Psychological topics, Vol. 13. No. 1., 2004.
Review article
Emotional control and health
Kristina Dankić
Abstract
In the last few years, particular attention is dedicated to emotional control in the context of research on the relationship between personality and reaction to stress. Roger and Nesshoever (1987) define the construct of emotional control as a general tendency in the inhibition of the expression of emotional reactions. In order to make it possible to measure emotional control, the authors Roger and Nesshoever (1987; according to Roger and Najarian, 1989) created the Emotion Control Questionnaire (ECQ). This questionnaire was initially developed in the content of a program aimed at researching the role of personality in the relation between stress and disease, and in the context of research on individual differences in reacting to stressful situations. ECQ inquires into four aspects of emotional control, called rehearsal (which measures the tendency to ruminate about emotional distress), emotional inhibition (which refers to the inhibition of past emotions, the maintenance of emotional expression), aggressiveness control (which refers to the expression of aggressive responses) and benign control (which indicates the control of impulses that are not aggressive by nature). The conclusion of the research on the relationship between the said dimensions of emotional control, stress and health, which was conducted by Lok and Bishop (1999) reads as follows: the inhibition of emotions does not necessarily have to be unhealthy, as suggested in previous research. That is, it seems that it can be adaptive at least in certain cases.
Keywords
emotional control; physical health; mental health
Hrčak ID:
12645
URI
Publication date:
20.12.2004.
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