Glossary // Glossary term Empirical

Reappraisal

A cognitive regulation strategy that changes how a situation is interpreted in order to change its emotional impact, for example viewing a provocation as the result of someone else's bad day. Meta-analytic evidence indicates that reappraising the situation itself tends to be more effective than attempting to change the emotional response directly, and habitual reappraisal is associated with more positive and less negative emotion. Recent work describes reappraisal as a family of tactics whose usefulness depends on the person, the situation and whether the situation can be changed.

Where the site uses it

Change the interpretation before trying to release the emotion
Cognitive reappraisal, reconsidering what a situation means, changes emotional experience more reliably than suppressing it or dwelling on it. How to practise it and when it is not the right tool.
The venting hypothesis: what experiments show about letting anger out
Controlled experiments on venting anger found that it keeps anger active and increases aggression. This note reviews the evidence, its limits, and the regulation strategies that reduce anger instead.

Studies behind it

The works the definition rests on, with the level of evidence each was appraised at.

Gross, J. J. (1998). The emerging field of emotion regulation: An integrative review. doi:10.1037/1089-2680.2.3.271

Level D Review

Supports definitions and the five-point process model used across the library. A conceptual framework, not a test of which strategies work.
Gross, J. J., & John, O. P. (2003). Individual differences in two emotion regulation processes: Implications for affect, relationships, and well-being. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.85.2.348

Level D Cross-sectional study

Supports the claim that habitual reappraisal is associated with more positive and less negative emotion and better well-being than habitual suppression. Correlational data cannot show that the strategy causes these outcomes.
Ochsner, K. N., & Gross, J. J. (2005). The cognitive control of emotion. doi:10.1016/j.tics.2005.03.010

Level D Review

Supports the claim that reappraisal and attentional control involve interactions between prefrontal and cingulate control systems and emotion-generative regions. Narrative review of early imaging work.
Webb, T. L., Miles, E., & Sheeran, P. (2012). Dealing with feeling: A meta-analysis of the effectiveness of strategies derived from the process model of emotion regulation. doi:10.1037/a0027600

Level A Meta-analysis

Supports the claims that cognitive change had a small-to-medium effect, distraction was effective, concentration on feelings was not, and suppressing the experience of emotion was ineffective. Effects come from short laboratory inductions and vary with moderators.
Uusberg, A., Ford, B., Uusberg, H., & Gross, J. J. (2023). Reappraising reappraisal: An expanded view. doi:10.1080/02699931.2023.2208340

Level D Theory

Supports the conceptual claim that reappraisal is a family of tactics (reconstrual and repurposing, object- and meta-level, decommitment and commitment). It proposes a map; it does not test the tactics' effectiveness.
Monachesi, B., Grecucci, A., Ahmadi Ghomroudi, P., & Messina, I. (2023). Comparing reappraisal and acceptance strategies to understand the neural architecture of emotion regulation: A meta-analytic approach. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1187092

Level A Meta-analysis

Supports the claim that reappraisal and acceptance share activity in left inferior frontal gyrus and insula but differ in other regions. Neural activation patterns do not show which strategy is more effective for a person.