Emotional regulation: definitions and conceptual advances from a behavioral perspective

Abstract

Emotional Regulation (ER) is a concept which lately is becoming relevant in different areas of applied psychology, due to its role in the functioning of individuals in several settings. Behavioral psychology has approached this concept from two therapeutic perspectives: cognitive-behavior therapy and clinical analysis of behavior. The first one is based on mediational aspects to explain it, and the second uses concepts from the analysis of behavior. The differences between how this phenomenon is explained in a behaviorism approach derive two main problems: (a) there is not a unified definition of emotional regulation, and (b) the explicatory mechanisms are uncertain. We have referred that it is important reviewing the conceptual bases of this expression and developing researches on processes that explain it.