Managing What You Feel
Emotional intelligence (EI), formalized by Peter Salovey and John Mayer and later popularized by Daniel Goleman, describes a set of abilities for perceiving, understanding, and managing emotions — both one's own and other people's. The Salovey-Mayer model breaks EI into four related abilities: perceiving emotions (accurately reading emotional cues, in faces, tone, or context), understanding emotions (grasping causes, consequences, and how emotions change or combine over time), using emotions to facilitate thought (harnessing emotional states to support reasoning, creativity, or decision-making), and managing emotions (regulating one's own emotional responses, and influencing others' emotions appropriately).
That final ability, emotion regulation, has been studied in particular depth by psychologist James Gross, who compared two common regulation strategies. Reappraisal involves cognitively reframing a situation before an emotional response fully develops (e.g. interpreting a rejection as "not a good fit" rather than "a personal failure") — research generally finds this strategy is associated with better long-term psychological and even physiological outcomes. Suppression instead involves masking or inhibiting the outward EXPRESSION of an emotion after it has already arisen (e.g. keeping a neutral face while inwardly upset) — this strategy tends to be LESS effective, often leaving the internal physiological arousal largely intact (or even increased) while adding the extra cognitive effort of maintaining the mask.
| Strategy | When it acts | Typical effectiveness |
|---|---|---|
| Reappraisal | Before the emotional response fully forms | Generally more effective, better outcomes |
| Suppression | After the emotion has already arisen | Generally less effective; effort without much relief |
| EI ability | What it involves |
|---|---|
| Perceiving emotions | Accurately reading emotional cues |
| Understanding emotions | Grasping causes and consequences |
| Using emotions | Harnessing emotion to support thought |
| Managing emotions | Regulating one's own and others' emotional responses |
Common pitfall: assuming suppression is simply "self-control" and therefore healthy. Suppression specifically targets the outward EXPRESSION of an already-formed emotion, which tends to leave the internal arousal largely unresolved — reappraisal, by intervening EARLIER, before the emotion fully forms, tends to be the more effective regulation strategy.