: Yeah. Thank you so much for asking me to join. It's a pleasure to chat with you today. Just a word more maybe about my background so people know where I'm coming from. After studying philosophy at Yale, I went on and studied at Oxford and then did a clinical psychology degree at UC Berkeley. My perspective, I think, starts from the idea that there's just a lot of suffering that people are experiencing in general. Sometimes that takes a form of clinical diagnoses, where you have anxiety disorders or mood disorders, but a lot of the suffering that we face is also subclinical, which sounds like it's not a big deal, but it is a really big deal. Particularly during the pandemic, we've seen just escalation beyond belief and anxiety and mood disorders and other flavors of suffering. So I'm very attentive to that.

My students and I at Stanford have for more than 25 years been working to better understand how emotions play out over time and when emotions are unhelpful, which they sometimes are, and what we can do about it. That's what I mean by emotion regulation. It's just an umbrella term for all of the processes we use to try to influence which emotions we have when we have them and how those emotions are experienced and expressed. I think, sometimes when people hear the term emotion regulation, they may misunderstand and think, oh, well this is clearly someone who hates emotions and thinks they should all go away. And that's not at all our perspective. We actually think that many times emotions are incredibly helpful.

Even so-called negative emotions of fear, or even sometimes sadness can be incredibly important and helpful to us in our lives and achieving our goals. We're really very specifically focused on times when people make the judgment that their emotions just really are getting in the way of what they want to be doing in their lives. It's in those cases that we're really interested in what they try to do to manage or modify their emotions. We try to use science, psychological science to empirically derive answers to people's questions about what can they do to more effectively regulate. I think just in summary then, although I come via philosophy, I'm very much grounded in psychology. As you said, this is my 28th year at Stanford.

And, our focus in the lab is very much around emotions and emotion regulation. Pianpian, I understand that you have some questions which I'm happy to address. I'm also, if you find it useful, happy to say just a few words about how I think about emotion regulation, what some of the distinctions that I find are useful to make, but I'm happy to have you lead off if you'd like to start.

: Happy. I love talking about this. This is my favorite topic in the entire universe, I have to say. Anytime I have an excuse to talk about my work to people who care about it, this is a good thing. So I'm excited. I wish obviously we are in person that's even more fun. My favorite mode of teaching is small seminars when I'm actually in person and we can interact, but hey, this is second best. I think it's a pretty good second best. So I'm excited. Thank you.

We can intervene at one or more of these points in the emotion generative process to modify how the emotions play out and concretely we've distinguished five families of regulatory strategies, and they're just connected to different points in that emotion generative process. First step is what we call situation selection

: Yeah, happy to answer both of those things, Pianpian. So here's how I think about things. This is a pretty simple scheme, but it's one that we found very helpful. So, here's the idea. When I started in this field some years ago, the way that people were thinking is really like a list. They wrote papers and tried to figure out what do people do when they're feeling discouraged or depressed. And it was a great big list. You might talk to your mom, you might throw a pillow, you might go for a run, and there wasn't really a sense of organization or which of these many strategies that are in a big list might work. What I did was back up a step and said, well, look, how do we think in very simple terms about emotions unfolding over time?

I'm being very generous with what I mean by emotion. I would include stress responses and various other affective states in this very broad conception of emotion for today's conversation. How do emotions unfold? Well, let's start really simply by saying, well, usually there's some kind of situation that has caused that trigger or caused us to pay attention. There's a situation which we then pay attention to and then think about in certain ways. We talk about that as an appraisal, a way of thinking about what we're attending to in this situation. It's that appraisal in our view, that leads to an emotion where an emotion is just a loosely coordinated set of changes in how we feel our expressive behavior and our physiological response.

Again, just as a really simple scheme, we're thinking that in some situations we pay attention and then think in certain ways. That's what gives rise to these responses. You might think it doesn't do any work for us at all, but here's the work it does now that we're thinking about how emotions unfold over time, whether it's anger or happiness, sadness, disgust, all of these, I think play out in this sequence is a situation we can identify. We attend to some features of it. We then think about those features and that's what leads to the emotion. Here's the work it does for us.

If we now want to ask, not just how emotions play out in our lives, but what we can do to change how they play out. We can now use that simple scheme for understanding how emotions arise.

We can intervene at one or more of these points in the emotion generative process to modify how the emotions play out and concretely we've distinguished five families of regulatory strategies, and they're just connected to different points in that emotion generative process.

