esses of inhibition and executive control. As already noted, this route to
change has been of special interest to cognitive accounts of emotion (Lazarus,
1966, 1982, 1991; Lazarus, Averill, & Opton, 1970). It also has received a
great deal of attention by many developmental psychologists who point out
that emotion regulation changes as individuals acquire complex structures of
emotion knowledge that involve differentiated logical relations that are ex-
plicitly and systematically structured. In the case of logical learning (Pascual-
Leone, 1991), change is based on explicit principles whose mastery depends
on the availability of cognitive resources.
Dynamic Integration Versus Degradation
Although the two modes appear to be based on different processing systems
and may often function in parallel, in actuality they interact in many per-
formances. It is widely assumed that the principle that constrains this interac-
tion is the fact that the two modes of processing share a common processing
mechanism with limited resources. At least, this appears to be true in tasks
that require some kind of emotion or self-regulatory effort (Baumeister,
1989). Hence, a compensatory process comes into play that downregulates
one process as another becomes more resource demanding.
The resulting interaction is captured by a generalization of the Yerkes-
Dodson (1908) law as recently elaborated by Metcalfe and Mischel (1999).
This law postulates a compensatory and curvilinear relationship between
level of activation–arousal on one hand, and the degree to which complex, in-
tegrated behavior is possible (Labouvie-Vief, 2003). The resulting relation-
ship is depicted in Fig. 9.1. Accordingly, when levels of emotional activa-
tion–arousal are low, complex and well-integrated thinking, planning, and
remembering are possible. That is, reality can be described in terms of rela-
- AFFECT OPTIMIZATION AND DIFFERENTIATION 247
FIG. 9.1. Cognitive and behavioral organization and efficiency decrease as
arousal increases beyond an optimal point (Duffy, 1957; Yerkes & Dodson,
1908).