TOWARD AN INTEGRATIVE MODEL OF AFFECT REGULATION - APPLICATIONS TO SOCIAL-PSYCHOLOGICAL RESEARCH

This article describes a model of affect regulation that integrates re search and theory from psychoanalytic, cognitive, behavioral, and evol utionary perspectives on personality. It proposes that feelings are me chanisms for the selection and retention of behavioral and mental resp onses. Individuals select behaviors, coping strategies, and defensive strategies that regulate aversive affective states and maximize pleasu rable ones. These affect regulation procedures are encoded as procedur al knowledge and are activated under specific circumstances. Some regu lation strategies are affect-specific, whereas others can be used to r egulate multiple affects of similar valence. These procedures are ofte n activated to resolve discrepancies between perceived and desired sta tes of the self, significant others, and external circumstances. The u tility of the model is demonstrated through a reinterpretation and int egration of a number of disparate traditions in social psychology, inc luding many of the classic experiments on social influence, in which t he processing of emotionally relevant social information plays a subst antial part.