What Emotion Regulation Really Means: A Look at the Research

It’s Not About Putting a Lid on It

A common misunderstanding is that regulating emotions means suppressing them. But the literature draws a clear line here. Eisenberg and Spinrad explicitly state that regulation involves managing and changing “if, when, and how (e.g., how intensely) one experiences emotions,” as well as how they are expressed behaviorally. The goal is adaptive functioning, not emotional numbness. Similarly, Cole’s work shows that regulation can target the emotion itself or the social interaction it’s part of—so the scope is much broader than just “staying calm.”

How This Plays Out in Early Childhood

For young children, emotion regulation is a team sport. Babies and toddlers rely heavily on co-regulation: a caregiver soothes them, helps them name their feelings, or redirects their attention. Research shows that the journey from co-regulation to self-regulation is a major developmental milestone, and it’s deeply shaped by parenting.

This shift is tied to a child’s growing ability to reflect on their own emotions. As they develop, they start volitionally applying simple strategies—like covering their ears when a noise is too loud or talking to themselves when they feel sad. This ability is increasingly seen as a critical bridge between early life experiences and later flourishing. One long-term view positions emotion regulation as a “key mediator linking early experiences with later flourishing in children.”

A Handy Framework for Your Own Writing

If you’re tackling this topic in a literature review or paper, here’s a synthesis of how leading researchers frame it, which you can cite directly:

Emotion regulation is the capacity, activated after an emotional response is triggered, to monitor, evaluate, and modify emotional reactions through both internal and external processes. Eisenberg and colleagues describe emotion-related self-regulation as the redirection, control, modulation, and modification of emotional arousal to enable adaptive functioning in emotional situations. Cole et al. further contend that emotion regulation involves changes associated with activated emotions, which can occur in the emotion itself or in other psychological processes like memory and social interaction. Thus, emotion regulation is not about suppressing feelings; rather, it is the process of adjusting the intensity, expression, and behavioral response to align with situational demands.

Who to Cite for What

To strengthen your literature review, here’s a quick guide to the key thinkers and their main contributions:

• Thompson (1994): Your go-to for the foundational, three-part definition (“monitoring, evaluating, modifying”) and the distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic processes.
• Eisenberg et al.: Best for framing emotion-related self-regulation in children, emphasizing adaptive functioning, redirection of arousal, and the idea that regulation is not suppression.
• Cole et al. (2004): Essential for the argument that emotion regulation isn’t just about changing the feeling, but can involve changes to other psychological systems and social interactions.
• Parenting & Child Development Literature: Use this to discuss the developmental trajectory from co-regulation to self-regulation, and the role of caregivers in modeling and supporting these skills.

The Big Takeaway

So, emotion regulation isn’t a single trick or a personality trait. It’s a dynamic set of skills for navigating our inner world and our relationships. The research tells us it’s about awareness, flexibility, and adaptation—not rigidity or denial. For children especially, these skills are built in the context of relationships, gradually transforming from a shared task into a personal toolkit that shapes their long-term wellbeing.