Why we have emotions at all is an age-old question. But why people manage emotions in certain ways and the effects that has on mental health has recently become a popular area of study. When it comes to emotion and motivation, what motivates people to attempt to modify or manage their emotions?
Emotion regulation is thought of as the automatic or effortful methods humans use to manage our emotional reactions. This regulation can occur in general and in response to large-scale stressors. As a basic tenet, much of the reason people regulate emotions is to meet both personal needs and social demands. We are social creatures, after all.
So why do people suppress emotions when it might help to express them? Why do people ruminate on relationship difficulties if they could approach their partner about what’s bothering them? The mental health field has traditionally viewed reasons we regulate emotion through the lens of “hedonic motives”. That is, the way we regulate emotions is based on what helps us maximize pleasure and avoid pain. But like so many things in mental health, the reason we regulate emotions is not so cut-and-dry (surprising, I know…).
Recent research on emotion and motivation
An impressive series of studies by social psychologist Maya Tamir finds there are many reasons people regulate their emotions. Many of these reasons center around individuals’ desire to regulate their emotions to help facilitate their social or emotional goals.
People are often willing to or even want to experience more difficult emotions in the interest of these aims. Sometimes people just want to feel upset or annoyed or angry. This is not to blame the victim. Research views this motivation as a very natural human response that often occurs automatically as a learned behavior. Certain patterns of emotion and motivation reinforce emotion regulation over time depending on context.
What this emotion and motivation research means for therapy
This research provides guidance for therapy. Many of these patterns involve some pay-off or “function”. For example, sometimes an individual may want to experience annoyance toward a romantic partner because doing so leads the partner to attempt to make repairs and facilitate closeness. (The long-term viability of this behavior would depend on many factors.) In this case, therapy can help that individual find more helpful ways to communicate. “I’m annoyed, but please give me some space and I will recover.”
Or an individual may continue to experience deep longing and prolonged grief by continuing to look at pictures of a lost loved for long periods each night. But doing so functions to provide a feeling of closeness and presence with the person lost. Therefore, using approaches like behavioral activation can help this grieving individual find a sense of self otherwise filled by the loss.
Patterns of continued substance abuse despite multiple negative life impacts also provides a set of examples for how people are motivated to feel depending on their context. It shows why Motivational Interviewing is effective in helping clients shine light on contradictory outcomes to help them determine their readiness to work for true behavior change.
Tamir’s research provides strong evidence that the reasons people regulate emotions are not so straightforward. This also accounts for why we see many clients experience difficulty changing unhealthy behaviors they realize work against their values.
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