Emotion Regulation Under Stress: A Social Processing and Memory Perspective

Research on emotion regulation often focuses on cognitively effortful self-regulation strategies, but exposure to stress has been shown to interfere with the underlying mechanisms supporting such processes. Understanding alternative strategies that potentially bolster emotion regulation under stress is an important topic of investigation. Two potential alternatives involve everyday occurrences of social processing and memory recall. Social support and past emotional experiences may help in guiding us toward appropriate neurophysiological responses through overlapping circuitry with stress and reward systems, while also buttressing cognitive regulation strategies by expanding one's perspective and allowing multiple opportunities to regulate retrospectively. In recognition that ongoing social and emotional events are often at the beginning of a cascade of both emotion regulation and memory processes, this chapter focuses on the emerging role of social relationships and autobiographical memory recall in regulating emotions under stress, highlighting opportunities and challenges associated with this process.