ABSTRACT
A number of emotion researchers agree that emotions are biologically-based reactions that organize an individual’s responses to important events (e.g., Arnold, 1960; Frijda, 1986; Levenson, 1988; Plutchik, 1980). Although these responses seem to be rather functional in a number of situations (e.g., Damasio,
1994; see the chapters of Bechara and of Stemmler in this volume), people are nevertheless frequently confronted with situations, in which unregulated and uncontrolled emotion responses would not be appropriate to attain individual short-or long-term goals. In addition, emotions are accompanied by feeling states, which signal the individual that something must be changed to attain a desired-mostly a more pleasant-feeling state. Thus, emotion regulation helps to achieve individual goals by modulating and manipulating the original emotion response.
