antecedent-focused emotion regulation
in the process model of emotion regulation, a form of emotion regulation in which one faced with a potentially emotional situation attempts to reappraise it in a way that decreases its emotional relevance. For example, reappraising an upcoming task as a challenge rather than as a threat, or thinking of an upcoming medical procedure as beneficial rather than painful, can reduce one’s subjective emotional experience of the actual event. Thus, reappraisal as antecedent to the event can, if effective, preempt full-blown emotional responses to it. Compare response-focused emotion regulation. [proposed in 1998 by U.S. clinical psychologist James J. Gross]