First step is what we call situation selection. This is just making decisions about what situations we expose ourselves to on the basis of how they're going to make us respond emotionally. If there's someone who we find really upsetting to deal with, and we don't want to have that feeling of being, we might avoid that person. It's as simple as that. That would be an example of situation selection.

A second family of emotion regulation processes is what we call situation modification

: A second family of emotion regulation processes is what we call situation modification. Now you're in a situation, is there anything you can do to influence features of that situation so that you no longer have the emotion that you want to not have? So that’s situation modification.

The third family of regulatory processes, just moving straight down the line influences the attentional process

: The third family of regulatory processes, just moving straight down the line influences the attentional process. Here we're just using attentional deployment as an umbrella term, for all the things we can do to shift our attention within a situation. We're not changing the situation, we're not picking a different situation. We're just shifting our attention within the situation.

The fourth family of regulatory processes comes to the next stage

: The fourth family of regulatory processes comes to the next stage. That's where we're thinking about the situation.

By changing our thinking, that's called cognitive change

: By changing our thinking, that's called cognitive change. We can actually change the emotional impact of the situation. That's where a lot of our work has focused because it's a very powerful leverage point.

The fifth family of regulatory processes is an end of the cycle where you actually directly modify one or more aspects of emotion

: The fifth family of regulatory processes is an end of the cycle where you actually directly modify one or more aspects of emotion. You asked about suppression. From my perspective, suppression is the form of response modulation, where you work very hard to either not feel or not show what you're feeling. Emotion regulation refers to all of these processes, situation, selection, situation modification, attention deployment, cognitive change response modulation, all five of those buckets fit under emotion regulation. Whereas suppression is just an example of one of those buckets. Pianpian, did I put that in a clear way in response to your question?

The first thing I want to make sure that everyone understands is that you've got all these different possible strategies

: Well, great question Pianpian. If I could answer all of those things in two minutes, I should get a huge prize because those are really hard questions, but let me have a go at this because I think you're asking just the right questions. So let me break it down. The first thing I want to make sure that everyone understands is that you've got all these different possible strategies.

The key idea is that we have some control over our emotions

: Key idea here is that when we have emotions that we really find they're going to be unhelpful for us, there are things we can do, and that's what these buckets of strategies refer to. The key idea is that we have some control over our emotions.

: Now it's important to say that because it turns out that people who believe that they have no control over their emotions, that emotions are whether it just comes and goes, and you have nothing to say about it, very reasonably, those people do not spend energy trying to change their emotions if they believe they can't. Of course they don't bother trying to change them.

The key takeaway idea is that emotions are things that we can have some control over, not perfect control.

: The key takeaway idea is that emotions are things that we can have some control over, not perfect control.

people who, I think, are immersed in this literature and to practice these steps that we're talking about can become very expert at having lots of different strategies at their disposal. That would be like having a big toolkit

: I've never met anybody who has perfect control over his or her emotions, but people who, I think, are immersed in this literature and to practice these steps that we're talking about can become very expert at having lots of different strategies at their disposal. That would be like having a big toolkit.

: Imagine you're trying to fix something complicated. Our minds are incredibly complicated and we show up with just a screwdriver to fix this very complex machine, not going to go so well, but if you have multiple tools, the way you'd have multiple experiences with multiple forms of regulation, you're in much better shape.

Idea number one is we can have some control over our emotions, and then we can do that by using these different tools.

: Idea number one is we can have some control over our emotions, and then we can do that by using these different tools.

The second key idea is that these tools are not interchangeable.

: The second key idea is that these tools are not interchangeable. That is to say, in some situations we don't have control. Our boss has control. We can't just walk out of the situation and go find a new boss. We're stuck with some of our coworkers or in a family context. We've got the family we've got, and we need to work with them and not just swap them out and find somebody else. In each of these cases, some of these forms of regulation are going to be less relevant because some of them are not applicable.

That's why it's so important to have different tools at your disposal so that you can kind of match the tool to the situation in order to maximize the chance of being in the kind of emotional state you think will be most helpful.

: That's why it's so important to have different tools at your disposal so that you can kind of match the tool to the situation in order to maximize the chance of being in the kind of emotional state you think will be most helpful. Idea number one, emotions can be controlled to some degree.

Idea number two, you can do emotion regulation using different strategies.

: Idea number two, you can do emotion regulation using different strategies.

Idea number three

: Idea number three, really important idea, based on decades of work. We now know that it's not just there are lots of strategies and just use whatever you want.

Some of these strategies are generally more helpful than others.

