Content uploaded by Andero Uusberg
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Andero Uusberg on Aug 21, 2019
Content may be subject to copyright.
https://doi.org/10.1177/1754073919862617
Emotion Review
1 –16
© The Author(s) 2019
ISSN 1754-0739
DOI: 10.1177/1754073919862617
https://journals.sagepub.com/home/emr
If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the
thing itself, but to your estimate of it.
Marcus Aurelius
Finding the elevator out of order en route to a top-floor meeting
can feel frustrating. On second thought, however, the situation
can be reconstrued as a minor setback and repurposed as an
opportunity to get some exercise by taking the stairs. This is
how an emotional response to a situation can be changed by
thinking differently about the situation—a phenomenon known
as reappraisal (Buhle et al., 2013; Gross, 1998; Lazarus, 1966;
McRae, 2016). In this article, we propose an integrative frame-
work for understanding reappraisal. We start with a brief over-
view of the history and the current state of reappraisal research.
Next, we sketch a working model of appraisal and use it to
reveal the basic psychological mechanisms of reappraisal. We
then introduce the core propositions of our framework. First,
reappraisal can involve changing how a situation is construed as
well as changing which goals this construal is compared to.
Second, reappraisal can be characterized in terms of the
appraisal shifts it produces along appraisal dimensions. Third,
Reappraising Reappraisal
Andero Uusberg
Department of Psychology, Stanford University, USA
Institute of Psychology, University of Tartu, Estonia
Jamie L. Taxer
Department of Psychology, Stanford University, USA
Jennifer Yih
Department of Psychology, Stanford University, USA
Department of Neurology and Neurological Sciences, Stanford University, USA
Helen Uusberg
Institute of Psychology, University of Tartu, Estonia
James J. Gross
Department of Psychology, Stanford University, USA
Abstract
What psychological mechanisms enable people to reappraise a situation to change its emotional impact? We propose that
reappraisal works by shifting appraisal outcomes—abstract representations of how a situational construal compares to goals—
either by changing the construal (reconstrual) or by changing the goal set (repurposing). Instances of reappraisal can therefore be
characterized as change vectors in appraisal dimensional space. Affordances for reappraisal arise from the range of mental models
that could explain a situation (construal malleability) and the range of goals that the situation could serve (goal set malleability).
This framework helps to expand our conception of reappraisal, assess and classify different instances of reappraisal, predict their
relative effectiveness, understand their brain mechanisms, and relate them to individual differences.
Keywords
appraisal, cognitive change, emotion regulation, reappraisal
Corresponding author: Andero Uusberg, Department of Psychology, Stanford University, 450 Serra Mall, Stanford, CA 94305, USA.
Email: andero.uusberg@ut.ee
862617EMR0010.1177/1754073919862617Emotion ReviewUusberg et al.
research-article2019
ARTICLE
2 Emotion Review
reappraisal depends on how malleable the situational construal
and the current goals are. We end by considering several broader
implications of this framework.
Reappraisal: The State of the Art
The phenomenon of reappraisal that we seek to explain encom-
passes a range of different behaviors that amount to intentional
changes to appraisal aimed at changing emotion. These changes
are intentional in the sense that they are directed at a goal to
alter the emotion trajectory. For instance, reappraisal can be
triggered by a goal to reduce negative emotions as well as to
increase positive emotions, and vice versa (Tamir, 2015). Our
framework applies to reappraisal irrespective of which kind of
emotion goal it serves (although down-regulation of negative
emotion will be overrepresented in this article much as it is in
everyday life). Our framework also applies to reappraisal irre-
spective of its automaticity. Even though we view reappraisal
as an intentional process (Gross, Sheppes, & Urry, 2011), it
may or may not also be controllable, conscious, and efficient
(Melnikoff & Bargh, 2018). For instance, an emotion goal can
be activated inside as well as outside awareness, and reap-
praisal can then proceed similarly inside as well as outside
awareness (Braunstein, Gross, & Ochsner, 2017). Thus, we will
not systematically explore differences between implicit and
explicit reappraisal, although doing so would be valuable in the
future. Finally, in addition to the intrapersonal level, reap-
praisal can also occur on the interpersonal level, such as when
people seek and offer alternative interpretations for distressing
events in social interactions (Zaki & Williams, 2013). The pre-
sent framework focuses exclusively on intrapersonal reap-
praisal, although we believe that it could prove useful for future
efforts to understand interpersonal reappraisal as well.
A Brief History of Reappraisal Research
Attempts to reinterpret a situation to change its emotional impact
have long been of interest in psychology, resulting in a rich, but
increasingly complex, set of findings and ideas. Systematic
study of reappraisal can be traced back to the idea of ego-
defenses that psychoanalysts associated with the management of
negative emotions (Freud, 1926/1959). Lists of identified ego-
defenses included reappraisal-like constructs such as intellectu-
alization and rationalization. Even as clinical psychology has
witnessed major paradigm shifts, constructs related to interpreta-
tion of situations have remained important for understanding as
well as alleviating mental ailments. For instance, etiologies of
mental illnesses such as depression and anxiety implicate ampli-
fied negative interpretation biases (Everaert, Podina, & Koster,
2017) and/or attenuated positive interpretation biases (Mezulis,
Abramson, Hyde, & Hankin, 2004; Snyder, 1989). Interventions
designed to alleviate mental illness therefore often target inter-
pretation biases. For instance, cognitive therapists teach patients
how to identify and challenge specific kinds of interpretation
patterns such as overgeneralization or exaggeration (Williams &
Garland, 2002). Improved reappraisal skills are among the
desired outcomes of many effective therapeutic systems such as
rational emotive behavior therapy (Ellis, 1957; Ellis & MacLaren,
1998) and cognitive behavioral therapy (Beck, 1963, 1964; Beck
& Dozois, 2011).
A second major source of inspiration for modern reappraisal
research is the study of psychological stress and coping, spear-
headed by Richard Lazarus (Lazarus, 1966; Smith & Kirby,
2011). Seminal experiments in the 1960s suggested that stress
responses depend on the way people cognitively construe, or
appraise (Arnold, 1960), stressful situations (Lazarus & Alfert,
1964; Speisman, Lazarus, Mordkoff, & Davison, 1964). The
term “reappraisal” was introduced to denote updates to the ini-
tial appraisal that could occur as the situation and its interpreta-
tion continually unfold (Lazarus, 1968). This early meaning of
“reappraisal” was broader than the meaning of this term in the
context of emotion regulation and this article. For Lazarus,
reappraisal could be intentional as well as unintentional, and
could reflect overt changes to the situation as well as covert
changes to the interpretation. By contrast, as an emotion regula-
tion strategy, reappraisal usually encompasses only intentional
changes to the covert interpretation, falling within the subspace
of reappraisal that Lazarus called emotion-focused coping
(intentional changes to overt situations would meanwhile fall
within problem-focused coping). A key contribution of the
stress and coping literature to reappraisal research is the realiza-
tion that reappraisal works through appraisal change. However,
beyond this broad insight, the literatures on appraisal and reap-
praisal have drifted apart over the years, creating a chasm that
we hope to help bridge (Smith & Kirby, 2011; Yih, Uusberg,
Taxer, & Gross, 2019).
Reappraisal in Modern Emotion Regulation
Research
Much of modern reappraisal research has been conducted in the
context of the broader project of understanding the many ways
people attempt to regulate their emotions. Emotion regulation
encompasses all overt or covert behaviors that change one or
more aspects of emotion (Gross, 1998, 1999, 2015; Koole,
2009; Larsen, 2000; Webb, Schweiger Gallo, Miles, Gollwitzer,
& Sheeran, 2012). According to the process model (Gross,
1998, 2015), emotion regulation follows when an emotion,
either experienced or imagined, is identified to be helpful or
harmful to some end, such as to experience pleasure or to per-
form well on a task (Gross et al., 2011; Tamir, 2015).
Identification activates an emotion goal to experience a certain
emotion, which can in turn trigger selecting, implementing, and
monitoring different strategies to accomplish this goal (Gross,
2015). These emotion regulation strategies bias the unfolding of
emotion by intervening at different stages in emotion generation
(Gross, 1998). A strategy can seek to change the situation that
triggers the emotion; the way attention is deployed within the
situation; the appraisal of the situation; or the emotional
response to the situation. For instance, to avoid being saddened
by a movie, a person could pick (or switch to) a comedy instead
of a drama (using strategies from the situation selection and
Uusberg et al. Reappraising Reappraisal 3
modification family); fiddle with a smartphone during intense
portions of the drama (attentional deployment); construe the
drama as irrelevant because it is fictional (reappraisal); or hold
back tears (response modulation).
The process model of emotion regulation, and the system-
atic research it has inspired, has made significant conceptual as
well as empirical contributions to our understanding of reap-
praisal. Conceptually, the process model distinguishes reap-
praisal from two related but distinct forms of emotion
regulation. On the one hand, it suggests that although atten-
tional deployment and reappraisal strategies are similarly cog-
nitive, they target different components of emotion generation
(Ochsner & Gross, 2005). Whereas reappraisal biases emotion
by changing appraisals, attentional deployment biases emotion
by interfering with the stream of information that appraisals
rely on. On the other hand, the process model also distinguishes
reappraisal from situation selection and modification strate-
gies. Both sets of strategies end up changing appraisals, but
situation selection and modification do so by changing the
overt situation while reappraisal does so by changing the covert
interpretation of the situation (Yih et al., 2019).
Empirical emotion regulation research has complemented
this conceptual picture with insights about the antecedents and
consequences of reappraisal. Studies of reappraisal antecedents
have highlighted the role of motives that make different emo-
tions desirable (Tamir, 2015), the role of beliefs about the effects
and controllability of emotions (Ford & Gross, 2018), and the
role of decisions to use different regulation strategies (Sheppes,
2014). Studies of emotion regulation consequences suggest that
reappraisal is often an effective means for achieving emotion
goals without significant side effects. In laboratory studies,
reappraisal has been found to change the experiential, expres-
sive, and physiological components of emotion, often with only
moderate mental effort, and in a sustained manner (Buhle et al.,
2013; Morawetz, Bode, Derntl, & Heekeren, 2017; Webb,
Miles, & Sheeran, 2012). Day-to-day reappraisal use mean-
while has been found to correlate with higher levels of well-
being (Gross & John, 2003; John & Eng, 2014) and fewer
mental health issues (Aldao, Nolen-Hoeksema, & Schweizer,
2010; Garnefski, Kraaij, & Spinhoven, 2001; Troy, Wilhelm,
Shallcross, & Mauss, 2010).
The Need for a Novel Integrative Framework
The existing body of research paints an informative picture of
reappraisal as a strategy that involves intentional changes to
appraisal and that can alter the course of thinking, feeling, and
behaving in generally desirable directions. However, this pic-
ture also contains blurred areas, some of which could be brought
to focus by further clarifying the psychological mechanisms
that reappraisal relies on. To illustrate some of the blurred areas,
we briefly consider three open questions in the current reap-
praisal literature. What kinds of regulation strategies should be
considered reappraisal? How might one characterize different
instances of reappraisal? How can one predict when reappraisal
will be more or less effective?
