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J Camosun Psyc Res. (2021). Vol. 3(1), pp. 16-22.
Submitted Fall 2020; accepted July 2021.

How Can You Gain Better Emotional Control?
Authors: Dike Gu*
Supervising Instructor & Assistant: Michael Pollock & Kristina Andrew, Psyc 110
(“Experimental Psychology”)
Department of Psychology, Camosun College, 3100 Foul Bay Road, Victoria, BC, Canada V8P 5J2
*Corresponding author email: gudike0523@gmail.com

ABSTRACT
In this paper, I looked at methods to improve emotional control in order to maximize
happiness. Previous studies have shown that reappraisal, reward, and exercise can help us gain
more emotional control, which may lead to greater happiness. In my correlational study, I tested
the strength of these relationships by examining naturalistic daily changes in their variables
longitudinally over a two-week period. I estimated reappraisal use by rating how often I
reframed negative thoughts, measured retail therapy by recording the number of items I
purchased, measured exercise as the total number of minutes spent exercising, and finally
measured emotional control by rating my mood on scale each day. The data collected in my
research show that emotional control is significantly correlated with reassessment and exercise,
but not with retail shopping.
1. Introduction

1.1 Research Problem
Not having control over your emotions
can lead to outbursts, high-stress, and anger.
In contrast, good emotional control can
make our bodies healthier. Also, when
people have poor emotional control it may
cause problems in their relationships with
other people. Therefore, understanding how
to improve emotional control may help
people have better interpersonal
relationships. Since having a wide range of
emotions makes it difficult to know how to
manage them, I wish to learn how to
improve emotional control so that I can
maximize happiness.

1.2 Literature Review
One of the factors previously found to
predict emotional control is cognitive
emotion regulation, specifically reappraisal.
Davis et al. (2015) studied a sample of 5and 6-year-old children in a rural area of the
northeast of the United States. The children
were randomly assigned to three groups,
each group watching two edited movies
(film order: sadness-fear or fear-sadness).
Before watching the film, the children were
each given one of three training sessions. In
the first training session, the children were
asked to carefully watch what happened in
the film and were told that they would have
questions to answer when it was over
(control condition). In the second training
session, children were told that if they feel
sad while watching a movie, they can think
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about things that make them happy, such as
eating ice cream (distraction condition). In
the third training session, children were
asked to tell themselves that the movie didn't
really happen and that it's no big deal when
they were afraid or sad (reappraisal
condition). The results showed that children
who watched sad or horror movies before
any training experienced more negative
feelings than after the reappraisal training.
This means that reappraisal may be an
effective way to adjust one's emotional
control in terms of cognitive direction of
views or attitudes towards things.
Another way to improve mood is for
people to engage in specific tasks to cheer
themselves up. Ataley et al. (2011)
specifically looked at retail therapy as a
method to improve emotional control.
Atalay et al. (2011) conducted a random
sample survey at a shopping mall in the
Northeast. Respondents were asked to fill in
a short survey report before shopping that
asked them to describe their mood at that
time, such as "at present, I am in a good
mood" and "at this moment, I feel irritable".
Comparing the pre-purchase and post
purchase lists, 63% of customers bought
unplanned items, which they thought made
them feel better. According to their analysis,
the emotional value of consumers after retail
treatment increased by a significant amount.
As a result, people in a bad mood are more
likely to engage in retail therapy, which
involves buying small gifts to reward
themselves. Therefore, current research
shows that retail therapy may be a good way
to improve people's mood.
Also, exercise is a good way to control
your mood. Zhang et al. (2019) conducted a
sample survey of sixty female graduate
students from a university in Beijing, China.
The subjects were those who had no or less
exercise experience. They were divided into
two groups: one group was given an aerobic

