Have you ever tried to cheer yourself up when you’re feeling down, or calm yourself when you’re feeling angry? If so, you have engaged in emotion regulation. The central idea behind emotion regulation is to identify and modify the emotions you feel. Recent research suggests that emotion management ability is a strong predictor of task performance for some jobs and for organizational citizenship behavior (OCB).

As you might suspect, not everyone is equally good at regulating emotions. Individuals who are higher in the personality trait of neuroticism have more trouble doing so and often find their moods are beyond their ability to control. Individuals who have lower levels of self-esteem are also less likely to try to improve their sad moods, perhaps because they are less likely than others to feel they deserve to be in a good mood.

The workplace environment influences an individual’s tendency to employ emotion regulation. In general, diversity in work groups increases the likelihood that you will regulate your emotions. One technique of emotion regulation is emotional suppression, or suppressing initial emotional responses to situations. This response seems to facilitate practical thinking in the short term. Mindfulness has started to become popular in organizations.