Metacognitive Emotion Regulation: Children's Awareness That Changing Thoughts and Goals Can Alleviate Negative Emotions

Metacognitive emotion regulation strategies involve deliberately changing thoughts or goals to alleviate negative emotions. Adults commonly engage in this type of emotion regulation, but little is known about the developmental roots of this ability. Two studies were designed to assess whether 5- and...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Emotion (Washington, D.C.) D.C.), 2010-08, Vol.10 (4), p.498-510
Main Authors: Davis, Elizabeth L, Levine, Linda J, Lench, Heather C, Quas, Jodi A
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Affectivity. Emotion
Age Factors
Biological and medical sciences
Child
Child development
Child, Preschool
Developmental psychology
Emotional Intelligence
Emotional Regulation
Emotions
Female
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Goals
Human
Humans
Male
Metacognition
Personality. Affectivity
Psychology, Child
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Sex Factors
Thinking
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Summary:Metacognitive emotion regulation strategies involve deliberately changing thoughts or goals to alleviate negative emotions. Adults commonly engage in this type of emotion regulation, but little is known about the developmental roots of this ability. Two studies were designed to assess whether 5- and 6-year-old children can generate such strategies and, if so, the types of metacognitive strategies they use. In Study 1, children described how story protagonists could alleviate negative emotions. In Study 2, children recalled times that they personally had felt sad, angry, and scared and described how they had regulated their emotions. In contrast to research suggesting that young children cannot use metacognitive regulation strategies, the majority of children in both studies described such strategies. Children were surprisingly sophisticated in their suggestions for how to cope with negative emotions and tailored their regulatory responses to specific emotional situations.
ISSN:1528-3542
1931-1516
DOI:10.1037/a0018428