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The ability to regulate one’s emotions is an integral part of human social behavior. One antecedent emotion regulation strategy, known as reappraisal, is characterized by cognitively evaluating an emotional stimulus to alter its emotional impact and one response-focused strategy, suppression, is aimed at reducing behavioral output. People are capable of using these specific emotion regulation strategies when instructed to do so; however, it is equally important to investigate natural and self-selected strategy use. This study was designed to determine to what extent people spontaneously regulate their emotions and the emotion regulation strategies they choose to achieve their regulatory goals. Participants were given no instructions to regulate their emotions before they were shown a negative and a positive film clip, but were instead asked afterwards about the specific strategies that they had used. Participants reported regulating their emotions more to the negative film than to the positive film. Reappraisal was more frequently selected as an emotion regulation strategy than suppression. As expected, participants with high baseline respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) adopted reappraisal strategies more than those with low RSA but, surprisingly, RSA was not associated with facial expressivity. Suggestions for future research in this relatively young field of spontaneous emotion regulation are offered.

Emotions have been defined as self-regulatory responses that are able to direct behaviors towards a goal (Thayer & Lane, 2000). While largely functional, emotions sometimes need to be controlled so that social goals can be achieved. In addition, the proper regulation of emotional processes is vital to mental health as well as physical well-being (Gross, 1998). For example, as seen in the diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders, 4th edition (APA, 1994), many affective disorders are characterized by emotional dysregulation (Gross, 1998). James Gross proposed the Process Model of emotion regulation (Gross, 1998 and John and Gross, 2004). This model divides emotion regulation into the two broad categories of antecedent-focused and response-focused strategies. Antecedent strategies encompass the processes enacted before an emotion is fully experienced; in essence, an individual manipulates the emotional input in the cognitive domain ( Gross, 1998). For example, one may purposefully redirect one’s attention away from an emotional stimulus or avoid an emotionally charged situation altogether. Response-focused strategies are enacted after the emotion has already been felt with the goal of altering the behavioral display of the felt emotion ( Gross, 1998). Use of response-focused strategies usually involves muscular control of behavioral (often facial) expressions. The most researched antecedent strategy is called “reappraisal”. Gross (1998) described reappraisal as redefining emotional stimuli in unemotional terms or thinking about a potential emotion situation in a different way to alter the emotion’s impact. Reappraisal is a cognitively oriented strategy. Likewise, the response-focused strategy most investigated is called “suppression” and is described as the inhibition of emotion expression during a felt emotion (Gross & John, 2003). Suppression is behavior-oriented. These two prototypical strategies can be differentiated in a number of ways.