Putting emotion regulation in context

In this commentary, we discuss the 19 review articles that encompass this Special Issue of Current Opinion in Psychology on the topic of Emotion Regulation. Given the growing recognition of the importance of contextual factors in determining how emotions are experienced and regulated (1), we adopt a contextual framework to organize our commentary. To that end, we discuss how each of the topics covered in the articles fit within the four contextual components of emotion regulation: (1) characteristics of the organism carrying out the regulation; (2) features of the emotion-eliciting stimuli and/or situations; (3) implementation of regulatory processes; and (4) types of outcomes. We then provide recommendations for future research. We hope that this Special Issue, and the future directions discussed in this commentary, can stimulate further research in the already fast growing area of emotion regulation and context.