Glossary
Suppression (emotion regulation)
What is suppression in emotion regulation?
Expressive suppression, often called emotional suppression, means deliberately inhibiting the outward expression of an emotion while experiencing it. The target is what you show; what you feel may or may not change.
Example of Expressive Suppression
Someone receives distressing news at work and deliberately maintains a calm expression. Their appearance differs from what they are experiencing. You cannot infer the full emotional or cognitive consequences just by looking at them.
Suppression compared with reappraisal
Reappraisal changes how a situation is interpreted; expressive suppression tries to control the visible response. In Gross's 1998 experiment, 120 participants watched a disgusting film. They were instructed to reinterpret it so they would feel nothing, hide their emotional expression, or simply watch.
Both regulation groups showed less emotional expression than the control group. Reappraisal also reduced reported disgust, while suppression increased sympathetic physiological activation. Thus, looking calmer, feeling less disgust, and changing bodily arousal were distinct outcomes. This experiment supports a specific comparison under those instructions; it does not establish that one strategy is best in every social situation.
Habitual suppression
Gross and John's studies associated habitual suppression with less positive emotion and poorer interpersonal functioning and well-being. These were individual-difference associations, not proof that suppressing an emotion in every situation causes harm.
Why it matters
Hiding an emotion and changing the emotion are different goals. The usefulness of a strategy depends on context, culture, and what the person is trying to communicate.