It’s arguably the most well-known psychology experiment.³ Over a six-year period, Stanford psychologist Walter Mischel brought 653 young children from the university’s Bing Nursery School into a room and offered them a tasty treat of their choice: marshmallow, Oreo cookie, or pretzel stick. But he also presented them with a dilemma. If they could resist eating the treat while he stepped out for several minutes, they would get a second treat as a reward. The children were then left alone. The experiment was a simple test of impulse control: the ability to manage one’s emotional arousal, excitement, and desire. Most of the kids gave in and ate the treat, usually in less than three minutes. But about 30 percent held out. Years later, Mischel gathered more data from the same children, who were then in high school. He was stunned to learn that their choices in the experiment predicted a broad range of outcomes. Children who had waited were more socially skilled, were better able to cope with stress, were less likely to have emotional outbursts when frustrated, were better able to deal with temptations, and had closer, more stable friendships than those who hadn’t waited. They also had substantially higher SAT scores. Why was “the marshmallow test” such a powerful predictor of long-term personal and interpersonal outcomes? Because it taps a critical skill: the ability to constructively manage emotions. As Mischel notes, “If you can deal with hot emotions in the face of temptation, then you can study for the SAT instead of watching television. It’s not just about marshmallows.”

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EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE

Managing your emotions is part of emotional intelligence: the ability to interpret emotions accurately and to use this information to manage emotions, communicate them competently, and solve relationship problems (Gross & John, 2002). People with high degrees of emotional intelligence typically possess four skills:

Given that emotional intelligence (EI) involves understanding emotions coupled with the ability to manage them in ways that optimize interpersonal competence, it’s not surprising that people with high EI experience a broad range of positive outcomes. For example, within leadership positions, people with high EI are more likely than low EI people to garner trust, inspire followers, and be perceived as having integrity (Kotzé & Venter, 2011). High EI individuals are less likely than low EI people to bully people or use violence to get what they want (Mayer, Salovey, & Caruso, 2004). High EI people even find it easier to forgive relational partners who have wronged them because of their strong empathy and skill at emotion management (Hodgson & Wertheim, 2007).

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Of the skills that constitute emotional intelligence, emotion management is arguably the most important one to improve because—as demonstrated by Mischel’s research—it directly influences your communication choices and the outcomes that result (Lopes, Salovey, Cote, & Beers, 2005). How? Put bluntly, if you can’t manage your emotions, you can’t communicate competently. Emotion management involves attempts to influence which emotions you have, when you have them, and how you experience and express them (Gross, Richards, & John, 2006). Emotions naturally trigger attempts to manage them. Consequently, the practical issue is not whether you will manage your emotions but how you can do so in ways that improve your interpersonal communication and relationships.

MANAGING YOUR EMOTIONS AFTER THEY OCCUR

One strategy for managing emotions is to try to modify or control them after we become aware of them (Gross et al., 2006). An event triggers arousal, interpretation, and awareness of an emotion. We then consciously try to modify our internal experience and outward communication of that emotion.

The two most common ways people manage emotions after they have been triggered are suppression and venting. Suppression involves inhibiting thoughts, arousal, and outward behavioral displays of emotion (Richards, Butler, & Gross, 2003). For example, one participant in an emotion management study describes suppressing his communication of happiness and surprise after scoring well on a college paper in which he had invested little effort (Gross et al., 2006):

The desire to suppress stems from the recognition that feeling, thinking, and openly communicating certain emotions would be relationally, socially, or culturally inappropriate. Although people sometimes suppress positive emotions, suppression occurs most commonly with negative emotions, especially anger and sadness (Gross et al., 2006). This is because displays of pleasant emotions elicit favorable responses from others, whereas the expression of negative emotions often drives other people away (Argyle & Lu, 1990; Furr & Funder, 1998).

Suppression is the most widely practiced strategy for managing unavoidable and unwanted emotions. But its effectiveness is marginal because you are trying to modify the intense arousal you are already experiencing, the thoughts you are already thinking, and the body’s natural inclination to display this arousal and these thoughts in the form of expressions (Lopes et al., 2005).

