Choosing to Regulate Emotions: Pursuing Emotion Goals in Autonomy-Supportive and Controlling Contexts.

We applied self-determination theory to emotion regulation and tested the potential effects of autonomy-supportive and controlling contexts on the pursuit of emotion goals. In four experimental studies ( = 242), participants viewed a fear-eliciting film clip or emotion-eliciting pictures and were prompted to pursue emotion goals with either autonomy-supportive or controlling instructions. Participants in both conditions were equally likely to engage in emotion regulation when directly instructed to do so.