Beyond Hedonism : Broadening the Scope of Affect Regulation

One principle which recent work in social psychology has continued to emphasize is that behavior is goal-directed (cf. Gollwitzer & Bargh, 1996). Given that moods and emotions powerfully influence so many different aspects ofour lives, it is no surprise that affect regulation is an important goal. Our basic assumption throughout this literature has been that people are motivated to feel good, so that they engage in mood-maintenance efforts when they are already in a positive mood, but engage in mood repair when in a negative mood. The simple picture painted by this general mood-management perspective is that people should attempt to regulate their affect by pursuing activities that make them feel positive. What the target articles emphasize is that this process of affect regulation is more complicated than has been previously assumed, leading to some provocative insights and developments. The target articles share the perspective that mood regulation can be brought into a more general self-regulation framework. Our discussion focuses on how such a perspective yields two important proposItions, both of which move us beyond a simple hedonistic principle. First, constraints may be placed on the pursuit of positive mood states. For example, the operation of other self-regulation goals beyond mood regulation, as well as individual differences in desired affective states, may in part determine the goal of mood-regulation efforts. Second, recent models of self-regulation emphasize that underlying motives determine how goals are pursued and the consequences of goal attainment or failure. We discuss each of these points and provide some further evidence for their importance in understanding mood regulation.