Regulating Collective Emotions

When we think of emotion and emotion regulation, we typically think of them as processes occurring at the individual level. Even when emotions are experienced by multiple people who interact with each other, analysis is typically centered around individual-level processes. Recently, however, there is a growing realization that there is unique value in examining emotions not only at the individual, micro-level, but also at the collective, macro-level. These macro-level emotions are often called collective emotions (Goldenberg, Garcia, Halperin, & Gross, 2020), and they represent the aggregation of emotions of a certain collective in response to a specific situation as it unfolds over time. Research on collective emotions has received increased attention in the past few years as part of a broader realization that macro psychological processes such as collective memory (Vlasceanu et al., 2018), collective attention (Shteynberg, 2015) and collective intelligence (Woolley et al., 2010) can capture unique aspects of social behavior and therefore deserve specific attention. Thus far, however, growing research on collective emotion has focused on emotion generation, paying almost no attention to whether and to what extent collective emotions can be regulated. The current chapter represents an attempt to explore the concept of collective emotion regulation. In light of the lack of existing empirical on this topic I have four goals in this paper. First, to define collective emotion regulation. Second, to define the notion of collective emotion. Third, to review some of the strategies in which collective emotion can be regulated. Fourth, to discuss important future directions for research on collective emotion regulation.