Control-Value Theory: A Dynamic Approach to Self, Emotions, and Emotion Regulation

Abstract

Across life domains, self-appraisals are critically important to understand the dynamics of emotions. Appraisals of one’s competencies, behavioral propensities, past developments, and future prospects shape human emotions, their regulation, and their trajectories over time. In this chapter, I outline how control-value theory (CVT) explains the links between self-appraisals and emotions. More specifically, I focus on developments that transform the original theory into a generalized, dynamic account of self and emotions. In its original version, CVT addressed achievement emotions. The generalized CVT extends the perspective by also considering other types of emotions that are foundational for human development, such as epistemic emotions (e.g., surprise, curiosity, confusion), social emotions (e.g., love, admiration, compassion, contempt, envy), and existential emotions (e.g., hope and fear related to health, life, illness, and death). I first outline how CVT conceptualizes these emotions and how it explains their individual and social origins. Next, I discuss CVT perspectives on how emotions impact essential outcomes, including achievement, well-being, and health, and how emotions, outcomes, and antecedents are linked by reciprocal causation over different timescales. Based on the CVT model of reciprocal causation, I then propose an expanded conception of emotion regulation. Going beyond traditional accounts, this conception addresses the role of the self as a target of regulation—developing one’s competencies, goals, and behavioral dispositions in affectively sound ways is seen as core to healthy emotion regulation. In conclusion, I discuss future directions to further develop CVT and practice to promote emotional flourishing and development.