One unresolved question concerns the range of emotion reg-
ulation strategies that should be identified as reappraisal.
Prototypical examples of reappraisal include reinterpreting the
meaning of a situation and reconsidering one’s ability to cope
with it (Gross, 2015). However, several other regulation strate-
gies are sometimes considered reappraisal and sometimes not.
Examples include arousal reappraisal, which involves recon-
struing emotional arousal as helpful for performance (Jamieson,
Hangen, Lee, & Yeager, 2017; cf. Tamir, 2017), and mindful
acceptance, which involves attending nonjudgmentally to one’s
emotional reactions (Naragon-Gainey, McMahon, & Chacko,
2017; cf. Chambers, Gullone, & Allen, 2009). There may also
be phenomena that have yet to be called reappraisal even though
they should be. For instance, the link between achievement
goals and achievement emotions (Pekrun, Elliot, & Maier,
2009) suggests that replacing performance goals with mastery
goals in order to feel better may be a form of reappraisal. The
framework proposed here helps resolve debates about what
counts as reappraisal by identifying the psychological mecha-
nisms of reappraisal which can be used as criteria for recogniz-
ing different versions of reappraisal.
A second and related open question concerns the best ways
to classify individual emotion regulation instances that fall
within the broad class of reappraisal. People are known to
implement reappraisal in many different ways. For instance,
participants reappraising their responses to unpleasant photo-
graphs were found to normalize and reinterpret the depicted
events; to imagine different future outcomes and interfering
agents; to rationally analyze the events; to challenge their real-
ity; and to distance themselves from the photographs (McRae,
Ciesielski, & Gross, 2012). Other taxonomies of reappraisal
can be found within the factor structures of relevant question-
naires. For instance, the Ways of Coping Checklist identifies
three emotion-focused coping strategies: wishful thinking,
self-blame, and avoidance (Vitaliano, Russo, Carr, Maiuro, &
Becker, 1985). The Cognitive Emotion Regulation
Questionnaire identifies nine strategies: self-blame, other-
blame, acceptance, rumination, positive refocusing, positive
reappraisal, refocus on planning, putting things into perspec-
tive, and catastrophizing (Garnefski et al., 2001). However, the
limited overlap and scope of these and other taxonomies sug-
gests that a universal map of the full territory of reappraisal has
yet to be drawn. The framework proposed here can be a step
towards such a map by providing a theory-driven way to char-
acterize different instances of reappraisal.
A third open question concerns moderating mechanisms
that determine how effective reappraisal is in the short and long
term. For instance, the short-term effectiveness of reappraisal
is reduced by less abstract content of a threatening stimulus
(McRae, Misra, Prasad, Pereira, & Gross, 2012; Suri et al.,
2018) and high intensity of concurrent affective state (Raio,
Orederu, Palazzolo, Shurick, & Phelps, 2013). Though these
findings have feasible individual explanations, they have not
yet been explained within a single framework. The same holds
for moderators that influence the long-term effects of reap-
praisal. For instance, reappraisal has been found to be adaptive
4 Emotion Review
over the long run only when used in uncontrollable situations
but not in controllable situations (Haines et al., 2016; Troy,
Shallcross, & Mauss, 2013). Both short-term and long-term
moderating effects need to be considered when drawing pre-
scriptive conclusions from reappraisal research. The frame-
work presented here can aid these efforts by providing an
account that predicts these as well as other, as yet unknown,
moderating effects.
An Appraisal Framework for Understanding
Reappraisal
In search for conceptual building blocks for a framework of
psychological mechanisms of reappraisal, we return to
Lazarus’s insight that reappraisal can be understood through
the lens of appraisal theory (Smith & Kirby, 2011; Yih et al.,
2019). Appraisal theory views emotion as a multicomponential
response that is generated and shaped by the appraisal, or
extraction of the motivational meaning, of a situation (Arnold,
1960; Lazarus, 1966; Moors, Ellsworth, Scherer, & Frijda,
2013; Scherer, Schorr, & Johnstone, 2001). In line with this
model, appraisals have been found to influence components of
emotion, including subjective feelings (Kuppens, van
Mechelen, & Rijmen, 2008; Roseman & Evdokas, 2004; Smith
& Ellsworth, 1985; Tong, 2015), vocal and facial expressions
(Kaiser & Wehrle, 2001; Laukka & Elfenbein, 2012), physio-
logical states (Kreibig, Gendolla, & Scherer, 2012; Pecchinenda
& Smith, 1996; Smith, 1989), and action tendencies on the
behavioral (Frijda, 2010; Roseman, 2013) and cognitive level
(Schimmack, 2005; Uusberg, Naar, Tamm, Kreegipuu, &
Gross, 2018). Even though appraisal is not the sole cause of
dynamic and distributed emotions (LeDoux & Brown, 2017;
Lindquist, Siegel, Quigley, & Barrett, 2013; Pessoa, 2017), we
assume—like most modern appraisal theorists—that appraisals
play a central role in generating and shaping emotions (Moors,
2009; Mulligan & Scherer, 2012; Sander, Grandjean, &
Scherer, 2018).
A Working Model of Appraisal
The process model of emotion regulation holds that a good way
to understand a regulatory phenomenon, such as emotion regu-
lation, is to use a simplified model of the phenomenon that is
being regulated, in this case emotion (Gross, 1998). Translating
this insight into the present context suggests that a good way to
understand reappraisal is to use a simplified model of appraisal,
which we lay out in the next few paragraphs. Our appraisal
model integrates major themes from different appraisal theo-
ries while remaining agnostic about many specific issues such
as the kinds of representations (e.g., associations vs. proposi-
tions) and processes (e.g., automatic vs. controlled) that are
involved in appraisal as well as their neural implementations
(Scherer et al., 2001).
According to appraisal theory, emotions are caused not by a
situation per se, but by what the situation means with respect to
various motivational concerns. We therefore view appraisal as a
comparison process that takes two inputs and produces an out-
put that represents the relationship between the inputs (see
Figure 1a; Chang & Jolly, 2018; Moors, 2010; Reisenzein,
2009). Consider for instance how a driver who is stuck behind a
slow vehicle may become angry. One input to his appraisal pro-
cess is the goal set, that is, currently active representations of
how he desires the world to be. We define goals broadly to
include any representation, conscious or otherwise, of a desired
end state, including needs, motives, values, and norms (Elliot &
Fryer, 2008). In the example, the angry driver may be motivated
by a goal to arrive on time to an important meeting. However, an
active goal in itself is not sufficient for either appraisal or emo-
tion. The goal needs to be related to another input to the appraisal
process—the construal of a situation, that is, a representation of
how the world is. We define situational construal as a set of
mental models that are activated to stand in for the current situ-
ation (Clark, 2013). For instance, the angry driver may construe
the slow speed of the vehicle in front of him as a deliberate
norm violation by another driver. Given a goal set and a con-
strual, the appraisal process produces an appraisal outcome,
that is, a summary representation of the relationship between
the construed situation and the goal set. It is this appraisal out-
come that goes on to shape emotion. Given the goal to arrive at
a meeting and the construal of a deliberately slow driver imped-
ing one’s progress, the person in our example appraises the situ-
ation as an external obstruction of an important goal and is
likely to experience anger.
Another central tenet of appraisal theory reflected in our
working model is the idea that appraisal outcomes can be
thought of as values on a relatively small number of abstract
appraisal dimensions. Appraisal functions as a data reduction
procedure that extracts a lower dimensional meaning represen-
tation from higher dimensional input representations of the situ-
ation and goals. Each appraisal dimension captures some
relatively abstract aspect of the motivational essence of a situa-
tion, such as the desirability of the situation, accountability for
its origins, and expectancies for its future. The sets of dimen-
sions proposed by different appraisal models largely overlap
(Moors et al., 2013), suggesting that different models may parse
the same phenomenon using somewhat different clustering
rules and labeling conventions. In our working model, relatively
concrete appraisal dimensions are clustered hierarchically into
increasingly abstract dimensions up to three metadimensions of
desirability, attribution, and expectancy on top. The desirability
metadimension asks, “How good or bad is this situation?” It
integrates the more specific dimensions of goal congruence
(“Does the situation help or hurt me. . .”) and goal relevance
(“. . . and by how much?”). The second metadimension of attri-
bution asks, “How did I get here?” It integrates the internal
accountability dimension (“How much responsibility for this
situation belongs to me. . .”) with external accountability (“. . .
and how much to someone or something else?”). The third
metadimension of expectancy asks, “What should I do about
it?” It integrates the outcome expectancy dimension (“How will
this situation evolve. . .”) with the coping potential dimension
Uusberg et al. Reappraising Reappraisal 5
(“. . . and what could I do about it?”). Responses to these ques-
tions can have variable degrees of certainty depending on how
clear the person is about the desirability, attribution, and expec-
tancies of the situation.
Finally, our working model of appraisal includes two broad
antecedents of appraisal: situations and knowledge (Smith &
Lazarus, 1990). Situations refer to particular configurations of
the internal and external environment, such as being hungry at a
restaurant (cf. Yang, Read, & Miller, 2009). Situations therefore
encompass the state outside of the body, such as a restaurant, as
well as the state inside of the body, such as being low on blood
glucose and feeling hungry. Situations can be currently ongo-
ing, giving rise to direct experiences. Situations can also be
simulated versions of past or future events, giving rise to recol-
lections and expectations, respectively (Hesslow, 2012).
Knowledge refers to the mental models that people construct or
draw from memory to make sense of ongoing situations as well
as to simulate recalled or expected situations (Binder, 2016;
Radvansky & Zacks, 2011). Knowledge can encompass rela-
tively simple mental models such as the concept of being hun-
gry as well as relatively complex mental models such as the
scenario of dining at a restaurant. Even though the material
nature of what we mean by situation is very different for expe-
rienced events (conditions in physical environments) and simu-
lated events (conditions in simulated environments), in both
cases there is a similar relationship between a situation as the
thing being signified and knowledge as the signifier.
Situations and knowledge are relevant for appraisal because
they combine to influence both how a situation is construed and
which goals belong to the goal set. Situational construal involves
selecting a mental model to make sense of the information
available about the situation (Clark, 2013). For instance, arrival
of one’s meal at a restaurant can be construed as “on time” or
“late” based on the time it took (element of the situation) and the
time it should take according to the restaurant scenario (element
of knowledge). The goal set is similarly sensitive to both actual
threats and opportunities as well as the knowledge needed to
perceive and evaluate them. For instance, the goal of having
Chinese food is more likely to enter the goal set when someone
is hungry and at a restaurant (elements of the situation) and is
also aware that the restaurant offers Chinese food (element of
knowledge).
From Appraisal to Reappraisal
Armed with a working model of appraisal (Figure 1a), we can
now turn to the psychological mechanisms that enable reap-
praisal (Figure 1b). We define reappraisal as an intentional
attempt to shift the appraisal outcome along appraisal dimen-
sions with the aim of changing emotion. A key insight of our
framework is that shifting the appraisal outcome generally
involves changing the goal set, the construal, or both. This is
because appraisal outcomes are an output of a comparison pro-
cess, and are therefore difficult to change directly. For instance,
Figure 1. From a working model of appraisal (a) to a framework of reappraisal (b).