: Some of these strategies are generally more helpful than others. And I'll give you a specific example.

cognitive change

: I talked about cognitive change.

reappraisal

: It's also known as reappraisal. Both of those are just referring to trying to change our thinking in ways that will change our emotional responses. That turns out to be a very effective strategy in many situations, not all. We'll come back to that if you'd like, but in many situations, developing that capacity, using that capacity can be very powerful.

: Another thing that people do a lot of is something you referenced Pianpian, which is suppression, another go-to strategy for people specifically form of response modulation. It's just trying not to show what you're feeling. People just use that a lot. It turns out, although it can sometimes be very important strategically to not show what you're feeling in a particular circumstance. If you do that chronically, that's not good for you.

We've done study after study showing that people who tend to chronically suppress positive emotions and negative emotions don't feel any better for doing it

: We've done study after study showing that people who tend to chronically suppress positive emotions and negative emotions don't feel any better for doing it. They may feel worse. They are more distant from other people because other people can't read what's really going on and cognitively they don't function as well because they're so distracted by trying to constantly monitor their emotional expressions. What's more, physiologically the effort associated with suppressing emotions actually leads to a magnified physiological response. There's emerging evidence that when you do that suppress, you have all of these negative consequences and you may even have some longer term health consequences, including cardiovascular functioning. This is not just a little thing.

This is a big thing because the strategies we choose to use on a regular basis, either set us up for some success like reappraisal or cognitive change, where we can think differently.

: This is a big thing because the strategies we choose to use on a regular basis, either set us up for some success like reappraisal or cognitive change, where we can think differently.

That makes us feel better. People feel closer to us. Our health is better, not worse.

: That makes us feel better. People feel closer to us. Our health is better, not worse. We contrast that to suppression, which is the opposite. People don't feel as comfortable around us. We don't feel better. We're cognitively very loaded and we have physically in worse shape

I want to be clear on this third point, that different strategies have different consequences.

: I want to be clear on this third point, that different strategies have different consequences.

That's not true because there are some times that using cognitive change can actually get you in trouble.

: I'm making it sound like, always use the cognitive change and never use suppression. That's not true because there are some times that using cognitive change can actually get you in trouble. I'll give you an example. Let's say you're in a really toxic relationship in your personal life. Each time that something flares up, you kind of make an excuse for the person who's really being toxic to you. That takes away the negative emotion. So in that sense, it's successful. Do you get out of the relationship? No, because you don't have the negative emotion to kind of push you out of the relationship. By being successful in decreasing your emotion, by thinking differently, looking on the positive side, this person may change. This is going to get better. You feel a little better, but long-term, you stay stuck in that bad relationship. That'd be an example of where cognitive change is not such a good idea. How about suppression? I've said it's pretty bad news if you do it all the time, right? But sometimes we're in an interpersonal situation, negotiation, whatever the situation is in the workplace. And we need to manage our emotions. It's not professional to burst into tears in the middle of a negotiation. At least in most cultural contexts that decreases your power, changes the whole set and distracts everybody from the issues at hand. In those cases, you need to suppress, because you can't do some other things that would be better than not doing suppression. Pianpian, those are some key ideas I think, to kind of put on the table for people that the idea that we have some control over emotions, a really important idea. Number two, there are different strategies we can use. We want to have lots of tools when we go into these situations. Idea number three, different tools have different success rates in different situations.

We want to be really smart about the tools we're using and practice and notice what works for us and realize that this is something you can get better at over time.

: We want to be really smart about the tools we're using and practice and notice what works for us and realize that this is something you can get better at over time.

These so-called soft skills matter an immense amount.

: These so-called soft skills matter an immense amount.

: Do you want to be part of a workgroup where the person is calm, focused, warm, appropriate? Or do you want to be in a workgroup where someone's flying off the handle, stressed out, yelling at people and off-topic. It's easy, where you want to be, and you want to be one of those people that others want to be on a team with. Pianpian, those are a few thoughts and I'm happy to open it up. I know we don't have a ton of time, but I want to make sure that if people have questions or things that you'd like us to get to, that we can do that.

So it's a lifelong learning process

: Let me take the second question first. Because it's an important one, which is what can we do? What practices can we engage in to gain experience and to gain expertise in this domain? It's a really important question. I think for many people in our culture, I mean, most of us don't come pre-programmed with a full understanding of our emotions, right? That just doesn't happen. For many people, they are just figuring out who they are as an emotional being, as they move, not only through childhood into adolescence but through adulthood, right? So a lot of people are, lifelong project here figuring out what our emotional triggers are, what are the things that are difficult for us? what are the situations that are most productive for us? What are the situations that are really horrible for us?

