The study of Emotional Expression has a long history, which dates back to the 1870s with scientific investigations undergone by Charles Darwin (Darwin, 1872). Darwin’s work emphasized the biological utility of emotional expression. Thus, it contributed to the development of an evolutionary-expressive approach to emotion, which suggests that emotion exists because it contributes to survival (Oatley, 1992). Emotional expression, emotional experience and emotional arousal have been conceptualised as three primary components of emotion (Kennedy-Moore & Watson, 1999), with emotional reflection as a secondary component, involving thoughts about the three primary components. They regard emotional expression as having four central functions, the promotion of arousal regulation, self-understanding, the development of coping skills and finally, to help improve interpersonal relationships. In 1999, Kennedy Moore and Watson defined emotional expression as: “observable verbal and nonverbal behaviours that communicate and / or symbolise emotional experience. Expression can occur with or without self-awareness. It is at least somewhat controllable, and it can involve varying degrees of deliberate intent.”
Gross’s work highlights the importance of being able to successfully regulate one’s emotions. Common regulation strategies include cognitive reappraisal, which involves interpreting a situation in positive terms, and expressive suppression, which involves inhibiting overt signs of inner emotional states. His research, proposes that reappraisal decreases both emotional experience and behavioural expression, whilst having no impact on memory. However in contrast, suppression decreases behavioural expression but not emotional experience, whilst actually impairing memory. Thus Gross (2002), suggests that some emotion regulation strategies are more preferable in different situations, than others. His 1998 process model of emotional regulation suggested that emotion may be regulated at five points in the emotion generative process (Gross, 1998) http://www-psych.stanford.edu/~james
Emotional Expression: A Positive or Negative?
Emotional behaviour can be said to play an important role in individual adjustment, social interaction and therapeutic success. It is clear that neither expression, nor nonexpression, is universally beneficial. Equally obvious is that neither is universally problematic. No rules exist that instruct when one should use expression and how much. The presence, and amount, of expression or nonexpression depends heavily of individual characteristics and environment. It is the degree to which one can integrate their thinking and feeling that far exceeds the importance of how much one does, or does not express themselves (Kennedy-Moore & Watson, 1999).
Emotional Expression in Relationships
Emotional expression is necessary for the development of “emotional intimacy” (Kennedy-Moore & Watson, 1999). However, it can be risky. In 1992, Pennebaker explained how three weeks after the San Francisco earthquake of 1989, while 80% of the local residents said how they wanted to talk about the quake, less than 60% actually wanted to hear about it. The relationship between expression of emotion and well-being is particularly complex. For example, some couples feel better after expressing their anger towards each other, as they experience greater satisfaction through managing to resolve their conflict (Kennedy-Moore & Watson, 1999). However in other cases, this expression of anger makes couples feel worse, as they end up firing hurtful remarks at each other, which are aimed to hurt, rather than resolve any issues. Emotion Focused Therapy, which was first introduced by Johnson and Greenberg in the early eighties, has recently been suggested to be “…one of the most major advances in marital and family therapy in the last decade” (Journal of Marital and Family Therapy). It is a short term structured approach to couples therapy, which has been split into nine stages (Johnson & Greenberg, 1994). It works on initiating new ways of interacting between partners.
Emotional Processing and Emotional Expression
Our model of emotional processing (Baker, Thomas, Thomas & Owens, 2003) [Link to Emotional Processing Model] assumes in common with many other models (Gross, 1998; Pennebaker, 1995; Kennedy-Moore & Watson, 1999; Greenberg & Safran, 1987) that the drive to emotionally express oneself, is a natural physiological response to distress. Emotional expression for some theorists (Frijda, 1986; 1987) is seen as crucial behaviour, which acts on the environment to achieve certain goals and as such, is the rationale for emotions. Others, like Gross (1998) and Pennebaker (1995), regard emotional expression as physiologically important in reducing distress, or reducing arousal connected with negative emotional experience.
Emotional expression can be seen as an important component of emotional processing. However, there are a number of other necessary components as well. These include registering, appraisal and memorizing of events, replaying memories, the role of emotional and cognitive schemas in interpreting events, strength and meaning of the event for the individual, unconscious mechanisms, such as repression (keeping the emotion out of awareness) or dissociation (cutting the memory off from consciousness) and lastly, labeling and linking emotional experiences to the triggering event. All of which, can be thought of as different components involved in experiencing and dealing with emotions. Emotional processing is not any one component per se but it is concerned with how all of these various components interplay in converting an emotionally distressing experience, into a non-distressing one.