(a) Appraisal involves expressing the relationship between the goal set and situational construal as an appraisal outcome on a set of appraisal dimensions (three are shown
here). Appraisal outcome shapes changes in the body and mind that make up an emotional response. The goal set and construal stem from knowledge applied to make sense
of a situation.
(b) Reappraisal involves changing either the goal set (repurposing) or the situational construal (reconstrual) with the aim of moving the appraisal outcome (appraisal change
vector) so as to change emotion. Reappraisal affordances depend on the malleability of the situational construal and the goal set.
6 Emotion Review
someone feeling disappointed by running late for a movie may
find it difficult to simply convince herself that being late is actu-
ally congruent with the goal of being on time. It is less difficult,
however, to change one of the inputs to the appraisal process.
She could, for instance, reconstrue the situation from a personal
failure to arrive on time to a misfortune caused by unexpectedly
slow traffic. This change in construal is likely to reduce the
internal accountability appraisal and thereby alleviate disap-
pointment. Alternatively, she could repurpose the situation by
demoting her original goal of being on time and promoting the
alternative goal of seeing the whole movie. Because the screen-
ing will begin with commercials, arriving a little late can be
perfectly congruent with the goal of seeing the whole movie,
even if it is incongruent with the initial goal to arrive on time.
This change in the goal set is likely to improve the goal congru-
ence appraisal and thereby again alleviate the negative emotion.
We propose that appraisal outcome shifts produced by
changing situational construal and goal set are the core psycho-
logical mechanisms of reappraisal, and that these mechanisms
can be recognized across many different instances of reap-
praisal. Consider, for example, instances of reappraisal that
begin at different times relative to emotion generation. During
emotion generation, appraisals become elaborated and updated
in iterative cycles, both as more information is processed and as
the situation changes (Clore & Ortony, 2008; Cunningham &
Zelazo, 2007; Gross, 2015; Kuppens, 2013; Moors, 2017; Yih
et al., 2019). Depending on when they are launched, we can
place instances of reappraisal on a continuum from proactive to
reactive reappraisal. Proactive reappraisal occurs when the goal
to change an emotion is activated prior to, or during early cycles
of, emotion generation. For instance, a student anxious about an
upcoming test may engage in proactive reappraisal while pre-
paring for the test or as soon as the test begins. Reactive reap-
praisal, by contrast, occurs when the goal to change emotion is
formed during late cycles of emotion generation, or even only
once the emotion has already subsided (Nørby, 2018). For
instance, a student may engage in reappraisal when encounter-
ing intense anxiety during a test, or when thinking back to the
test. We suggest that even though there are important differ-
ences between proactive and reactive reappraisal (Sheppes &
Meiran, 2007), both flavors rely on the same mechanisms of
shifting appraisal outcomes through goal and construal change
to bias or update the appraisals involved in emotion generation.
The vignette about a person rushing to see a movie also illus-
trates three propositions that our framework makes about the
psychological mechanisms of reappraisal. First, the vignette
demonstrates that in order to bring about downstream changes
in appraisal outcomes, people can alter how they view the situ-
ation as well as what goals they consider when evaluating it. We
therefore propose that reappraisal incorporates two co-occur-
ring but distinct strategies: changing the situational construal
(i.e., reconstrual) and changing the goal set (i.e., repurposing).
Second, the vignette demonstrates that reappraisal can shift the
appraisal outcome along distinct appraisal dimensions such as
accountability or congruence. We therefore propose that differ-
ent instances of reappraisal can be characterized as shifts along
specific appraisal dimensions (i.e., appraisal change vectors).
Third, the vignette demonstrates that changes to appraisal are
made possible by the availability of different construals that
could explain the same situation as well as the availability of
different goals that the same situation could serve. We therefore
propose that reappraisal affordances are a function of how mal-
leable the initial goal set and the initial situational construal are.
We will elaborate each of these propositions in the next three
sections.
Two Reappraisal Strategies: Reconstrual and
Repurposing
Our framework proposes that there are two broad reappraisal
strategies, reconstrual, which involves changing how a situation
is construed, and repurposing, which involves changing which
goals the construal is compared to. Starting from reconstrual,
how could someone use this strategy to reappraise feelings of
despair triggered by losing a job during a recession? One option
is to realize that the situation is not that bad, because the job
might be reinstated when the economy improves. Another
option is to take solace in the fact that the job loss was caused
by external factors and is thus not indicative of personal failure.
These instances of reappraisal involve selecting different men-
tal models to replace an initial one to make sense of a complex
situation. Compared to the initial model, the new models com-
pare more favorably to the goals that were the basis for the ini-
tially negative appraisal. For instance, the initial feeling of
despair might have resulted from comparing the job loss to the
goal of maintaining the job. Reconstruing the job loss as possi-
bly temporary reduces the mismatch between the situation and
this goal, without changing anything about the goal. Likewise,
reconstruing the job loss as not attributable to oneself reduces
the mismatch between the situation and a different goal to main-
tain high self-regard, without changing the goal.
Reappraising through reconstrual makes use of the construc-
tive nature of perception. Representing a situation is a construc-
tive process in the sense that it relies on applying mental models
to the often ambiguous and incomplete information available
about situations (Clark, 2013). Many aspects of situations that
we readily perceive, such as causes of events, intentions of oth-
ers, and future developments, cannot be directly detected with
any sensory organ. Instead, they need to be inferred from a com-
bination of prior knowledge and information available about the
situation. This process can be thought of as selecting a set of
mental models to stand in for the situation based on how well
the models fit available information (Clark, 2013; Friston, 2010;
Huang & Rao, 2011). Often, several models exist that can fit the
same information reasonably well. In the previous example, the
situation of losing a job is equally compatible with a model in
which the job loss is permanent and with another model in
which the job loss is temporary. Opportunities to reappraise
through reconstrual are therefore a consequence of a system
applying mental models to explain perceptual evidence.
An alternative strategy for reappraising a job loss is to repur-
pose the situation by changing something about the currently
active goals. For instance, the laid off person could realize that
Uusberg et al. Reappraising Reappraisal 7
being unemployed is an opportunity to pursue a different career.
He could also focus on the purchases he can make with the gen-
erous severance package he will soon receive. In these instances
of reappraisal, the situational construal remains intact, but its
initially unfavorable comparison with the goal set is improved
by changing something about the goals. By activating the hith-
erto dormant goals of pursuing a different career and making
desired purchases, the set of currently active goals is expanded.
The original goals of maintaining employment and self-worth
may also be simultaneously demoted. When the construed situ-
ation is compared to the modified set of goals, the two will
appear on balance more congruent than before. Even as losing a
job continues to be incongruent with the goal of maintaining
that particular job, it is now also congruent with the goal of find-
ing a potentially more rewarding job. The net congruence of the
situation with the updated set of goals is therefore improved,
leading to a reduction in negative emotion.
The repurposing approach to reappraisal makes use of natu-
ral competition between different goals. Behaving adaptively
over the short term requires pursuing one committed goal at a
time, whereas behaving adaptively over the long term requires
switching among many goals (Shah, Hall, & Leander, 2009).
The need to balance exploiting one opportunity and exploring
others (Cohen, McClure, & Yu, 2007) suggests that at any given
time, there is a set of different goals that a person is open to
pursuing (Klinger, 1975; Kruglanski et al., 2002). Reappraisal
through repurposing works by cognitively modulating the goals
that make up this set as well as their relative positions within the
set. In the previous example, thinking about alternative career
options and imagining what one would purchase with the sever-
ance payment promoted the commitment levels of goals related
to these opportunities. Reappraisal through repurposing there-
fore relies on cognitive influences on goal commitments for
emotion regulation purposes.
In addition to the immediate outcomes of reconstrual and
repurposing illustrated before, both strategies can have cumula-
tive long-term effects. Using reconstrual repeatedly in similar
situations can over time change the default mental models that
are initially selected as the most probable explanations of avail-
able information. For instance, consider a young professional
experiencing anxiety about public speaking. During a single
presentation, he may use reconstrual to realize that a yawn of an
audience member may signify lack of oxygen in the room
instead of boredom with the presentation. As this replacement
of mental models is repeated over several encounters with
yawning audience members, the person may undergo a sus-
tained shift in beliefs about the likely reasons for yawning dur-
ing presentations. As a result, he may stop associating yawning
audience members with his performance as a public speaker and
become less anxious. Likewise, repeated use of repurposing
across similar situations can over time change the content and
prioritization of goals. For instance, during a single presenta-
tion, the young professional may use repurposing to realize that
a successful presentation need not excite all of the audience
members all of the time. Repeating this repurposing over sev-
eral presentations, the person may undergo a sustained shift in
his goal system whereby he stops striving for total excitement of
audience members and thereby becomes less anxious.
The distinction between reconstrual and repurposing aligns
with the fundamental distinction between assimilative and
accommodative psychological processes. Assimilation involves
shaping information from the external world to better integrate
it with existing internal structures, whereas accommodation
involves shaping the internal structures to better incorporate
external information (Block, 1982; Piaget, 1954). Reconstrual
is a more assimilative form of reappraisal because it involves
shaping the information about the external world rather than the
motivational core of the self. Repurposing, by contrast, is a
more accommodative form of reappraisal because it involves
shaping internal goals to align with the external world.
Interestingly, a related but different distinction can be found in
the stress and coping literature between primary control or prob-
lem-focused coping, which involves assimilative shaping of the
external world by directly acting on it, and secondary control or
emotion-focused coping, which involves accommodative shap-
ing of oneself to bend to reality through covert emotion regula-
tion, including reappraisal (Weisz, McCabe, & Dennig, 1994).
It is possible to concatenate these two distinctions into a single
continuum. The continuum starts from the maximally assimila-
tive strategy of changing the world to fit goals (problem-focused
coping), continues to the mixed strategy of changing the con-
strual of the world to fit goals (reconstrual reappraisal portion of
emotion-focused coping), and extends to the primarily accom-
modative strategy of changing the goals to fit to the world
(repurposing reappraisal portion of emotion-focused coping).
Appraisal Change Vectors
A second proposition of our framework is that instances of reap-
praisal can be characterized as appraisal outcome shifts along
appraisal dimensions, or appraisal change vectors. In each
reappraisal instance, the broad strategies of reconstrual and
repurposing are implemented in a particular way that has a par-
ticular downstream impact on appraisal outcomes. An important
question is how to best capture this variance, both inside and
outside the laboratory. Enumerating all conceivable ways in
which situational construals and goals can change would
quickly become overwhelming. One solution to this kind of
classification problem is to adopt a dimensional system that can
characterize many instances with a high degree of precision as
well as parsimony. For instance, the color dimensions of red-
ness, greenness, and blueness can be used to characterize thou-
sands of distinct colors. We suggest that appraisal dimensions
can perform a similar function for instances of reappraisal.
