Giving in to feel good: The place of emotion regulation in the context of general self-control

Understanding how emotion regulation is similar to and different from other self-control tasks can advance the understanding of emotion regulation. Em otion regulation has many similarities to other regulatory tasks such as di eting, and abstaining from smoking, drugs, alcohol, ill-advised sexual enco unters, gambling, and procrastination, but it differs in a few important re spects. Emotion regulation is similar to other kinds of self-regulation in that it consists of three components. standards, monitoring, and strength. Emotion regulation involves overriding one set responses with another, inco mpatible set, just like with other types of self-control. And like other re gulatory tasks, emotion regulation can fail either because of underregulati on or because of misregulation. Although emotion regulation is similar in m any respects to other regulatory tasks, it is a special case of self-regula tion in that it can often undermine attempts at other kinds of self-control . Specifically, focusing on regulating moods and feeling stares can lead to a failure of self-control in other areas.