Emotion regulation and evaluative understanding

ABSTRACT

Emotions can enhance our evaluative understanding by mobilizing directed reflection, but notoriously, emotional reflection can also lead us astray. If our goal is evaluative understanding, then we must make room for emotion regulation. Which forms of emotion regulation should we rely upon if our goal is evaluative understanding? In this paper, I distinguish between engaged forms of emotion regulation which keep us engaged with our emotional concern (e.g., certain forms of reappraisal) and disengaging forms of emotion regulation, which regulate emotional experience by leading us to direct attention away from the emotional concern in question (e.g., many forms of meditation). I consider but then reject the engagement view, according to which engaged forms of emotion regulation characteristically enhance evaluative understanding, whereas disengaging forms of emotion regulation hinder or detract from evaluative understanding. Against this view, I argue that disengaging forms of emotion regulation can play a vital role in enhancing evaluative understanding. I propose a practical model that can help us to decide when to rely on engaging forms of emotion regulation and when to rely on disengaging forms of emotion regulation, if our goal is evaluative understanding.

KEYWORDS:

• Emotion
• emotion regulation
• evaluative understanding
• understanding
• reappraisal
• mindfulness

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. I borrow the term ‘evaluative understanding’ from Michael Brady (2013), who provides one of the clearest articulations of the relationship between emotions and evaluative understanding. I shall focus on evaluative understanding in this paper, as opposed to non-evaluative understanding, because I believe that the relationship between emotions, emotion regulation, and evaluative understanding is particularly rich and easy to misunderstand; however, much of what I will say applies to non-evaluative understanding as well.

2. Cf., Brady (2013). Brady argues that emotions enhance our evaluative understanding when our attention is virtuously controlled; however, I shall be emphasizing that certain forms of emotion regulation can themselves enhance evaluative understanding. In other words, it is not just the emotion virtuously controlled that enhances understanding.

3. My position here is neutral on whether understanding is to be explained in terms of knowledge. For early discussion on the relationship between understanding and knowledge, see Zagzebski (2001), Kvanvig (2003), and Grimm (2006). For a review of the literature on understanding, see Baumberger et al. (2016).

4. See also Morton (2010).

5. This type of view is most clearly articulated in Brady (2013).

6. When we reflect about some emotional object and bring to mind relevant non-evaluative facts, the resulting update to our evaluation may be immediate and effortless, even occurring without our full awareness (see Zajonc, 1980, 1985); however, any such subconscious processing can then be succeeded by a more conscious recognition and elaboration of our newfound understanding.

7. More generally, reappraisal efforts are activated by emotion regulation goals – by the desire, for instance, never to be excessively angry, or by the desire to avoid distress. When an emotion regulation goal is present, reappraisal efforts can occur automatically and effortlessly; a sudden awareness of one’s anger may lead one to reappraise the offender’s intentions as possibly benign. Reappraisal efforts can also be initiated in a way that is deliberate and effortful, however. Grappling with shame and embarrassment, an individual may challenge herself to consider whether she should care so much about what other people think, leading to thoughtful reflection and reappraisal. Both types of reappraisal – effortless and deliberate – have been identified in the literature on emotion regulation. See, for instance, Gyurak et al. (2011). The more effortful form of reappraisal can itself come in different types. For instance, some deliberate reappraisals are prepared ahead of time; the individual resolves to reappraise a future stressful situation in a certain way. Reappraisals often need to be generated on the fly, however. For instance, certain forms of cognitive-behavioral therapy involve learning how to challenge cognitive distortions as they arise, thereby reappraising the emotional situation (e.g., Beck’s cognitive therapy, Beck, 1967, 1976, or Ellis’s Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy, Ellis & Dryden, 1997).

8. However, as we shall see in a moment, we can often fool ourselves by selectively attending to positive considerations and ignoring negative ones.

9. A more precise characterization of such integration would require telling a story about the various ways in which considerations interact to yield a conclusion about what to believe. Yet, this appears to be no easy task, as some philosophers worry that reasons can do more than just compete with one another (see, for instance, Cullity, 2018; Dancy, 2004; Nair, 2016). It is beyond the scope of this paper to address this issue. For my purposes, an individual integrates two considerations X and Y when she takes into account both considerations and how they interact before settling on a conclusion. For example, the individual might compare the weights of X and Y, she might determine that X somehow affects the significance of Y as a consideration, or the individual might discover that, in light of consideration X, Y does not seem to be as relevant of a consideration as initially suspected.

10. Many forms of emotion regulation are not inherently engaging or disengaging, so their contribution to evaluative understanding depends on the context. Drinking alcohol, for instance, may facilitate either engagement or disengagement. In this paper, I shall mainly be focusing on those forms of emotion regulation that are clearly engaging or disengaging in order to illuminate the relationship between this distinction and the development of evaluative understanding.

11. In my view, reappraisals can be achieved in a number of different ways, and self-distancing is one of these. By self-distancing, we can identify novel, relevant considerations that we failed to identify from a more “self-immersed” perspective. There are other ways to generate reappraisals, however. For example, an individual can search for considerations that challenge her initial evaluation. If the individual begins with a negative evaluation, the result is likely to be a positive reappraisal. It currently does not appear that these different implementations of reappraisal have different regulatory efficacy (see Ranney et al., 2017).

12. This has led to the development of the mindfulness-to-meaning theory, which holds that the salutary effects of mindfulness on well-being are due to its facilitation of positive reappraisals. For discussion, see Garland et al. (2009); and Garland et al. (2015a, 2015b).

13. Of course, it may be that mulling over some consideration repeatedly can help one to more fully grasp this consideration and its relevance. I do not at all object to such mulling but only to the unproductive extension of such mulling, which is perseveration. Can we introspectively distinguish productive mulling from unproductive perseveration? This is a difficult question, but I suggest that the two processes may feel different, at least in their extreme versions. We can feel certain considerations “sinking in” as we briefly mull them over. Similarly, if we are on the lookout for unproductive perseveration, we should be able to spot it (e.g., by thinking “I’ve already gone over this”).

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Shai Madjar

Shai Madjar received his PhD in philosophy from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, in 2018. He is currently completing the medical school portion of a combined MD-PhD program through the University of Michigan's Medical Scientist Training Program (MSTP).