Specifically, appraisal dimensions can be used to define
appraisal change vectors that capture the direction and the dis-
tance that appraisal outcomes travel in appraisal dimensional
space due to reappraisal. The idea of a vector reflects our views
of appraisal outcomes as values on a set of appraisal dimen-
sions. If we arrange appraisal dimensions into a coordinate
space, then the appraisal outcome becomes a point within this
space characterized by locations on each of the dimensions
8 Emotion Review
(Figure 1a). An instance of successful reappraisal moves this
appraisal outcome point in appraisal dimensional space in some
direction and for some distance (Figure 1b). For instance, con-
sider a student who receives a bad grade, appraises it as goal-
incongruent, self-caused, and unchangeable, and thereby feels
disappointed. Trying to reappraise the situation, the student may
tell himself that “this was the best I could hope for with this
lousy professor.” This reappraisal would move the student’s
appraisal outcome higher on the goal-congruence dimension
(by lowering the performance standard he considers as his goal).
It would also move the appraisal outcome lower on the internal
accountability dimension (by blaming the professor). These
simultaneous appraisal outcome changes can be thought of as a
single appraisal change vector which can be visualized as an
arrow with some direction and length in appraisal dimensional
space. The same information can of course be visually repre-
sented in other ways, such as a profile of movements along
separate appraisal dimensions.
Appraisal change vectors provide a flexible way to concep-
tualize as well as assess reappraisal variance. Conceptually,
these vectors can be applied to both reconstrual and repurposing
reappraisal. In the previous example, repurposing was used to
move the appraisal outcome higher on the goal-congruence
dimension (by lowering the performance standard), while
reconstrual was used to move the outcome lower on the internal
accountability dimension (by shifting blame to the professor).
In principle, reconstrual as well as repurposing can yield similar
appraisal changes. For instance, coping potential can be
increased both by changing the construal: “I’ll get the result I
want next time, because I now know how the exam is struc-
tured”; as well as by changing the goal: “I’ll get the result I want
next time, because I will want a B rather than an A.” However,
even if reconstrual and repurposing can in principle produce
similar appraisal changes, there may be statistical regularities
whereby one strategy is more likely to change some dimensions
over others. These regularities may further differ between types
of situations and emotions. Novel empirical work is needed to
map the relationships between reconstrual and repurposing on
the one hand and appraisal change vectors on the other hand.
Appraisal change vectors are also useful for assessment pur-
poses. They are equally sensitive to instances of reappraisal that
target a single appraisal dimension as well as to those that target
multiple dimensions. In addition to capturing experienced
appraisal changes, appraisal change vectors can also be used to
assess imagined or intended appraisal changes. For instance,
participants could be asked to indicate different changes to
appraisals they would attempt in different situations. These data
could be used to assess the reappraisal affordances that different
situations offer (Suri et al., 2018) as well as the reappraisal
inventiveness (Weber, Assunção, Martin, Westmeyer, & Geisler,
2014) and reappraisal self-efficacy (Ford & Gross, 2018) that
different individuals display. Appraisal change vectors can be
further processed to derive novel metrics. For instance, the use
of different appraisal change vectors within and between differ-
ent situations could be used as a metric of reappraisal flexibility
(Aldao, Sheppes, & Gross, 2015).
Our hope is that appraisal change vectors may become a
common standardized coordinate space for comparing and inte-
grating findings from different studies. As an illustration of the
potential of this approach, consider how the different ways par-
ticipants were found to reappraise responses to unpleasant pho-
tographs (McRae, Ciesielski, et al., 2012) map onto the three
metadimensions of desirability, attribution, and expectancy. The
desirability metadimension may have changed through the goal
relevance component when participants distanced themselves
from the images, rationally analyzed them, and challenged their
reality. The attribution metadimension may have changed when
participants normalized and reinterpreted the depicted events.
Finally, the expectancy metadimension may have changed when
participants imagined different outcomes and interfering agents.
Note that although this illustration relies on three metadimen-
sions, the notion of appraisal change vectors can be operational-
ized using any appraisal dimensional system. This makes
appraisal change vectors attractive for not only integrating
results across different reappraisal studies, but also empirically
bridging the divide between emotion regulation and appraisal
literatures (Smith & Kirby, 2011; Yih et al., 2019).
Reappraisal Affordances From Construal and
Goal Set Malleability
A third proposition of our framework is that the availability of
affordances for effective reappraisal depend on the malleability
of situational construals and goal sets. Reappraisal affordance
refers to the potential to reinterpret a situation in a particular
way (Suri et al., 2018). In terms of our framework, a reap-
praisal affordance constitutes a potential appraisal change vec-
tor that a given person identifies in a given situation. Some
situations offer more potential appraisal change vectors than
others (Suri et al., 2018), whereas some people are able to
detect more vectors in the same situation than others (Weber
et al., 2014). A higher number of reappraisal affordances is
generally conducive to attempting to as well as succeeding in
using reappraisal to regulate emotion. Given how central
affordances are, it is important to understand how they become
available. Our framework suggests that a useful way to address
this question is to focus on how malleable the situational con-
strual as well as the goal set are.
Construal malleability is high when an individual can choose
from several mental models that would explain the situation
comparably well. Often, this is because only limited informa-
tion is available about the situation. For instance, a situation
where a friend has not shown up to an agreed-upon meeting can
be consistent with several models such as “the friend forgot”
and “something urgent came up.” As both explanations are
equally probable, the construal of this situation is malleable and
emotions elicited in it can be reappraised through reconstrual.
For instance, the stood-up person may reduce his initial frustra-
tion by assuming that his friend most probably was held up by
something urgent. Towards the other end of the construal malle-
ability spectrum lie situations that implicate a single dominant
Uusberg et al. Reappraising Reappraisal 9
explanation, such as a friend admitting he forgot about the meet-
ing. Such a situation with low construal malleability offers few
affordances to regulate emotions using reconstrual. In addition
to the availability of information about a situation, construal
malleability also depends on the knowledge that people bring to
situations. For instance, people from cultures with lax punctual-
ity norms may have an additional affordance to think that the
friend who has not shown up on agreed time is simply late.
Goal set malleability is high when people are equally com-
mitted to several goals, often because they are not overly com-
mitted to any of them. For instance, if an agreed-upon meeting
is cancelled early enough, a person can use repurposing to man-
age his disappointment by valuing other things he could do dur-
ing the time reserved for the meeting. By contrast, recommitting
to an alternative goal is harder when the commitment to the
original goal dominates alternative goals, making the goal set
less malleable. For instance, when the person has already taken
a long commute to meet his friend, he might find it harder to
reappraise his disappointment elicited by the cancellation
through repurposing. In addition to the features of a situation,
goal set malleability also depends on the features of the knowl-
edge structures of the individual. For instance, people with high
trait extraversion might place higher value on social contacts
and therefore have less malleability to replace a goal to meet a
friend with a nonsocial alternative activity.
The construal and goal set malleability constructs help
explain why reappraisal is more effective in some circumstances
than others. For instance, reappraisal is less helpful for regulat-
ing responses to emotional events that are defined by their
observable features (e.g., a smelly toilet) rather than unobserved
features (e.g., a verbal insult; McRae, Misra, et al., 2012; Suri
et al., 2018). Within our framework, this pattern can be explained
by assuming that less observable events have higher construal
malleability than more observable events. As making sense of a
less observable event such as an insult requires more complex
mental models with a larger number of elements than making
sense of a smelly toilet, it also offers more targets for recon-
strual. For instance, a verbal insult can be attributed to different
intentions. Our framework thus suggests that the extent to which
an event requires inferences that go beyond sensory input facili-
tates reappraisal by increasing the malleability of situational
construal.
In another example of a moderating relationship that can be
explained through the malleability construct, reappraisal effec-
tiveness can depend on affective intensity. For instance, people
tend to spurn reappraisal for regulating responses to pictures
with high compared to low negative intensity (Sheppes, 2014;
Sheppes et al., 2014). They are also less successful in using
reappraisal under high compared to low stress (Raio et al.,
2013). Within our framework, these findings can be explained
by assuming that high affective intensity reduces goal set malle-
ability. Intense affective experiences are characterized by con-
trol precedence, or prioritization of affect-relevant mental
processes (Frijda, 2009). In terms of our framework, control
precedence corresponds to prioritization of affect-related goals
in the goal set at the expense of other goals, thereby reducing
the malleability of the overall goal set. For instance, highly
unpleasant stimuli probably prioritize the goal to disengage
from these stimuli, while high levels of stress prioritize the goal
to avoid threats. Likewise, highly pleasant stimuli probably pri-
oritize the goal to approach relevant rewards. As these affect-
relevant goals become more dominant in the goal set, it becomes
more difficult to cognitively demote them and promote alterna-
tive goals. Our framework thus suggests that affective intensity
may reduce reappraisal effectiveness by reducing the malleabil-
ity of the goal set.
Further nuances of reappraisal effectiveness can be explained
by considering how the knowledge and situation components of
the present framework impact reappraisal through changing the
malleability of construals and goal sets. As an example of a
nuanced impact of knowledge on reappraisal, consider the some-
what puzzling finding that the use (John & Gross, 2004) and
effectiveness (Shiota & Levenson, 2009) of reappraisal increase
throughout adulthood into older age even while executive control
capacities involved in emotion regulation decline (Urry & Gross,
2010). This paradox may in part stem from older individuals rely-
ing on the rich knowledge they have accumulated through a
longer life to compensate for any decline in executive functions.
Our framework suggests that richer knowledge delivers a wider
selection of mental models which can increase both construal
malleability and goal set malleability. Construal malleability ben-
efits from knowledge when a larger selection of mental models
helps the person to find an alternative explanation to a situation to
replace the initial emotionally undesirable explanation. Goal set
malleability benefits from knowledge when a larger selection of
mental models helps the person to find more ways in which the
situation can be beneficial for alternative goals.
As an example of a nuanced impact of a situation on reap-
praisal, consider how members of oppressed groups facing dis-
crimination may benefit less from reappraisal than members of
nonoppressed groups (Perez & Soto, 2011). This paradox can be
explained by the availability of affordances to reconstrue the
situation that provide only limited relief from negative emotion.
For instance, when a member of an oppressed group is fired, she
may detect an affordance to reattribute this event from a per-
sonal failure to an extrinsic cause, much like a nonoppressed
individual would. However, if the most likely extrinsic cause is
systemic racism, then the new construal is equally distressing
and will therefore fail to produce the desired improvement in
emotion. In another situation-related paradox, reappraisal can
be suboptimal in distressing situations that could actually be
changed for the better (Ford et al., 2018; Haines et al., 2016;
Troy et al., 2013). This is probably because the relief from neg-
ative affect that reappraisal provides can prevent negative affect
from motivating overt action that would improve the situation.
In terms of our framework, this pattern can be explained by the
availability of reappraisal affordances that are overvalued rela-
tive to affordances for changing this situation.
Implications and Future Directions
A core contribution of our appraisal framework for understand-
ing reappraisal involves the three propositions we have just laid
10 Emotion Review
out. Specifically, we have suggested that people use repurpos-
ing and reconstrual to produce appraisal change vectors that are
either facilitated or inhibited by the relative malleability of the
goal set and/or the situational construal. In this section, we con-
sider a number of further implications of this framework.