intervention while the other was given a
mindfulness (yoga, meditation) intervention.
They offered forty minutes of aerobic
exercise three times a week for eight weeks,
alternating with sixty minutes of yoga. After
eight weeks of the experiment, the implicit
emotion regulation ability of the subjects
was significantly improved. There was no
significant change in mindfulness
intervention group. This study confirmed the
effect of exercise intervention on the
regulation of endogenous emotion. Eight
weeks of physical and mental exercise
intervention did improve positive emotions.
Therefore, exercise is one of the ways to
improve mood.
1.3 Hypotheses
Based on the above literature review, I
predicted the following hypotheses:
1. If reappraisal increases then
emotional control will improve.
2. If retail shopping increases then
emotional control will improve.
3. If exercise increases then emotional
control will improve.
2. Methods
2.1 Participants
The author of this paper served as the
sole participant in this study. The participant
was a 30 years old woman and
undergraduate student at Camosun College
who completed the current study as an
assignment for Psyc 110 (“Experimental
Psychology”). The participant did not suffer
from any disorders of emotional control and
experienced normal levels of emotional
control during this study.
2.2 Materials and Procedure
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I performed a correlational study to test
concurrently all of my hypotheses by
examining naturalistic daily changes in their
variables longitudinally. I kept a study
journal with me at all times over this study’s
two-week period in order to record selfobservations of the following four variables:
(1) reappraisal, (2) retail shopping, (3)
exercise, and (4) degree of emotional
control.
In order to measure reappraisal in the
current study, the participant was asked to
rate the number of times they reframed a
problem or situation that bothered them each
day on a scale of 1-7. Reframing was
defined as thinking about a problem or
situation in a way that minimizes the stress
or negative thinking associated with the
problem or situation. For example, the initial
thought of “I’m not going to pass my test”
could be reframed as “I passed my last test,
so I’ll probably pass this test.” The
following response anchors were used for
this scale: 0 = did not reframe any of my
negative thoughts, 3 = occasionally reframed
my negative thoughts, 5 = often reframed
my negative thoughts, and 7 = reframed all
my negative thoughts. Using the scale, the
participant recorded a score for each day in
their research journal before going to bed.
To measure retail shopping, the
participant was asked to record the number
of items they bought in a physical store and
the number of times they visited online
shopping websites (e.g. Amazon) every day
of the study. The participant added the total
number of items purchased each day with
the number of times they visited online
shopping websites each day to calculate a
single retail shopping score for each day and
this score was recorded in their research
journal. If the participant did not purchase
anything on a certain day or visit any online

shopping websites, the participant recorded
a zero for that day.
To measure aerobic exercise, the
participant recorded the amount of time they
spent doing aerobic exercise each day in
their research journal. Total time the
participant spent doing aerobic exercise
(e.g., walking, running, swimming, etc.)
each day was recorded in minutes.
To measure the degree of emotional
control, the participant rated their general
emotional state on a scale of 1 to 5 every
day of the study before going to bed. The
participant was asked to reflect on how they
were feeling at bedtime and then record their
emotion rating for that day in their research
journals. The following values were used in
this emotional scale: 1 = very unhappy, 2 =
slightly unhappy, 3 = neutral, 4 = slightly
happy, and 5 = very happy.
To assess the strength and statistical
significance of associations between
variables predicted by my three hypotheses,
I performed Pearson product moment
correlations of my predictor variables
(reappraisal, retail shopping, and exercise)
with my outcome variable (degree of
emotional control). For testing hypothesis
#1, reappraisal ratings were correlated with
emotional control ratings. Foe testing
hypothesis #2, I correlated the number of
purchases made per day and the number of
times shopping websites were visited with
emotional control ratings. For testing
hypothesis #3, the amount of aerobic
exercise was correlated with emotional
control ratings. A correlation coefficient was
considered statistically significant if the
probability of its random occurrence (p) was
< .05 (i.e., less than 5% of the time expected
by chance alone).
3. Results

