The power of emotional regulation and the ability to have awareness of one’s own emotional states is fundamental to the overall well-being and functionality of an individual. Emotional regulation gives an individual the power to properly identify how they are feeling and appropriately regulate their emotions. There were several things from this class that really stuck with me. First, I was very surprised by how understudied this topic is, especially because of how deeply rooted it is in everything we do. Secondly, the class material made me realize how little I actually know about emotion, affect, and emotional regulation. In psychology we spend copious amounts of time talking about emotion, affect, and emotional regulation. We learn how to identify how others are feeling based on observational data and create strategies to help individuals to deal with their emotions, yet we do not focus on learning about the research, theories, and fundamental concepts of emotions, affect, and emotional regulation. Therefore, for me, this class was very beneficial because it provided me with a good knowledge base that I can implement in my scholarship, research, and future career.
There were three topic areas that were covered in our class that I feel I benefited the most from: affective and cognitive perspective, developmental perspective and emotions, and psychotherapy and emotions. First, the affective and cognitive perspective topic area helped me to define emotion and affect. A lot of times, as I stated before, these definitions become blurry and it is extremely difficult to operationally define these terms, yet we are constantly using language that is centered around emotionality (e.g. asking questions like, “How are you today?”). I believe that part of the reason why emotions are difficult to operationally define is because they are very difficult to measure accurately as stated in the Barrett (2012) article. Perhaps, this has to do with the fact that the origin of the experience of emotions is not only from one place, yet it is a combination of biological, social, and psychological factors and the unique complex interaction that occurs between the three is what results in a certain emotional expression (Barrett, 2012). Additionally, Barrett (2012) discusses how we address the types of questions in our research. Possibly in relation to the study of emotions, we need to ask questions that concern the process that occurs to derive to certain emotions, or how different factors (e.g. perception, culture, social influence, etc.), have an effect on a person’s emotional expression. In direct relation to perception, the Barrett article discusses the Conceptual Act Theory of Emotions, where the combination of the sensations that an individual receives externally and the sensations that a person experiences internally, due to the external stimuli, are unique to the individual feeling them. Simply put, it can be inferred that each person’s perception is different than the people around them. Regardless of how the situation may seem externally, the expression of emotions is a combination of internal and external factors; therefore, it is important to recognize that just because you feel a certain way about something, does not necessarily mean that the person next to you experiencing the same situation will exhibit the same emotional reaction. By an individual being able to recognize that others around them, experiencing the same stimuli, may be feeling differently about the same stimuli is indicative of how emotionally intelligent that individual is. Emotional intelligence is not only being able to recognize your own feelings, but also being able to understand emotion and how it is expressed differently for different individuals (Brackett, Rivers, Bertoli, & Salovey, 2016). Overall, this topic area was important to me because I was able to build a foundation for the rest of the material we discussed in our class.
To add to the first topic area, the developmental perspective and emotions topic area help me to get a grasp on understanding what emotional regulation is and how it presents itself across one’s life. Chapter 12 on Emotional Regulation in Adolescents defines emotional regulation as a methodical and automatic process in which individuals are able to accurately identify and influence which emotion they want to feel, while also recognizing the appropriate time to feel and express certain emotions (Riediger & Klipker, 2014). Additionally, the reading brings forward a component of development to emotions and emotional regulation. When considering development, it is imperative to look at all three factors discussed earlier, biological, social, and psychological. In fact, Riediger and Klipker (2014) discuss how emotional regulation plays a fundamental role in emotional experiences felt and how these emotional experiences are dependent on the different rates of mental and body development in adolescents. This is very important to recognize, especially as a future school psychologist. As school psychologists, we will be working with many youth that are at different physical and psychological development stages. And, we need to be able to remain emotionally intelligent in order to be able to provide services that are effective and long-lasting. In contrast to the emotional regulation in adolescences, this topic area also covered emotional regulation in preschoolers in an article by Russell. This was a very interesting read and really stuck out to me because of the results obtained by the study that children under the age of seven can actually identify certain emotions based on facial and nonverbal expressions, with happiness being the first identifiable emotion (Russell, 1990). Given that this article is dated, as a researcher I would try to replicate it, but I would want to try to figure out if certain emotions are primed from an early age. For example, the results of this study indicated that children typically identify happiness as an emotion first. I would want to address questions such as: is the identification of happiness as an emotion first, due to the negative affect produced by others as a result of negative emotions felt and expressed? For example, I would hypothesize that children are primed to answer the question, “How are you today?” with “Good” or “Happy,” because when they answer “Not good” or “Sad” the reciprocated emotion is usually negative, like, “Oh, no! Why is it that you feel sad?” And, therefore, maybe children do not actually know what the emotional difference is between happy or sad, but they just express that they are happy because that is the answer that is reciprocated positively. In addition to that, Riediger & Klipker (2014) also discuss what adaptive emotional regulation strategies that adolescents use and if these strategies are effective. I believe that these factors are important to look at, we need to be able to foster emotional regulation strategies in adolescents and in younger youth as well. I feel as though the latter topic area ties in really well with the first one discussed in this paper, because it discusses how emotions are expressed differently across various individuals and it provides strong support in the need for further research.
Lastly, the topic I found to be helpful in putting together all of the discussions and presentations from class was on psychotherapy and emotions. The chapter by Greenberg (2016) further breaks down emotions into primary and secondary, which is then broken down into adaptive and maladaptive. Just like in the previous two articles that discuss preschoolers and adolescents, there is a need to discover the source of emotions and first determine if the emotions are primary or secondary and then deduce if the emotions are adaptive or maladaptive. If the leading emotion is adaptive and the emotion that follows, the secondary emotion, is maladaptive, then we would use Evidence-Based Treatment (EFT) techniques to help transform the secondary maladaptive emotion by leading the individual into transforming their personal narrative (Greenberg, 2016). Further, the second reading in the psychotherapy and emotions topic area introduced many of the issues that we face in relation to researching and practicing these principles in the field. Heesacker and Bradley (1997) present several different issues (e.g. educational, professional, practical, methodological, theoretical, metatheoretical, epistemological). I found this article to be interesting because it puts into perspective how many barriers there are in the study of emotions and emotional regulation. On the other hand, these areas would be great points of research for the development of more knowledge in emotions, emotional regulation, and the origin of emotion.
Overall this class really put into perspective the implications of emotions on my research, scholarship, and future practice. Throughout the discussions, I started to develop research projects in my mind. One of which was a product of our class discussion about gun violence and school gun drills. I would like to see if I can conduct a longitudinal study to see what the emotional regulation effects are in schools where gun drills are frequent, in schools where there has already been an accident, and in schools where gun drills are infrequent. I think that this would be interesting to see how youth adapt and are able to generalize their emotional regulation across settings and across time.