Expanding the Focus of Reappraisal Research
Our framework calls for direct empirical comparisons of the
reconstrual and repurposing strategies. As this distinction hasn’t
been made in past studies, it is hard to assess the extent to which
available findings involve one or the other strategy (or both). We
suspect, however, that existing work is biased towards the recon-
strual strategy. For instance, most laboratory studies have opera-
tionalized reappraisal with instructions such as “change the
meaning of the situation or your emotional response” (Webb,
Miles, et al., 2012), which resembles reconstrual more than repur-
posing. Such instructions may fail to elicit reappraisal via repur-
posing that, anecdotally, seems to be very common. For instance,
people think of failures as learning experiences, search for silver
linings in dark clouds, and tell themselves that they did not really
want the things they cannot have. Future research is therefore
needed to map the prevalence of repurposing and reconstrual as
well as to document their similarities and differences.
Interestingly, while repurposing has been underrepresented in
emotion regulation research, some of the effects of this strategy
may have been inadvertently documented elsewhere. For
instance, research on motivation has revealed how changes in
goals can lead to changes in emotion. The goals people set in
achievement contexts differ in terms of their orientation towards
positive or negative outcomes defined in relation to the task, to
competitors, or to an internal standard (Elliot, Murayama, &
Pekrun, 2011). Such differences in goal orientations have been
associated with different emotional responses (Higgins, 1997;
Pekrun, 2006). These findings support the idea that emotions are
sensitive not only to variance in situational construal but also to
variance in goals. Furthermore, interventions designed to change
goal orientations (Pekrun et al., 2009) as well as goal values
(Hulleman, Godes, Hendricks, & Harackiewicz, 2010) have
been shown to change emotions. Even though emotion regula-
tion has not been the objective of these interventions, they dem-
onstrate that goal change can lead to emotion change, and thereby
amount to preliminary evidence for the efficacy of reappraisal
via repurposing. Emotion regulation research on repurposing
could derive valuable insights from the existing literature on the
relationship between goals and emotion.
Once reconstrual and repurposing can be studied on an equal
footing, it will become possible to directly compare their ante-
cedents as well as their consequences. Regarding antecedents,
one hypothesis suggested by our framework is that reconstrual
should be preferred when construal malleability is high, whereas
repurposing should be preferred when goal set malleability is
high. Regarding consequences of reconstrual and repurposing, it
will be important to chart the effects these strategies have on
appraisal change vectors, on emotional experiences, as well as
on long-term coping and striving. Understanding the antecedents
and consequences of reconstrual and repurposing can pave the
way for understanding when each strategy is most adaptive. For
instance, reconstrual may be mandated when an unwanted emotion
arises from biased interpretation of a situation. However, when an
unwanted emotion arises from quite veridical interpretation of a
situation, it might be more adaptive to reappraise via repurposing.
Reappraisal of External and Internal Situations
The present framework points to similarities between regulation
strategies targeting appraisals of the external situation (e.g., situ-
ational reappraisal) and strategies targeting appraisals of the
internal situation (e.g., arousal reappraisal). On the level of emo-
tion generation, the external and internal aspects of a situation
appear to be processed in largely similar ways (Barrett, 2017;
Dixon, Thiruchselvam, Todd, & Christoff, 2017). On the level of
emotion regulation, however, researchers disagree whether the
reappraisal construct is helpful for characterizing strategies such
as arousal reappraisal (Jamieson et al., 2017; cf. Tamir, 2017)
and mindful acceptance (Naragon-Gainey et al., 2017; cf.
Chambers et al., 2009) that focus primarily on the internal
aspects of situations such as feelings and bodily sensations.
It should be noted that complex regulation strategies can have
many underlying mechanisms and therefore need not fall neatly
into a single class. With this mind, however, our framework sug-
gests that many strategies that target internal situations exhibit the
core psychological mechanisms of reappraisal—goal-directed
changes in appraisal outcomes produced through reconstrual or
repurposing. For instance, arousal reappraisal can be initiated by
an emotion goal (e.g., feel less anxious during a stressful event)
and involve shifts in appraisal outcomes (e.g., telling onself that
bodily arousal is actually congruent with a performance goal).
Likewise, we argue that mindful acceptance involves inten-
tional shifts in appraisals of internal states. This may seem odd
as the stated aim of most mindful acceptance techniques is to
refrain from changing emotion (Chambers et al., 2009; Farb,
Anderson, Irving, & Segal, 2014). However, a goal of absence
should not be equated with an absence of a goal. The mindful
imperative to let emotions unfold without interference is a
desired end state, that is, a goal. The mindful goal tends to differ
from spontaneous emotion goals that people activate, often
implicitly, to reduce unpleasant and increase pleasant emotions
(Koole, Webb, & Sheeran, 2015; Mauss, Bunge, & Gross,
2007). Pursuing the mindful goal of unchanged emotion is thus
often an active process that requires changing the way emotion
would otherwise unfold, similar to how other forms of reap-
praisal interfere with emotion generation. Mindful acceptance
further resembles reappraisal insofar as it produces shifts in how
the internal aspects of situations are appraised. For instance, a
mindful person may appraise bodily sensations of anxiety as
nonthreatening, not one’s fault, and temporary. We therefore
conclude that on the level of psychological mechanisms, strate-
gies such as arousal reappraisal and mindful acceptance are
highly similar to more prototypical forms of reappraisal.
An interesting implication of this conclusion is that the three
propositions of our framework may be applicable to strategies
Uusberg et al. Reappraising Reappraisal 11
that target internal situations. For instance, the effects of mind-
ful acceptance may be analyzed through the lens of reconstrual
and repurposing. As an example of mindful reconstrual, view-
ing one’s feelings as clouds passing in the sky can be thought of
as applying a particular mental model to make sense of intero-
ceptive information. As an example of mindful repurposing,
mindfulness often involves promoting nonspontaneous goals
such as understanding emotions and using them for personal
growth. Following the second proposition of our framework,
reappraisal of internal situations could be characterized using
appraisal change vectors. For instance, viewing feelings as
clouds in the sky will probably lower the self-accountability
appraisal of these feelings. Finally, it may be helpful to consider
the malleability of construals and goals that relate to internal
situations. For instance, low malleability of internal situational
construal may lead someone to consider dizziness as a harbinger
of fainting, whereas high malleability of internal situational
construal helps the person to reconsider dizziness as a normal
sign of anxiety.
Mapping Brain Mechanisms
Our framework can be used to better link the observed neural
correlates of reappraisal to the mechanisms and computations
they reflect. Reappraisal in service of the goal to down-regulate
emotion tends to reduce emotional responses in sensory cortices
and affective areas such as the amygdala and anterior insula and
increase activity in several control regions in the prefrontal, cin-
gulate, parietal, and temporal cortices (Buhle et al., 2013;
Hajcak, MacNamara, & Olvet, 2010; Kalisch, 2009; Ochsner &
Gross, 2008). Our framework suggests that this pattern may
encompass two overlapping but distinct brain networks support-
ing reconstrual and repurposing. Assuming that both strategies
require some executive control, the shared portion of these two
networks may contain the executive control areas consistently
implicated in neuroimaging studies of reappraisal such as the
dorsal prefrontal and posterior parietal cortex (Buhle et al.,
2013; Ochsner & Gross, 2008). The nonshared portion of the
brain substrate of reconstrual may include frontal and temporal
regions associated with top-down influences on perception
(Chanes & Barrett, 2016; Lamme & Roelfsema, 2000). In con-
trast, the nonshared portion of the brain substrate of repurposing
may involve regions in the orbital and lateral prefrontal cortex
associated with setting and pursuing goals (Berkman &
Lieberman, 2009) and a broader parieto-frontal network associ-
ated with adjudicating between different goals (Rueter, Abram,
MacDonald, Rustichini, & DeYoung, 2018).
Preliminary support for this dual network account can be
found in differences observed in neuroimaging studies that have
induced reappraisal through reinterpretation or perspective-tak-
ing. Reinterpretation, induced by instructions such as “change
the meaning of the situation or your emotional response,” resem-
bles reconstrual more than repurposing. Perspective-taking,
induced by instructions such as “analyze the situation objec-
tively, from a detached observer’s perspective,” is a complex
strategy with some resemblance to repurposing. Specifically, by
invoking a third-person perspective (Kross & Ayduk, 2011), it
should demote the egocentric goals to purse the action tenden-
cies inherent in the emotional response and promote different
goals such as understanding the broader causes and conse-
quences of the situation. In the brain, reinterpretation-related
processes are distributed across medial as well as lateral prefron-
tal regions, whereas perspective-taking is relatively more con-
strained to lateral regions (Ochsner & Gross, 2008). The
distribution of reinterpretation and perspective-taking across the
lateral-medial axis of the prefrontal cortex aligns with a recent
suggestion that lateral prefrontal regions process more abstract
goals than medial regions (Dixon et al., 2017). This may be con-
sistent with the role of shifting abstract goals, such as the goal to
analyze the situation, in repurposing via perspective-taking.
More research using novel manipulations is needed to test the
neural predictions of our framework.
Understanding Individual Differences
Our framework has implications for understanding individual
differences in appraisal and reappraisal. In particular, it illus-
trates how stable knowledge structures such as beliefs can
influence the dynamic processes of appraisal as well as reap-
praisal. For instance, a person who believes human abilities to
be mostly innate and fixed rather than learned and malleable
is likely to construe a failure at a task as an instance of a mis-
match between talent and task (Dweck, Chiu, & Hong, 1995).
Given this knowledge and this construal, this person is likely
to not only appraise the failure as low on goal congruence but
also himself as low on coping potential. After all, if ability
level is fixed, there is little that could improve in similar
future situations. The same belief constrains this person’s
affordances to use reappraisal to change these appraisals
(Ford & Gross, 2018). Our framework thus explains how a
stable knowledge structure such as a belief can bias dynamic
behavior so that it obtains the trait-like property of exhibiting
similar characteristics across many different situations. This
is in line with theorizing in the fields of appraisal styles
(Ellsworth & Scherer, 2003), development (Dweck, 2017),
and personality (Baumert et al., 2017).
More broadly, the role of knowledge in reappraisal suggests
a pathway through which culture, as a major source of mental
models (Tulviste, 1991), can impact emotion regulation. This
pathway could be used in future research to consider how differ-
ent cultures impact reappraisal by constraining or facilitating
construal as well as goal set malleability. For instance, people
from cultures characterized by high uncertainty avoidance
(Hofstede, 1980) may experience situations on average as hav-
ing lower construal malleability, because they are motivated to
find a single mental model to explain situations and have had
extensive practice in doing this. Culturally informed reappraisal
research is also needed as a counterweight to the current over-
representation of work conducted within the Western hemi-
sphere (Henrich, Heine, & Norenzayan, 2010). We hope that the
general nature of the present framework makes it a useful scaf-
fold for future cross-cultural reappraisal research.