So it's a lifelong learning process. I think for many people who haven't had a chance to think about some of these things that we're talking about today, their emotions do feel more like stuff that's happening from the outside and just happens. And they feel out of control. They don't really appreciate the connections between their thinking and their emotional responses. I'm simplifying, of course, people have some idea about this, but I think on a practical basis, people don't have a ready understanding of this. What that means is that for a lot of people, they go through a day, blow up at somebody, come home, upset, yell at somebody else in their home, and then don't know what to do about all of it. They may have a drink or, disengage or something like that.

emotions play out over time. There are ways that I can intervene to change them by practicing.

: I think that is kind of where most people are. I think what we're talking about today is a way of developing even a simple framework for thinking, hey, emotions play out over time. There are ways that I can intervene to change them by practicing.

just that noticing your emotions as you move through the day, that's a huge win right there

: I can get better. I can make some distinctions between different things that I can do to regulate my emotions. Some are gonna work better. Some are not gonna work as well for me. By noticing, first of all, one's emotions, just that noticing your emotions as you move through the day, that's a huge win right there because I think people feel buffeted by them and not even aware that their thinking changes and their patterns of interaction change because they're in an emotional state.

in retrospect

: I think when number one just notices your emotions, then as you are attending to your emotions, either in retrospect. At night, you can think about what happened today. You can think, yeah, I was really happy about this good thing that happened at work.

reflect in your mind

: I got super stressed out about this. You can reflect in your mind after it had happened because there is any other way that I could have handled that.

I think by reflecting, you can by simulation sorta try out, well, what if I had not said that, okay, that probably would have gone better?

: I think by reflecting, you can by simulation sorta try out, well, what if I had not said that, okay, that probably would have gone better? Or what if I had really focused on the fact that he was trying to help me, even though that was really what I thought was a sexist comment of his, know I'm not going to forgive the sexism, but I am going to at least notice the intent was positive. There's something there that's positive to work with. So that'd be rethinking.

it's noticing your emotions either in retrospect or in real-time, and then giving some thought to the strategies you might have used.

: it's noticing your emotions either in retrospect or in real-time, and then giving some thought to the strategies you might have used.

What I think we're doing as we build expertise is by noticing emotions repeatedly and trying out different strategies, either in imagination or in reality, we're building our repertoire and we're building our experience of what works.

: What I think we're doing as we build expertise is by noticing emotions repeatedly and trying out different strategies, either in imagination or in reality, we're building our repertoire and we're building our experience of what works.

So I think it's this gradual process. I think the real win here is not just noticing emotions, trying out different things imaginably but trying them out in real life, seeing if they work.

: So I think it's this gradual process. I think the real win here is not just noticing emotions, trying out different things imaginably but trying them out in real life, seeing if they work. When you get really good at this, you can actually anticipate we do this in other parts of life, right? For those of us, you've had young kids, they're hot in the morning. They can't imagine that they're going to be cold later, but we as parents know that they need to take warm clothing, cause they're going on a school outing and they're going to be freezing.

In a similar sense, we can do that for ourselves and our loved ones by gaining some wisdom about what the emotional trajectory of our day or week, or month is going to be.

: In a similar sense, we can do that for ourselves and our loved ones by gaining some wisdom about what the emotional trajectory of our day or week, or month is going to be.

Slowly as we gain expertise, we can then anticipate and then start to use some of those situational strategies that are very powerful.

: Slowly as we gain expertise, we can then anticipate and then start to use some of those situational strategies that are very powerful. My sculpting our lives in a way that leads us to have opportunities to have the kinds of emotions we want to have, and not the ones we don't.

: My sculpting our lives in a way that leads us to have opportunities to have the kinds of emotions we want to have, and not the ones we don't.

Practical tips in deploying cognitive reappraisal, particularly since our stress hormones usually outperform anything else.

: Practical tips in deploying cognitive reappraisal, particularly since our stress hormones usually outperform anything else.

: Pianpian, I see we're at four and I know we need to stop, but I want to, thank you for the invitation. This has been a pleasure to chat with you and folks on the call, and, hopefully, this is a tiny bit useful for everyone. Good luck in your emotion regulation quest everybody. We have zillions of papers, obviously on our website, if any of those are of interest, just Google me and you'll see them on the Stanford website. With that, I'll stop and thank you so much Pianpian for inviting me.