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As shown in Table 1, emotional control
was significantly correlated with only
exercise and not with reappraisal or retail
shopping. There was no significant
correlation between participants' reappraisal
and emotional control (r =. 15, p =. 06; see
Figure 1). Similarly, there was no significant
correlation between retail shopping and
emotional control (r = -. 35, p =. 22; see
Figure 2). In contrast, exercise was
significantly associated with emotional
control (r = 0.71, p = 0.002; see Figure 3).
4. Discussion
4.1 Summary of Results
Based on previous research, I
hypothesized that the increase of three
variables would lead to better emotional
control: reappraisal (Hypothesis #1), retail
shopping (Hypothesis #2), and exercise
(Hypothesis #3). The data collected in my
research supported the relationship between
emotional control and exercise (Hypothesis
#3), but did not between emotional control
and support reassessment or retail shopping
(Hypotheses #1 and #2).
4.2 Relation of Results to Past Research
My research failed to confirm the
relationship between reappraisal and
emotion control. Davis et al. (2015) found
that after reappraisal training, participants'
emotion control ability was significantly
improved. Davis et al. (2015) compared
children's perceptions of sad events with
their perceptions of problems. In contrast, I
evaluated the use of reappraisal by assessing
how often I reflect on negative thoughts
every day. This difference in methodology
could possibly account for the discrepancy
in results between the two studies.

My research also failed to confirm
the relationship between retail shopping and
emotional control. Ataley et al. (2011)
conducted a survey of randomly sampled
respondents to fill in a survey report before
and after shopping to evaluate whether the
respondents improved their emotional
control through retail purchase. In contrast,
as a participant, I don't always find that
retail shopping has an impact on improving
emotional control. In fact, I can improve
emotional control in a short time through
retail shopping several times, but the process
is short and unstable. The other several retail
shopping did not bring too much fluctuation
to my mood, that is to say, the retail
purchase did not improve my emotional
control value. Future research should
examine whether retail shopping can predict
the degree of certain emotional control.
The relationship I found between
exercise and emotional control is consistent
with previous studies. Zhang et al. (2019)
found that regular aerobic exercise can help
improve one's mood. Although Zhang et al.
(2019) manipulated exercise through
running and yoga exercise, my research
included other forms of exercise (rope
skipping and some stretching exercises) and
achieved the same results. This similarity in
findings about the relationship between
regular exercise and emotional control
shows the universality of this relationship.
References
Atalay, A. S., & Meloy, M. G. (2011). Retail
therapy: A strategic effort to improve
mood. Psychology & Marketing, 28(6),
638-659.
Davis, E. L., Quiñones-Camacho, L. E., &
Buss, K. A. (2016). The effects of
distraction and reappraisal on children’s
parasympathetic regulation of sadness
and fear. Journal of Experimental Child
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Psychology, 142, 344–358.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2015.09.02
0
Zhang, Y., Fu, R., Sun, L., Gong, Y., &
Tang, D. (2019). How does exercise
improve implicit emotion regulation

ability: Preliminary evidence of mindbody exercise intervention combined with
aerobic jogging and mindfulness-based
yoga. Frontiers in Psychology, 10.
https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01888

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Table 1
Correlation coefficient (r) values, with number of daily trials (n) per correlation in brackets.

Variables correlated
Reappraisal & degree of emotional control

r(n)
.15(14)

Retail shopping & degree of emotional control

-.35(14)

Exercise & degree of emotional control

.71(14)*

* p < .05.

Figure 1

degree of emotional control (1-5 scale,
1=very unhappy, 5=very happy)

Scatterplot of reappraisal and degree of emotional control.
6
5
4
3
2
1
0
0

1
2
3
4
5
reappraisal (0-7 scale, 0=did not reframe any of my negative thoughts,
7=reframed all my negative thoughts)

6

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Figure 2

degree of emotional control (1-5 scale,
1=very unhappy, 5=very happy)

Scatterplot of retail shopping and degree of emotional control.
6
5
4
3

2
1
0
0

1
2
3
4
5
retail shopping (0-20 scale, 0=No purchases, 20=Purchase more than 20
items)

6

Figure 3

degree of emotional control (1-5 scale,
1=very unhappy, 5=very happy)

Scatterplot of exercise and degree of emotional control.
6
5
4
3
2
1
0
0

10
20
30
40
50
60
exercise (0-60 scale, 0=No exercise, 60=exercise 60 minutes)

70

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