regulated for instrumental reasons, people should want to feel pleasant emotions when immediate benefits outweigh future benefits, but when future benefits outweigh immediate benefits, people may…
Differential Preferences for Happiness: Extraversion and Trait‐Consistent Emotion Regulation
The assumption that everyone wants to be happy is prevalent among psychologists and laypeople alike. The present investigation suggests that motives for happiness are not consistent across individuals or contexts. Three studies demonstrate that preferences for happiness vary as a function of trait extraversion and situational demands. When anticipating an effortful task that requires increased motivational engagement, individuals demonstrated tra…
Behavioral facilitation: A cognitive model of individual differences in approach motivation
Approach motivation consists of the active, engaged pursuit of one's goals. The purpose of the present three studies (N = 258) was to examine whether approach motivation could be cognitively modeled, thereby providing process-based insights into personality functioning. Behavioral facilitation was assessed in terms of faster (or facilitated) reaction time with practice. As hypothesized, such tendencies predicted higher levels of approach motivati…
Choosing to be afraid: Preferences for fear as a function of goal pursuit
According to an instrumental approach to emotion regulation (M. Tamir, in press), people may not always prefer to feel pleasant emotions and avoid unpleasant ones. Instead, they may be motivated to experience even unpleasant emotions when they might be useful for goal attainment. Given that fear serves to promote successful avoidance, these studies tested this hypothesis by examining preferences for fear in preparation for avoidance goal pursuits…
The social costs of emotional suppression: A prospective study of the transition to college
There is growing interest in understanding how emotion regulation affects adaptation. The present study examined expressive suppression (which involves inhibiting the overt expression of emotion) and how it affects a critical domain of adaptation, social functioning. This investigation focused on the transition to college, a time that presents a variety of emotional and social challenges. Analyses focused on 2 components of suppression: a stable …
When feeling bad is expected to be good: Emotion regulation and outcome expectancies in social conflicts
According to the instrumental approach to emotion regulation, people may want to experience even unpleasant emotions to attain instrumental benefits. Building on value-expectancy models of self-regulation, we tested whether people want to feel bad in certain contexts specifically because they expect such feelings to be useful to them. In two studies, participants were more likely to try to increase their anger before a negotiation when motivated …
The pursuit of happiness can be lonely
Few things seem more natural and functional than wanting to be happy. We suggest that, counter to this intuition, valuing happiness may have some surprising negative consequences. Specifically, because striving for personal gains can damage connections with others and because happiness is usually defined in terms of personal positive feelings (a personal gain) in western contexts, striving for happiness might damage people's connections with othe…
Can seeking happiness make people unhappy? Paradoxical effects of valuing happiness
Happiness is a key ingredient of well-being. It is thus reasonable to expect that valuing happiness will have beneficial outcomes. We argue that this may not always be the case. Instead, valuing happiness could be self-defeating, because the more people value happiness, the more likely they will feel disappointed. This should apply particularly in positive situations, in which people have every reason to be happy. Two studies support this hypothe…
A Dark Side of Happiness? How, When, and Why Happiness Is Not Always Good
Happiness is generally considered a source of good outcomes. Research has highlighted the ways in which happiness facilitates the pursuit of important goals, contributes to vital social bonds, broadens people's scope of attention, and increases well-being and psychological health. However, is happiness always a good thing? This review suggests that the pursuit and experience of happiness might sometimes lead to negative outcomes. We focus on four…
When getting angry is smart: Emotional preferences and emotional intelligence
People who prefer to feel useful emotions, even when they are unpleasant to experience, must understand emotions and seek to regulate them in strategic ways. Such people, therefore, may be more emotionally intelligent compared with people who prefer to feel emotions that may not be useful for the context at hand, even if those emotions are pleasant to experience. We tested this hypothesis by measuring emotional intelligence and preferences to fee…
Should people pursue feelings that feel good or feelings that do good? Emotional preferences and well-being
Is it adaptive to seek pleasant emotions and avoid unpleasant emotions all the time or seek pleasant and unpleasant emotions at the right time? Participants reported on their preferences for anger and happiness in general and in contexts in which they might be useful or not (i.e., confrontations and collaborations, respectively). People who generally wanted to feel more happiness and less anger experienced greater well-being. However, when emotio…
Nonconscious goals can shape what people want to feel
Can Emotion Regulation Change Political Attitudes in Intractable Conflicts? From the Laboratory to the Field
We hypothesized that an adaptive form of emotion regulation— cognitive reappraisal—would decrease negative emotion and increase support for conflict-resolution policies. In Study 1, Israeli participants were invited to a laboratory session in which they were randomly assigned to either a cognitive-reappraisal condition or a control condition; they were then presented with anger-inducing information related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Par…
An expectancy-value model of emotion regulation: Implications for motivation, emotional experience, and decision making
According to expectancy-value models of self-regulation, people are motivated to act in ways they expect to be useful to them. For instance, people are motivated to run when they believe running is useful, even when they have nothing to run away from. Similarly, we propose an expectancy-value model of emotion regulation, according to which people are motivated to emote in ways they expect to be useful to them, regardless of immediate contextual d…
Psychology (66 works) · Social Psychology (60 works) · Cognitive psychology (37 works) · Cultural Differences and Values (34 works) · Developmental psychology (32 works) · Social Psychology (32 works) · Social and Intergroup Psychology (25 works) · Behavioral Health and Interventions (20 works) · Psychological Well-being and Life Satisfaction (18 works) · Anger (17 works)