12 Emotion Review
In addition to analyzing how knowledge structures influence
reappraisal, our framework can also be used to consider the
causal pathway running in the opposite direction—how repeated
patterns of reappraisal can contribute to durable change in
knowledge structures such as beliefs, goals, and identity. Many
emotions that people seek to regulate are recurring, elicited by
similar triggers repeatedly over weeks, months, and years
(Voelkle, Ebner, Lindenberger, & Riediger, 2013). A potent
source of recurrent emotion are major life events such as chronic
illness or loss of a loved one (Stroebe & Schut, 2001). When
faced with strong recurrent emotions, the process of emotion
regulation, which operates on the level of a single emotional epi-
sode, relates to the process of coping with the underlying change,
which operates across many emotional episodes. Coping with
major life events takes time and involves relatively permanent
changes to knowledge structures such as beliefs, personal goals,
and identity. Among the different psychological mechanisms
involved in coping may be the cumulative impact of reconstrual
as well as repurposing. Intentional changes to construals and
goals within a single emotional episode that are effective in
changing emotion can lead, through mechanisms such as rein-
forcement learning, to sustained shifts in the construals and goals
that are activated spontaneously, without intentional reappraisal.
Therefore, the cumulative effects of the psychological mecha-
nisms identified in the current framework can also help explain
longer term coping processes.
Assessment and Intervention
The idea that instances of reappraisal can be characterized as
change vectors in appraisal dimensional space could spur the
development of reappraisal assessment tools. Relying on exist-
ing appraisal research, self-report items can be constructed to
assess a suitable selection of appraisal dimensions. These items
could then be used to measure the appraisal profile before and
after participants engage in various reappraisal tasks, or to ask
people to directly rate which appraisal dimensions they changed
as they engaged in reappraisal. Once the reliability and validity
of these measures are established, this approach could become
an important part of a standardized toolkit of reappraisal
research. Developing more standardized measures could cata-
lyze research efforts by allowing us to quantitatively integrate
findings from different studies and research groups as well as
across different situations, emotions, and populations.
Appraisal change vectors may also be useful for identifying
reappraisal tactics. An emotion regulation tactic is simply a con-
text-specific implementation of a broader regulation strategy. In
terms of our framework, tactics operate on a level of description
that lies between the broad distinction between reconstrual and
repurposing and the detailed mapping of appraisal change vec-
tors. One way to derive reappraisal tactics would be to use unsu-
pervised statistical learning algorithms to identify clusters among
observed appraisal change vectors. This approach relies on the
assumption that the appraisal change vectors that people employ
are unlikely to be distributed randomly across the appraisal
dimensional space owing to the clustering of emotions in that
space (Ellsworth & Scherer, 2003). Alternatively, theory-driven
taxonomies of reappraisal tactics could be devised based on the
present framework. For instance, it might be useful to distin-
guish six reappraisal tactics: repurposing for desirability change,
reconstrual for desirability change, repurposing for attribution
change, reconstrual for attribution change, repurposing for
expectancy change, and reconstrual for expectancy change. Each
tactic may be further divided into a version operating primarily
on external versus internal situations.
Finally, the present framework could aid in the design of inter-
vention programs targeting children as well as adults, and those
with mental illnesses as well as those without. Key learning
objectives in many interventions include improved emotional
awareness and reappraisal skill development. Both objectives
may benefit from teaching participants how to analyze and influ-
ence their own appraisals using appraisal dimensions. Learning
appraisal dimensions can be a useful tool for increasing emotional
awareness. Appraisal dimensions may also provide a simple and
powerful “checklist” for exploring reappraisal affordances in
challenging situations. People might practice going through a list
of appraisal dimensions, identifying which ones are open for
change, and coming up with alternative construals and goal set
modifications. A suitably selected appraisal dimension nomencla-
ture would be concise enough to remember and flexible enough
to be applicable in a wide range of situations. This method may
help lower the executive function demands of reappraisal. It can
also compensate for appraisal biases by making it less likely that
people overlook useful reappraisal affordances. Over the long
run, such intervention techniques could produce sustained
increases in goal set and construal malleability.
Concluding Comment
Reappraisal is in many ways the poster child of emotion regula-
tion. It has a long research history, strong efficacy evidence, and
numerous applications. Even though the active ingredient of
reappraisal is known to involve appraisal change, there is much
to learn about what this in fact entails. We have sought to con-
tribute to answering this question by presenting an appraisal
framework of the psychological mechanisms involved in reap-
praisal. We modelled appraisal as a comparison between a situ-
ational construal and goal set expressed as an appraisal outcome
within the appraisal dimensional space. This approach led to
three propositions. Reappraisal involves (a) some combination
of reconstrual and repurposing that (b) results in an appraisal
change vector which (c) has been afforded by the malleability of
the situational construal and/or the goal set. We identified sev-
eral directions for future research. We hope that the present
framework helps to consolidate existing knowledge and to spur
new research, opening the way for similarly detailed accounts
of other families of emotion regulation strategies.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the
research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Uusberg et al. Reappraising Reappraisal 13
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the
research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was sup-
ported by the Estonian Research Council grants IUT2-13, PUTJD-79, and
MOBTP-17.
ORCID iDs
Andero Uusberg https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7327-9503
Jennifer Yih https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2170-7836
References
Aldao, A., Nolen-Hoeksema, S., & Schweizer, S. (2010). Emotion-regula-
tion strategies across psychopathology: A meta-analytic review. Clini-
cal Psychology Review, 30, 217–237. doi:10.1016/j.cpr.2009.11.004
Aldao, A., Sheppes, G., & Gross, J. J. (2015). Emotion regulation flex-
ibility. Cognitive Therapy and Research, 39, 263–278. doi:10.1007/
s10608-014-9662-4
Arnold, M. B. (1960). Emotion and personality. New York, NY: Columbia
University Press.
Barrett, L. F. (2017). The theory of constructed emotion: An active infer-
ence account of interoception and categorization. Social Cognitive and
Affective Neuroscience, 12, 1–23. doi:10.1093/scan/nsw154
Baumert, A., Schmitt, M., Perugini, M., Johnson, W., Blum, G., Borkenau,
P., . . . Wrzus, C. (2017). Integrating personality structure, personality
process, and personality development. European Journal of Personal-
ity, 31, 503–528. doi:10.1002/per.2115
Beck, A. T. (1963). Thinking and depression: I. Idiosyncratic content and
cognitive distortions. Archives of General Psychiatry, 9, 324–333.
Beck, A. T. (1964). Thinking and depression: II. Theory and therapy.
Archives of General Psychiatry, 10, 561–571.
Beck, A. T., & Dozois, D. J. A. (2011). Cognitive therapy: Current sta-
tus and future directions. Annual Review of Medicine, 62, 397–409.
doi:10.1146/annurev-med-052209-100032
Berkman, E. T., & Lieberman, M. D. (2009). The neuroscience of goal pur-
suit: Bridging gaps between theory and data. In G. B. Moskowitz & H.
Grant (Eds.), The psychology of goals (pp. 98–126). New York, NY:
Guilford Press.
Binder, J. R. (2016). In defense of abstract conceptual representations. Psy-
chonomic Bulletin & Review, 23, 1096–1108. doi:10.3758/s13423-015-
0909-1
Block, J. (1982). Assimilation, accommodation, and the dynam-
ics of personality development. Child Development, 53, 281–295.
doi:10.2307/1128971
Braunstein, L. M., Gross, J. J., & Ochsner, K. N. (2017). Explicit and
implicit emotion regulation: A multi-level framework. Social Cognitive
and Affective Neuroscience, 12, 1545–1557. doi:10.1093/scan/nsx096
Buhle, J. T., Silvers, J. A., Wager, T. D., Lopez, R., Onyemekwu, C., Kober,
H., . . . Ochsner, K. N. (2013). Cognitive reappraisal of emotion: A
meta-analysis of human neuroimaging studies. Cerebral Cortex.
Advance online publication. doi:10.1093/cercor/bht154
Chambers, R., Gullone, E., & Allen, N. B. (2009). Mindful emotion regula-
tion: An integrative review. Clinical Psychology Review, 29, 560–572.
doi:10.1016/j.cpr.2009.06.005
Chanes, L., & Barrett, L. F. (2016). Redefining the role of limbic areas
in cortical processing. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 20, 96–106.
doi:10.1016/j.tics.2015.11.005
Chang, L. J., & Jolly, E. (2018). Emotions as computational signals of goal
error. In A. S. Fox, R. C. Lapate, A. J. Shackman & R. J. Davidson
(Eds.), The nature of emotion: Fundamental questions (2nd ed., pp.
343–348). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Clark, A. (2013). Whatever next? Predictive brains, situated agents, and the
future of cognitive science. The Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 36,
181–204. doi:10.1017/S0140525X12000477
Clore, G. L., & Ortony, A. (2008). Appraisal theories: How cognition
shapes affect into emotion. In M. Lewis, J. M. Haviland-Jones & L.
F. Barrett (Eds.), Handbook of emotions (3rd ed., pp. 628–642). New
York, NY: Guilford Press.
Cohen, J. D., McClure, S. M., & Yu, A. J. (2007). Should I stay or should I
go? How the human brain manages the trade-off between exploitation
and exploration. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B:
Biological Sciences, 362, 933–942. doi:10.1098/rstb.2007.2098
Cunningham, W. A., & Zelazo, P. D. (2007). Attitudes and evaluations:
A social cognitive neuroscience perspective. Trends in Cognitive Sci-
ences, 11, 97–104. doi:10.1016/j.tics.2006.12.005
Dixon, M. L., Thiruchselvam, R., Todd, R., & Christoff, K. (2017). Emotion
and the prefrontal cortex: An integrative review. Psychological Bulle-
tin, 143, 1033–1081. doi:10.1037/bul0000096
Dweck, C. S. (2017). From needs to goals and representations: Foundations
for a unified theory of motivation, personality, and development. Psy-
chological Review, 124, 689–719. doi:10.1037/rev0000082
Dweck, C. S., Chiu, C., & Hong, Y. (1995). Implicit theories and their role
in judgments and reactions: A word from two perspectives. Psychologi-
cal Inquiry, 6, 267–285. doi:10.1207/s15327965pli0604_1
Elliot, A. J., & Fryer, J. W. (2008). The goal construct in psychology. In J.
Y. Shah & W. L. Gardner (Eds.), Handbook of motivation science (pp.
235–250). New York, NY: Guilford Press.
Elliot, A. J., Murayama, K., & Pekrun, R. (2011). A 3 × 2 achievement goal
model. Journal of Educational Psychology, 103, 632–648. doi:10.1037/
a0023952
Ellis, A. (1957). Rational psychotherapy and individual psychology. Jour-
nal of Individual Psychology, 13, 38–44.
Ellis, A., & MacLaren, C. (1998). Rational emotive behavior therapy: A
therapist’s guide. Atascadero, CA: Impact.
Ellsworth, P. C., & Scherer, K. R. (2003). Appraisal processes in emotion.
In R. J. Davidson, K. R. Scherer & H. H. Goldsmith (Eds.), Handbook
of affective sciences (pp. 572–595). New York, NY: Oxford Univer-
sity Press.
