Emotion Regulation Strategies Questionnaire ERQ

The Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (ERQ) is a standardized emotion regulation measurement tool developed by Stanford University psychology professor James J. Gross in 2003. It measures the frequency of use of the two most representative emotion regulation strategies, cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression. It is currently one of the most widely used emotion regulation measurement tools in the field of psychology worldwide. It is not only suitable for scientific research data collection, but also helps ordinary people quickly identify their own emotion regulation habits.

The first time I used ERQ in practice was when I was doing a general psychological test for freshmen in a university seven years ago. When I was receiving the questionnaire, a little girl grabbed me and asked: "Teacher, the last few questions about 'I control myself not to show emotions' were all very consistent. Is there something wrong with my psychology?" ” I spent almost half an hour explaining to her that day that score is never the criterion for judging "good" or "bad" - this is also the biggest misunderstanding that many people have about ERQ.

It is not without reason that ERQ has been popular for 20 years. Its compilation is completely based on the emotional process model proposed by Gross: Emotions do not appear out of thin air, but are a complete process from when you are exposed to a stimulating situation, to noticing the stimulus, to evaluating the stimulus, and finally generating an emotional response. Cognitive reappraisal belongs to the category of "advance attention regulation", which means that before the emotional response is fully activated, you actively adjust your interpretation of the event. For example, when being scolded by a leader, your first reaction is not "He is targeting me", but "There are indeed loopholes in my plan this time." This is a typical cognitive reappraisal. ； Expressive suppression belongs to "response-focused regulation". It means that your emotions have risen, and you actively suppress your expression, language, and movement expression. For example, if you are so angry that your hands are shaking when you are yelled at, you still say "I'm fine" with the corner of your mouth pulled up. This is expressive suppression. The entire scale has a total of 10 questions, 6 of which test cognitive reappraisal and 4 of which test expression suppression. It is scored on 7 levels from "strongly disagree" to "strongly agree". It is simple to operate and has stable reliability and validity across groups of people. The internal consistency coefficient of the cognitive reappraisal dimension is between 0.79-0.88, and the expression suppression is between 0.68-0.82, which is good enough for non-clinical people.

However, ERQ has been criticized by academic circles in recent years. The most mainstream doubts come from the field of cross-cultural research: in the early years, Western academic circles generally believed that cognitive reappraisal is a "positive regulatory strategy" and expressive suppression is a "negative regulatory strategy", and even directly linked high expressive suppression scores to the risk of anxiety and depression. However, after repeated verification, a psychology team in East Asia found that in a collectivist cultural context, Under the circumstances, expression suppression is often socially adaptive - for example, when relatives urge you to get married during the Chinese New Year, you suppress your thoughts of rebuttal and laugh and laugh. It's not because of internal friction, but because you don't want to upset your elders, and you don't want to create a tense atmosphere in the whole family. Expression suppression in this situation will not only bring no psychological burden, but can also reduce interpersonal conflicts. Many scholars who study emotion regulation believe that the dimension of ERQ is too narrow. After all, in reality, people have many ways to regulate emotions: avoiding bad things directly is situational avoidance, watching short videos to divert attention is attention allocation, and asking friends to complain is catharsis. These strategies are not covered by ERQ, and they are definitely not enough to conduct detailed research on emotion regulation.

When I receive individual consultations, I occasionally ask clients to fill out the ERQ first, not for diagnosis, but to help them see their emotional habits. There was a visitor who worked in Internet operations. After filling out the form, her cognitive reappraisal score was only 3 points (out of 42), and her expressive inhibition score was close to the full score of 28. She was stunned. She said, "I always say that I have a good temper and never quarrel with others. It turns out that I am not good-tempered. I never think about problems from different angles and only hold back." ” Later, our consultation started with adjusting her cognitive reappraisal habits, and the effect was much better than me telling her directly, "Don't suppress your emotions."

But I really want to remind everyone, don’t use the ERQ score as a judgment book. I have seen many psychology enthusiasts who have just started to panic after taking the scale to measure their expressive inhibition score. They feel that sooner or later they will get sick from suppressing it, which is really unnecessary. There is never an "optimal solution" to emotional regulation. For example, if you have just experienced the death of a loved one, if you have to force yourself to use cognitive reappraisal and think, "It's better to go without guilt," it will hinder you from completing the normal grieving process. At this time, even if you just don't want to talk or show your emotions, it's totally fine to temporarily suppress it with expressions. Tools are dead, people are alive.

After all, ERQ is like a small mirror in your bag. If you take it out and look at it, you can see the little emotional habits that you usually don't notice. But it can't tell you whether you are an "emotionally stable and good person", let alone define your mental health level. If you are curious about your own adjustment habits, just find a formal version and take two minutes to fill it out and take a look. Don't worry about the score - after all, when you really encounter something, the adjustment method that makes you comfortable is the best way.