Moving ahead in the study of the development of emotion regulation

Abstract

This special section on the development of emotion regulation highlights several important new directions for research. Specifically, the findings of these studies indicate that: (1) emotion regulation develops across the lifespan and not just in early childhood and does so in complex ways, (2) it is necessary to distinguish among emotions to fully understand emotion regulation, and (3) at all ages emotion regulation is socially regulated. In addition, the limitations of the studies point to additional new directions, including the (4) need for a sophisticated conceptualization of the role of gender, (5) the acute need to incorporate cultural variations into the research, and (6) the need to define emotion regulation as a process.