Everaert, J., Podina, I. R., & Koster, E. H. W. (2017). A comprehensive
meta-analysis of interpretation biases in depression. Clinical Psychol-
ogy Review, 58, 33–48. doi:10.1016/j.cpr.2017.09.005
Farb, N. A., Anderson, A. K., Irving, J. A., & Segal, Z. V. (2014). Mindful-
ness interventions and emotion regulation. In J. J. Gross (Ed.), Hand-
book of emotion regulation (2nd ed., pp. 548–567). New York, NY:
The Guilford Press.
Ford, B. Q., Feinberg, M., Lam, P., Mauss, I. B., & John, O. P. (2018).
Using reappraisal to regulate negative emotion after the 2016 U.S.
presidential election: Does emotion regulation trump political action?
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Advance online publica-
tion. doi:10.1037/pspp0000200
Ford, B. Q., & Gross, J. J. (2018). Why beliefs about emotion matter: An
emotion-regulation perspective. Current Directions in Psychological
Science. Advance online publication. doi:10.1177/0963721418806697
Freud, S. (1959). Inhibitions, symptoms, anxiety (J. Strachey, Ed., A. Stra-
chey, Trans.). New York, NY: Norton. (Original work published 1926)
Frijda, N. H. (2009). Emotion experience and its varieties. Emotion Review,
1, 264–271. doi:10.1177/1754073909103595
Frijda, N. H. (2010). Impulsive action and motivation. Biological Psychol-
ogy, 84, 570–579. doi:10.1016/j.biopsycho.2010.01.005
Friston, K. (2010). The free-energy principle: A unified brain theory?
Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 11, 127–138. doi:10.1038/nrn2787
Garnefski, N., Kraaij, V., & Spinhoven, P. (2001). Negative life events,
cognitive emotion regulation and emotional problems. Personal-
ity and Individual Differences, 30, 1311–1327. doi:10.1016/S0191-
8869(00)00113-6
14 Emotion Review
Gross, J. J. (1998). The emerging field of emotion regulation: An integrative
review. Review of General Psychology, 2, 271–299.
Gross, J. J. (1999). Emotion regulation: Past, present, future. Cognition and
Emotion, 13, 551–573. doi:10.1080/026999399379186
Gross, J. J. (2015). Emotion regulation: Current status and future prospects.
Psychological Inquiry, 26, 1–26. doi:10.1080/1047840X.2014.940781
Gross, J. J., & John, O. P. (2003). Individual differences in two emotion
regulation processes: Implications for affect, relationships, and well-
being. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85, 348–362.
Gross, J. J., Sheppes, G., & Urry, H. L. (2011). Emotion generation and
emotion regulation: A distinction we should make (carefully). Cogni-
tion and Emotion, 25, 765–781.
Haines, S. J., Gleeson, J., Kuppens, P., Hollenstein, T., Ciarrochi, J.,
Labuschagne, I., . . . Koval, P. (2016). The wisdom to know the dif-
ference: Strategy–situation fit in emotion regulation in daily life is
associated with well-being. Psychological Science, 27, 1651–1659.
doi:10.1177/0956797616669086
Hajcak, G., MacNamara, A., & Olvet, D. M. (2010). Event-related poten-
tials, emotion, and emotion regulation: An integrative review. Develop-
mental Neuropsychology, 35, 129–155.
Henrich, J., Heine, S. J., & Norenzayan, A. (2010). The weirdest people in
the world? (RatSWD Working Paper No. 139). Retrieved from http://
papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1601785
Hesslow, G. (2012). The current status of the simulation theory of cogni-
tion. Brain Research, 1428, 71–79. doi:10.1016/j.brainres.2011.06.026
Higgins, E. T. (1997). Beyond pleasure and pain. American Psychologist,
52, 1280–1300. doi:10.1037/0003-066X.52.12.1280
Hofstede, G. (1980). Culture’s consequences: International differences in
work-related values. Beverly Hills, CA: SAGE.
Huang, Y., & Rao, R. P. N. (2011). Predictive coding. Wiley Interdisci-
plinary Reviews: Cognitive Science, 2, 580–593. doi:10.1002/wcs.142
Hulleman, C. S., Godes, O., Hendricks, B. L., & Harackiewicz, J. M. (2010).
Enhancing interest and performance with a utility value interven-
tion. Journal of Educational Psychology, 102, 880–895. doi:10.1037/
a0019506
Jamieson, J. P., Hangen, E. J., Lee, H. Y., & Yeager, D. S. (2017).
Capitalizing on appraisal processes to improve affective responses
to social stress. Emotion Review. Advance online publication.
doi:10.1177/1754073917693085
John, O. P., & Eng, J. (2014). Three approaches to individual differences
in affect regulation: Conceptualizations, measures, and findings. In J.
J. Gross (Ed.), Handbook of emotion regulation (2nd ed., pp. 321–345).
New York, NY: The Guilford Press.
John, O. P., & Gross, J. J. (2004). Healthy and unhealthy emotion regu-
lation: Personality processes, individual differences, and life span
development. Journal of Personality, 72, 1301–1334. doi:10.1111/
j.1467-6494.2004.00298.x
Kaiser, S., & Wehrle, T. (2001). Facial expressions as indicators of appraisal
processes. In K. R. Scherer, A. Schorr & T. Johnstone (Eds.), Appraisal
processes in emotion: Theory, methods, research (pp. 285–300). New
York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Kalisch, R. (2009). The functional neuroanatomy of reappraisal: Time
matters. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 33, 1215–1226.
doi:10.1016/j.neubiorev.2009.06.003
Klinger, E. (1975). Consequences of commitment to and disengage-
ment from incentives. Psychological Review, 82, 1–25. doi:10.1037/
h0076171
Koole, S. L. (2009). The psychology of emotion regulation: An
integrative review. Cognition and Emotion, 23, 4–41. doi:10.1080
/02699930802619031
Koole, S. L., Webb, T. L., & Sheeran, P. L. (2015). Implicit emotion regula-
tion: Feeling better without knowing why. Current Opinion in Psychol-
ogy, 3, 6–10. doi:10.1016/j.copsyc.2014.12.027
Kreibig, S. D., Gendolla, G. H. E., & Scherer, K. R. (2012). Goal rele-
vance and goal conduciveness appraisals lead to differential autonomic
reactivity in emotional responding to performance feedback. Biological
Psychology, 91, 365–375. doi:10.1016/j.biopsycho.2012.08.007
Kross, E., & Ayduk, O. (2011). Making meaning out of negative experi-
ences by self-distancing. Current Directions in Psychological Science,
20, 187–191. doi:10.1177/0963721411408883
Kruglanski, A. W., Shah, J. Y., Fishbach, A., Friedman, R., Chun, W. Y.,
& Sleeth-Keppler, D. (2002). A theory of goal systems. In M. P. Zanna
(Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 34, pp. 331–
378). San Diego, CA: Academic Press.
Kuppens, P. (2013). Comment: Appraisal affords flexibility to emo-
tion in more ways than one. Emotion Review, 5, 176–179.
doi:10.1177/1754073912468167
Kuppens, P., van Mechelen, I., & Rijmen, F. (2008). Toward disentangling
sources of individual differences in appraisal and anger. Journal of Per-
sonality, 76, 969–1000. doi:10.1111/j.1467-6494.2008.00511.x
Lamme, V. A. F., & Roelfsema, P. R. (2000). The distinct modes of vision
offered by feedforward and recurrent processing. Trends in Neuro-
sciences, 23, 571–579. doi:10.1016/S0166-2236(00)01657-X
Larsen, R. J. (2000). Toward a science of mood regulation. Psychological
Inquiry, 11, 129–141. doi:10.1207/S15327965PLI1103_01
Laukka, P., & Elfenbein, H. A. (2012). Emotion appraisal dimensions can
be inferred from vocal expressions. Social Psychological and Personal-
ity Science, 3, 529–536. doi:10.1177/1948550611428011
Lazarus, R. S. (1966). Psychological stress and the coping process. New
York, NY: McGraw-Hill.
Lazarus, R. S. (1968). Emotions and adaptation: Conceptual and empirical
relations. In W. J. Arnold (Ed.), Nebraska Symposium on Motivation
(pp. 175–266). Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
Lazarus, R. S., & Alfert, E. (1964). Short-circuiting of threat by experimen-
tally altering cognitive appraisal. The Journal of Abnormal and Social
Psychology, 69, 195–205. doi:10.1037/h0044635
LeDoux, J. E., & Brown, R. (2017). A higher-order theory of emotional
consciousness. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
114(10), E2016–E2025.
Lindquist, K. A., Siegel, E. H., Quigley, K. S., & Barrett, L. F. (2013). The
hundred-year emotion war: Are emotions natural kinds or psychologi-
cal constructions? Comment on Lench, Flores, and Bench (2011). Psy-
chological Bulletin, 139, 255–263. doi:10.1037/a0029038
Mauss, I. B., Bunge, S. A., & Gross, J. J. (2007). Automatic emotion
regulation. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 1, 146–167.
doi:10.1111/j.1751-9004.2007.00005.x
McRae, K. (2016). Cognitive emotion regulation: A review of theory and
scientific findings. Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences, 10, 119–
124. doi:10.1016/j.cobeha.2016.06.004
McRae, K., Ciesielski, B., & Gross, J. J. (2012). Unpacking cognitive
reappraisal: Goals, tactics, and outcomes. Emotion, 12, 250–255.
doi:10.1037/a0026351
McRae, K., Misra, S., Prasad, A. K., Pereira, S. C., & Gross, J. J. (2012).
Bottom-up and top-down emotion generation: Implications for emotion
regulation. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 7, 253–262.
doi:10.1093/scan/nsq103
Melnikoff, D. E., & Bargh, J. A. (2018). The mythical number two. Trends
in Cognitive Sciences, 22, 280–293. doi:10.1016/j.tics.2018.02.001
Mezulis, A. H., Abramson, L. Y., Hyde, J. S., & Hankin, B. L. (2004).
Is there a universal positivity bias in attributions? A meta-analytic
review of individual, developmental, and cultural differences in the
self-serving attributional bias. Psychological Bulletin, 130, 711–747.
doi:10.1037/0033-2909.130.5.711
Moors, A. (2009). Theories of emotion causation: A review. Cognition and
Emotion, 23, 625–662.
Moors, A. (2010). Automatic constructive appraisal as a candidate cause of
emotion. Emotion Review, 2, 139–156. doi:10.1177/1754073909351755
Moors, A. (2017). Integration of two skeptical emotion theories: Dimen-
sional appraisal theory and Russell’s psychological construction theory.
