Achievement Emotions: A Process Model of Emotion Regulation

• In Event: Turning That Frown Upside Down: Emotion Regulation in Achievement Settings

Abstract

Achievement emotions are critical because of their impact on success and failure in important domains such as learning and academic achievement (Pekrun, Lichtenfeld, Marsh, Murayama, & Goetz, 2017; Pekrun & Linnenbrink-Garcia, 2014). The emotions we experience in achievement situations can both help and hinder performance. It is therefore in our best interest to make efforts to regulate (i.e., attempt to control) these emotions. Emotion regulation (ER) refers to conscious or unconscious attempts people make to influence which emotions they have, when they have them, and how they express and experience them (Gross, 2015). There are a variety of ways we can regulate emotions, though not all are equally effective or equally feasible. However, little research has been conducted to date on the regulation of achievement emotions, and ER has not been a focal point of major theories related to achievement emotions, such as the control-value theory (CVT; Pekrun, 2006; Pekrun & Perry, 2014) which focuses on emotion generation. Moreover, while the dominant process model of ER (Gross, 1998, 2015) provides a domain-general account of different ER strategies, it has not had substantial contact with the CVT and achievement emotion literature to date. In this presentation we propose a process model of achievement ER to overcome the current fragmentation of these literatures and provide a coherent set of new and integrative propositions to guide research on the regulation of achievement emotions. The integrated model will also be used to organize and discuss the existing literature on academic achievement ER.
The creation of the process model of achievement ER involved summarizing key propositions of the CVT and process model of ER and then identifying opportunities for integrating and extending these propositions. An accompanying comprehensive literature search was conducted in PsycINFO and ERIC databases to identify studies addressing ER in academic achievement contexts. Keywords were used to identify studies related to the regulation of emotions (e.g., emotion regulation, coping, attribution* retraining) in academic achievement situations (e.g., learn*, study, test). Keywords had to appear in the title, the keywords or the abstract of the study.
The process model of achievement ER integrates propositions about the generation of achievement emotions from CVT (Pekrun, 2006; appraisals of control and value; object foci) with domain-general propositions about how emotions are regulated (e.g., identification and selection stages of ER) and the types of ER strategies available (e.g., situation selection and modification, cognitive change) from the process model of ER (Gross, 2015). Our model also highlights how different achievement situations (e.g., test-taking vs. studying), object foci and time frames, as well as discrete emotions with different CV appraisal patterns will impact the appropriateness and effectiveness of major ER strategies. ER in academic achievement contexts is an emerging area of research that needs more attention, as indicated by the results of our literature search that identified only 52 studies (published between 1975 and 2016). Our integrated model stands to provide much needed guidance and direction for this important, but nascent field of inquiry.

Authors

• Jason Matthew Harley, University of Alberta

• Reinhard Pekrun, University of Essex

• Jamie Taxer, Stanford University

• James J Gross, Stanford University