Publication year: 2011
Source: Aggression and Violent Behavior, Available online 21 September 2011
Terri Roberton, Michael Daffern, Romola S. Bucks
This review considers the impact of deliberate emotion regulation on aggression, by integrating findings from recent emotion regulation research with a contemporary model of aggressive behavior, the General Aggression Model. First, it considers how individuals who under-regulate anger and other emotions may be more likely to behave aggressively in an attempt to repair, terminate, or avoid uncomfortable emotional states. Second, it explores how over-regulation of emotion may lead to aggressive behavior by increasing negative affect, reducing inhibitions against aggression, compromising decision making processes, diminishing social networks, increasing physiological arousal and hindering the resolution of difficult situations. Finally, it reviews three skills thought to underlie deliberate emotion regulation: emotional awareness, emotional acceptance and proficiency in a variety of emotion regulation strategies. Treatment encompassing all of these skills may improve an individual’s ability to regulate difficult emotion states more adaptively and thereby lessen aggressive behavior.
Highlights
► Both under- and over-regulated emotion increase the likelihood of aggression. ► Aggression assists in repairing, terminating or avoiding under-regulated emotion. ► Over-regulating emotion is cognitively costly. ► These cognitive costs increase the likelihood of aggression.