Flexible Emotion Regulation Requires Emotional Intelligence

Emotional intelligence and emotion regulation

Source: Carolyn MacCann

Emotional intelligence and emotion regulation are related but importantly separate psychological concepts. Emotional intelligence is a set of abilities (capacities people have), whereas emotion regulation is a set of behaviors (things people do). People with higher emotional intelligence tend to use more effective emotion regulation strategies (such as engaging in problem-solving, changing their thoughts to be more positive, and seeking social support) and fewer ineffective strategies (such as ruminating about a negative event or emotion, or avoiding addressing the emotion or cause of the emotion).

This week, new research led by Kit Double shows that people with high levels of emotional intelligence are more flexible in how they use different strategies to regulate their emotions. That is, it is not just that emotionally intelligent people use more effective strategies, but that they change the strategies they use to suit their situation.

Double's study examined two emotional intelligence abilities:

1. Emotion understanding. Emotion understanding involves understanding the causes of different emotions (such as that unfairness makes people angry), knowing how emotions will progress over time (such that anger might intensify into rage), knowing the consequences of feeling a certain way (such as that feeling angry with your partner might lead to an argument or relationship difficulties), and knowing how you might feel if particular events happened to you (such as knowing that your partner being late without messaging you would make you feel angry).
2. Emotion management. Emotion management involves knowing how effective different emotion regulation responses will be for a given situation (such as knowing that if you yell at your partner you will feel worse). It also includes the ability to evaluate and monitor whether the regulation responses you use are working for you, so you can change tactics if what you are doing is not working. People with high emotion management attend to their emotions as a source of feedback to determine whether the strategies they use to manage their emotions are effective.

The study also examined four emotion regulation strategies. Emotion regulation is the process people use to influence the type and intensity of emotions they have, when they have them, and how they experience and express them.

1. Direct situation modification involves changing something in your environment to reduce its emotional impact (i.e., taking direct action to change the situation).
2. Distraction involves diverting your attention away from your feelings or the causes of your feelings, often by engaging in activities to distract yourself.
3. Rumination involves dwelling on your feelings or the causes of your feelings, especially when those feelings or the situations that caused them are negative.
4. Positive reappraisal involves changing the way you think about the event that caused your feelings, in order to reduce its emotional impact (i.e., positive thinking).

In Double's study, the researchers asked 165 university students to complete two assessments of emotional intelligence: the Situational Test of Emotion Understanding, and the Situational Test of Emotion Management. These are multiple choice tests that ask test-takers to pick the best response as to how someone is feeling in a given situation, or the best way to manage their emotions in a given situation.

After completing the emotional intelligence tests, study participants were sent six text messages per day for five days. Each message contained a link to an online mini-survey with items assessing how much each participant was using the five regulation strategies listed above. This research method is known as "experience sampling" because it takes multiple samples of a person's daily experiences in their day-to-day life.

Based on these 30 samples of people's experiences, Double and colleagues were able to calculate:

1. How much each person changed their use of each strategy across the 30 different situations they were in (known as "within-strategy variability")
2. How much each person selectively used some strategies more than others in each situation (known as "between-strategy variability").

Higher levels of emotion understanding and emotion management were related to the selective use of some strategies more than others (between-strategy variability). Higher levels of emotion understanding (but not emotion management) were related to how much people changed their use of the strategies across time (within-strategy variability).

This research tells us that emotionally intelligent people are not just finding a strategy that works and sticking with it. Rather, emotionally intelligent people are selectively changing what they do, presumably to meet the emotional demands of different situations.

It is clear from other research that higher emotional intelligence is related to better life outcomes such as better mental health, better academic performance and better workplace outcomes. Psychology researchers also think that one reason emotionally intelligent people achieve these better outcomes is because they use more effective regulation strategies and fewer ineffective regulation strategies to manage their emotions. What Double's research suggests is that it is not just that they use better strategies, but that they flexibly vary the strategies they use to meet the demands of the situations they are in.