Dealing with feeling: A meta-analysis of the effectiveness of strategies derived from the process model of emotion regulation
Webb, Miles and Sheeran combined 306 experimental comparisons of emotion regulation strategies, coded under the process model of emotion regulation. Cognitive change, the family that includes cognitive reappraisal, had a small to medium effect; attentional deployment had no overall effect, with distraction helping a little and concentrating on the situation working slightly against people; response modulation had a small effect. Effects on physiological measures were smaller than effects on self-reported experience.
Webb, Miles and Sheeran combined 306 experimental comparisons of emotion regulation strategies, coded under the process model of emotion regulation. Cognitive change, the family that includes cognitive reappraisal, had a small to medium effect; attentional deployment had no overall effect, with distraction helping a little and concentrating on the situation working slightly against people; response modulation had a small effect. Effects on physiological measures were smaller than effects on self-reported experience.
Written from the abstract and repository summary, 2026-09-ingest record in the Cognitive Reappraisal concept note; full text not read.
What our sources record
Recorded when this source was checked, figures included, with page references and quotation marks removed.
Webb, T. L., Miles, E., & Sheeran, P. (2012). Dealing with feeling: A meta-analysis of the effectiveness of strategies derived from the process model of emotion regulation. Psychological Bulletin, 138(4), 775-808. doi:10.1037/a0027600 https://doi.org/10.1037/a0027600