Psychological Inquiry, 28, 1–19. doi:10.1080/1047840X.2017.1235900
Uusberg et al. Reappraising Reappraisal 15
Moors, A., Ellsworth, P. C., Scherer, K. R., & Frijda, N. H. (2013). Appraisal
theories of emotion: State of the art and future development. Emotion
Review, 5, 119–124. doi:10.1177/1754073912468165
Morawetz, C., Bode, S., Derntl, B., & Heekeren, H. R. (2017). The effect
of strategies, goals and stimulus material on the neural mechanisms
of emotion regulation: A meta-analysis of fMRI studies. Neurosci-
ence & Biobehavioral Reviews, 72, 111–128. doi:10.1016/j.neubi-
orev.2016.11.014
Mulligan, K., & Scherer, K. R. (2012). Toward a working definition of emo-
tion. Emotion Review, 4, 345–357. doi:10.1177/1754073912445818
Naragon-Gainey, K., McMahon, T. P., & Chacko, T. P. (2017). The
structure of common emotion regulation strategies: A meta-analytic
examination. Psychological Bulletin, 143, 384–427. doi:10.1037/
bul0000093
Nørby, S. (2018). Mnemonic emotion regulation: A three-process model.
Cognition and Emotion. Advance online publication. doi:10.1080/026
99931.2018.1523137
Ochsner, K. N., & Gross, J. J. (2005). The cognitive control of emo-
tion. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 9, 242–249. doi:10.1016/j.
tics.2005.03.010
Ochsner, K. N., & Gross, J. J. (2008). Cognitive emotion regulation. Cur-
rent Directions in Psychological Science, 17, 153–158. doi:10.1111/
j.1467-8721.2008.00566.x
Pecchinenda, A., & Smith, C. A. (1996). The affective significance of skin
conductance activity during a difficult problem-solving task. Cognition
and Emotion, 10(5), 481–504.
Pekrun, R. (2006). The control–value theory of achievement emotions:
Assumptions, corollaries, and implications for educational research and
practice. Educational Psychology Review, 18, 315–341. doi:10.1007/
s10648-006-9029-9
Pekrun, R., Elliot, A. J., & Maier, M. A. (2009). Achievement goals and
achievement emotions: Testing a model of their joint relations with aca-
demic performance. Journal of Educational Psychology, 101, 115–135.
doi:10.1037/a0013383
Perez, C. R., & Soto, J. A. (2011). Cognitive reappraisal in the context of
oppression: Implications for psychological functioning. Emotion, 11,
675–680. doi:10.1037/a0021254
Pessoa, L. (2017). A network model of the emotional brain. Trends in Cog-
nitive Sciences, 21, 357–371. doi:10.1016/j.tics.2017.03.002
Piaget, J. (1954). The construction of reality in the child (M. Cook, Trans.).
New York, NY: Basic Books.
Radvansky, G. A., & Zacks, J. M. (2011). Event perception. Wiley Inter-
disciplinary Reviews: Cognitive Science, 2, 608–620. doi:10.1002/
wcs.133
Raio, C. M., Orederu, T. A., Palazzolo, L., Shurick, A. A., & Phelps, E. A.
(2013). Cognitive emotion regulation fails the stress test. Proceedings
of the National Academy of Sciences, 110, 15139–15144. doi:10.1073/
pnas.1305706110
Reisenzein, R. (2009). Emotional experience in the computational
belief–desire theory of emotion. Emotion Review, 1, 214–222.
doi:10.1177/1754073909103589
Roseman, I. J. (2013). Appraisal in the emotion system: Coher-
ence in strategies for coping. Emotion Review, 5, 141–149.
doi:10.1177/1754073912469591
Roseman, I. J., & Evdokas, A. (2004). Appraisals cause experienced emo-
tions: Experimental evidence. Cognition and Emotion, 18, 1–28.
doi:10.1080/02699930244000390
Rueter, A. R., Abram, S. V., MacDonald, A. W., Rustichini, A., & DeY-
oung, C. G. (2018). The goal priority network as a neural substrate of
conscientiousness. Human Brain Mapping. Advance online publica-
tion. doi:10.1002/hbm.24195
Sander, D., Grandjean, D., & Scherer, K. R. (2018). An appraisal-driven
componential approach to the emotional brain. Emotion Review, 10,
219–231. doi:10.1177/1754073918765653
Scherer, K. R., Schorr, A., & Johnstone, T. (Eds.). (2001). Appraisal pro-
cesses in emotion: Theory, methods, research (Vol. 14). New York,
NY: Oxford University Press.
Schimmack, U. (2005). Attentional interference effects of emo-
tional pictures: Threat, negativity, or arousal? Emotion, 5, 55–66.
doi:10.1037/1528-3542.5.1.55
Shah, J. Y., Hall, D., & Leander, N. P. (2009). Moments of motivation:
Margins of opportunity in managing the efficacy, need, and transitions
of striving. In G. B. Moskowitz & H. Grant (Eds.), The psychology of
goals (pp. 234–254). New York, NY: Guilford Press.
Sheppes, G. (2014). Emotion regulation choice: Theory and findings. In J.
J. Gross (Ed.), Handbook of emotion regulation (2nd ed., pp. 126–139).
New York, NY: The Guilford Press.
Sheppes, G., & Meiran, N. (2007). Better late than never? On the dynamics
of online regulation of sadness using distraction and cognitive reap-
praisal. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 33, 1518–1532.
doi:10.1177/0146167207305537
Sheppes, G., Scheibe, S., Suri, G., Radu, P., Blechert, J., & Gross, J. J.
(2014). Emotion regulation choice: A conceptual framework and sup-
porting evidence. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 143,
163–181. doi:10.1037/a0030831
Shiota, M. N., & Levenson, R. W. (2009). Effects of aging on experimen-
tally instructed detached reappraisal, positive reappraisal, and emo-
tional behavior suppression. Psychology and Aging, 24, 890–900.
doi:10.1037/a0017896
Smith, C. A. (1989). Dimensions of appraisal and physiological response in
emotion. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 56, 339–353.
doi:10.1037/0022-3514.56.3.339
Smith, C. A., & Ellsworth, P. C. (1985). Patterns of cognitive appraisal in
emotion. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 48, 813–838.
Smith, C. A., & Kirby, L. D. (2011). The role of appraisal and emotion in
coping and adaptation. In R. J. Contrada & A. Baum (Eds.), The hand-
book of stress science: Biology, psychology, and health (pp. 195–208).
New York, NY: Springer.
Smith, C. A., & Lazarus, R. S. (1990). Emotion and adaptation. In L. A.
Pervin (Ed.), Handbook of personality: Theory and research (pp. 609–
637). New York, NY: Guilford Press.
Snyder, C. R. (1989). Reality negotiation: From excuses to hope and beyond.
Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 8, 130–157. doi:10.1521/
jscp.1989.8.2.130
Speisman, J. C., Lazarus, R. S., Mordkoff, A., & Davison, L. (1964). Exper-
imental reduction of stress based on ego-defense theory. The Journal of
Abnormal and Social Psychology, 68, 367–380.
Stroebe, M. S., & Schut, H. (2001). Models of coping with bereavement: A
review. In M. S. Stroebe, R. O. Hansson, W. Stroebe & H. Schut (Eds.),
Handbook of bereavement research: Consequences, coping, and care
(pp. 375–403). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Suri, G., Sheppes, G., Young, G., Abraham, D., McRae, K., & Gross, J.
J. (2018). Emotion regulation choice: The role of environmental
affordances. Cognition and Emotion, 32, 963–971. doi:10.1080/0269
9931.2017.1371003
Tamir, M. (2015). Why do people regulate their emotions? A taxonomy
of motives in emotion regulation. Personality and Social Psychology
Review, 20, 199–222. doi:10.1177/1088868315586325
Tamir, M. (2017). Comment on Jamieson, Hangen, Lee, and Yaeager: What
should we regulate to promote adaptive functioning and how? Emotion
Review. Advance online publication. doi:10.1177/1754073917719328
Tong, E. M. W. (2015). Differentiation of 13 positive emotions by apprais-
als. Cognition and Emotion, 29, 484–503. doi:10.1080/02699931.201
4.922056
Troy, A. S., Shallcross, A. J., & Mauss, I. B. (2013). A person-by-situation
approach to emotion regulation: Cognitive reappraisal can either help
or hurt, depending on the context. Psychological Science, 24, 2505–
2514. doi:10.1177/0956797613496434
16 Emotion Review
Troy, A. S., Wilhelm, F. H., Shallcross, A. J., & Mauss, I. B. (2010). Seeing
the silver lining: Cognitive reappraisal ability moderates the relation-
ship between stress and depressive symptoms. Emotion, 10, 783–795.
Tulviste, P. (1991). The cultural-historical development of verbal thinking
(M. J. Hall, Trans.). Hauppauge, NY: Nova Science.
Urry, H. L., & Gross, J. J. (2010). Emotion regulation in older age. Cur-
rent Directions in Psychological Science, 19, 352–357. doi:10.1177
/0963721410388395
Uusberg, A., Naar, R., Tamm, M., Kreegipuu, K., & Gross, J. J. (2018).
Bending time: The role of affective appraisal in time perception. Emo-
tion, 18, 1174–1188. doi:10.1037/emo0000397
Vitaliano, P. P., Russo, J., Carr, J. E., Maiuro, R. D., & Becker, J. (1985).
The Ways of Coping Checklist: Revision and psychometric prop-
erties. Multivariate Behavioral Research, 20, 3–26. doi:10.1207/
s15327906mbr2001_1
Voelkle, M. C., Ebner, N. C., Lindenberger, U., & Riediger, M. (2013).
Here we go again: Anticipatory and reactive mood responses to recur-
ring unpleasant situations throughout adulthood. Emotion, 13, 424–
433. doi:10.1037/a0031351
Webb, T. L., Miles, E., & Sheeran, P. (2012). Dealing with feeling: A meta-
analysis of the effectiveness of strategies derived from the process
model of emotion regulation. Psychological Bulletin, 138, 775–808.
doi:10.1037/a0027600
Webb, T. L., Schweiger Gallo, I., Miles, E., Gollwitzer, P. M., & Sheeran,
P. (2012). Effective regulation of affect: An action control perspective
on emotion regulation. European Review of Social Psychology, 23,
143–186. doi:10.1080/10463283.2012.718134
Weber, H., de Assunção, V. L., Martin, C., Westmeyer, H., & Geisler, F. C.
(2014). Reappraisal inventiveness: The ability to create different reap-
praisals of critical situations. Cognition and Emotion, 28, 345–360. doi
:10.1080/02699931.2013.832152
Weisz, J. R., McCabe, M. A., & Dennig, M. D. (1994). Primary and second-
ary control among children undergoing medical procedures: Adjust-
ment as a function of coping style. Journal of Consulting and Clinical
Psychology, 62, 324–332. doi:10.1037/0022-006X.62.2.324
Williams, C., & Garland, A. (2002). Identifying and challenging unhelpful
thinking. Advances in Psychiatric Treatment, 8, 377–386. doi:10.1192/
apt.8.5.377
Yang, Y., Read, S. J., & Miller, L. C. (2009). The concept of situa-
tions. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 3, 1018–1037.
doi:10.1111/j.1751-9004.2009.00236.x
Yih, J., Uusberg, A., Taxer, J. L., & Gross, J. J. (2019). Better together: A
unified perspective on appraisal and emotion regulation. Cognition and
Emotion, 33, 41–47. doi:10.1080/02699931.2018.1504749
Zaki, J., & Williams, W. C. (2013). Interpersonal emotion regulation. Emo-
tion, 13, 803–810. doi:10.1037/a0033839
