Hedonic and instrumental motives in anger regulation

ABSTRACT—What motivates individuals to regulate their emotions? One answer, which has been highlighted in emotion-regulation research, is that individuals are mo-tivated by short-term hedonic goals (e.g., themotivation to feel pleasure). Another answer, however, is that individu-als are motivated by instrumental goals (e.g., the moti-vation to perform certain behaviors). We suggest that both answers have merit. To demonstrate the role instrumental goals may play in emotion regulation, we pitted short-term hedonic motives and instrumental motives against each other, by testing whether individuals were motivated to experience a potentially useful, albeit unpleasant, emo-tion.We found that (a) individuals preferred activities that would increase their level of anger (but not their level of excitement) when they were anticipating confrontational