The inverse of suppression is venting: allowing emotions to dominate our thoughts and explosively expressing them (Fuendeling, 1998; Kostiuk & Fouts, 2002). Venting may be positive, such as when we jump up and shout for joy after learning we got the job we wanted. At other times, we vent negative emotions, such as when we blow up at a spouse or other family member who has been pestering us repeatedly.

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PREVENTING EMOTIONS

An alternative to managing emotions after they occur is to prevent unwanted emotions from happening in the first place. Four strategies are commonly used for preventing emotions, the first of which is encounter avoidance: staying away from people, places, or activities that you know will provoke emotions you don’t want to experience (Gross et al., 2006). For example, you might purposely avoid a particular class that your ex signed up for because seeing him or her always provokes intense and unpleasant emotions within you.

A second preventive strategy is encounter structuring: intentionally avoiding specific topics that you know will provoke unwanted emotion during encounters with others. For example, I love my in-laws (honestly!), but my political attitudes are very different from theirs. Early in our acquaintanceship, my father-in-law and I would both get angry whenever we discussed politics. After a few such battles, we agreed to avoid this topic and now structure our encounters so that politics isn’t discussed.

A third preventive strategy is attention focus: intentionally devoting your attention only to aspects of an event or encounter that you know will not provoke an undesired emotion. Imagine that you’re sitting in class, listening to a lecture, but the person sitting behind you keeps getting and sending text messages. To use attention focus, you would actively watch and listen to the professor, letting the sound of the phone text alerts drop beneath conscious awareness so that it doesn’t set you off.

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A fourth way people preventively manage emotion is through deactivation: systematically desensitizing yourself to emotional experience (Fuendeling, 1998). Some people, especially after experiencing a traumatic emotional event, decide that they no longer want to feel anything. The result is an overall deadening of emotion. Though the desire to use this strategy is understandable, deactivation can trigger deep depression.

REAPPRAISING YOUR EMOTIONS

Imagine that you (like me) occasionally receive friendly Facebook messages from former romantic partners. You feel ethically obligated to share these messages with your current partner, but you also know that when you do, he or she will respond with nasty remarks about your ex that anger you. How can you best manage the emotions that will arise?

The most fruitful strategy for engaging difficult and unavoidable emotions is reappraisal: actively changing how you think about the meaning of emotion-eliciting situations so that their emotional impact is changed (Jackson, Malmstadt, Larson, & Davidson, 2000). To use reappraisal in the previous example, you might think vividly about your partner’s positive aspects, your mutual love for each other, and your future together (Richards et al., 2003). As a result, you’ll be more likely to communicate positively, with empathy—“I know you don’t like my ex, and I can totally understand why; I would feel the same if I were in your shoes.”

Reappraisal is effective because you employ it before a full-blown emotional reaction commences. This strategy requires little effort compared to trying to suppress or control your emotions after they’ve occurred. In addition, reappraisal produces interpersonal communication that is partner-focused and perceived as engaged and emotionally responsive (Gross et al., 2006). Across studies, people who are most effective at managing their emotional communication report reappraisal as their primary strategy (John & Gross, 2004).

Reappraisal is accomplished in two steps. First, before or during an encounter that you suspect will trigger an undesired emotion in yourself, call to mind the positive aspects of the encounter. If you truly can’t think of anything positive about the other person, your relationship, or the situation, focus on seeing yourself as the kind of person who can constructively communicate even during unpleasant encounters with people you ardently dislike. Second, consider the short- and long-term consequences of your actions. Think about how communicating positively in the here and now will shape future outcomes in constructive ways.

You can use reappraisal to effectively manage problematic positive emotions as well. Imagine again that you’ve received a job offer from the company you have long desired to work for. Your roommate, however, hasn’t gotten a single interview. Jumping for joy will not help maintain your relationship with him or her. In this case, reappraisal allows you to focus on your roommate’s feelings and perspective; you might respond with “I did receive an exciting offer, but I also know that you’re going to land somewhere great. It’s a tough market right now, but you have so many desirable skills and qualities; any employer would be lucky to have you.”