Figure 3.

Affect regulation stages. Affect regulation consist of key decisions that people make, consciously or otherwise, during four stages. At the identification stage, people decide what, if anything, should change about affect. At the selection stage, they decide which affect regulation strategy to use in service of that goal. At the implementation stage, they decide which actions to take as part of the chosen strategy to alter the affect generation process. The monitoring stage consists of iterative updates to the identification, selection and implementation decisions that amounts to a separate decision about whether ongoing efforts should be maintained, switched or stopped.