Abstract
Purpose
The emotion regulation research has drawn considerable attention from academicians and scholars in the contemporary world. As a result, the publications that are specifically dedicated to emotion regulation research are rapidly escalating. Therefore, this study aims to conduct a bibliometric analysis of research articles that have been published in the field of “emotion regulation.” The study primarily examines the growth and development of scholarly publications, seminal studies, influential authors, productive journals, research production and collaboration among countries, emerging research themes, research hotspots and thematic evolution of emotion regulation research.
Design/methodology/approach
The Web of Science Core Collection database was used to gather the study’s data, which was then analysed using VOSviewer and Bibliometrix, Biblioshiney open-source package of the R language environment.
Findings
The study’s results reveal that the research on emotion regulation has grown significantly over the last three decades. Notably, Emotion and Frontiers in Psychology are the most dominant and productive journals in the field of emotion regulation research. The most prominent author in the area of emotion regulation is identified as James Gross, followed by Gratz, Wang and Tull. The USA is at the forefront of research on emotion regulation and has collaborated with most of the developed countries like Germany, England and Canada. The keyword analysis revealed that the most potential research areas in the field of emotion regulation are functional magnetic resonance imaging, amygdala, post-traumatic stress disorder, borderline personality disorder, alexithymia, emotion dysregulation, depression, anxiety, functional connectivity, neuroimaging, mindfulness, self-regulation, resilience and coping. The thematic evolution reflects that the research on emotion regulation has recently focused on issues including Covid-19, non-suicidal self-injury, psychological distress, intimate partner violence and mental health.
Originality/value
The results of this study highlighted the current knowledge gaps in emotion regulation research and suggested areas for further investigation. The present study could be useful for researchers, academicians, planners, publishers and universities engaged in emotion regulation research.
Keywords
Citation
Rahaman, S., Govil, P., Khan, D. and Jevremov, T.D. (2024), "A 30-year bibliometric assessment and visualisation of emotion regulation research: applying network analysis and cluster analysis", Information Discovery and Delivery, Vol. 52 No. 1, pp. 85-100. https://doi.org/10.1108/IDD-11-2022-0110
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2023, Emerald Publishing Limited
Introduction
The field of developmental psychology is the one that pioneered the concept of emotion regulation (McRae and Gross, 2020). Fernández-Álvarez et al. (2018) defined emotion regulation as “the processes deployed by an individual or group of individuals to explicitly or implicitly influence the experienced emotions in order to achieve desirable states or goals”. Nowadays, emotion regulation is considered as one of the fastest-growing fields of psychology (Gross, 2015; Tamir, 2011), as evidenced by earlier research works on psychological stress, coping (Lazarus,1966), cognitive (Miu and Crisan, 2011), behavioural approach (Bargh and Williams, 2007), clinical (Webb et al., 2012); developmental (Thompson, 2014), biological (Hartley and Phelps, 2010), social (Schmader et al., 2008), personality (Mayer and Salovey, 1995) and health (DeSteno et al., 2013).
The past three decades have witnessed an unprecedented growth in emotion regulation research (Moore et al., 2022; Fernández-Álvarez et al., 2018). This proliferation of research has rendered the field of emotion regulation as one of the most intellectually stimulating and dynamic areas in the realm of psychology. Conspicuously, as the volume of emotion regulation research continues to expand, it becomes increasingly important to synthesize and integrate the plethora of findings and insights to inform the direction of future research. Furthermore, the multidisciplinary nature of emotion regulation research, which spans the domains of clinical, personality, social, developmental psychology as well as cognitive and affective neurosciences and psychophysiology (McRae and Gross, 2020; Gross, 2015), only further accentuates the need to measure, monitor, assess and comprehend the field of emotion regulation. In this regard, bibliometric analysis can play a pivotal role in providing valuable insights into the current state of emotion regulation research.
Bibliometric analysis is a rigorous method for delving into and deciphering vast amounts of scientific knowledge. It allows us to disclose the evolutionary nuances of a particular discipline and identify research trends, hotspots and areas that require further exploration (Donthu et al., 2021). Recently, many scholars (Dong et al., 2022; Guo et al., 2022; Lin et al., 2022; Fei et al., 2022; Nie et al., 2022; Rong et al., 2022; Wu et al., 2022; Yang et al., 2022; Wang et al., 2021; Yeung, 2018) investigated various sub-disciplines of psychology through bibliometric techniques to assess research performance, uncover emerging research trends and themes, identify research gaps and trace the evolution and development of knowledge within the fields.
In this direction, the literature review indicates that Ribero et al. (2013) and Fernández-Álvarez et al. (2018) examined emotion regulation from the lens of bibliometric techniques. However, both the studies ignored an in-depth keyword analysis, citation analysis, cluster analysis and thematic analysis, which are essential to identify research trends, emerging research themes, research hotspots, and research gaps, as well as for tracing the structure, evolution and development of knowledge in the field of emotion regulation. Given these limitations, it may be reported that these studies could not capture a comprehensive picture of emotion regulation research. To fill this research gap, we decided to conduct a bibliometric study in the field of emotion regulation. The present study:
analysed the impact and productivity of authors, journals, institutions, and countries engaged in emotion regulation research;
disclosed the highly cited studies (seminal work) in the field of emotion regulation;
examined the structure and dynamics of international scientific collaboration in emotion regulation research;
discovered the research hotspots, research trends and research gap in the field of emotion regulation; and
explored the evolution and development of emotion regulation field in the last 30 years, i.e. 1992–2021. This study offers scholars and practitioners a new perspective and suggestions for future challenges and policy formulation.
Literature review and identification of research gap
In bibliometric research, mathematical and statistical methods are combined to produce in-depth information in a particular field of study using different scientific databases and software. The bibliometric analysis contributes to categorising and evaluating bibliographic content by creating accurate summaries of existing literature (Donthu et al., 2020). Recently, bibliometric techniques have been employed in various branches of knowledge to measure the output and influence of scientific publications. The results gleaned by bibliometric analysis are highly significant and assist researchers in comparing different academic disciplines, authors, institutions, geographic regions and even specific countries (Siddique et al., 2023). Bibliometric techniques play an essential role in identifying areas that require improvement and highlighting the areas of strength in a given field of study. Bibliometric techniques also assist policymakers in determining their desired future paths and in formulating policies (Adabre et al., 2021; Gaggero et al., 2020). Over the past few years, many researchers have investigated various subfields of psychology by employing bibliometric and visualisation techniques. A review of such studies is presented here.
Rong et al. (2022) performed a bibliometric analysis in the field of autism spectrum disorder. A total of 40,597 papers were published between 1998 and 2021 and were extracted from the Web of Science (WoS) database. The study quantitatively analysed and visualised the network of authors, institutions, nations and keywords related to autism spectrum disorder research. Similarly, Yang et al. (2022) examined the literature related to gut microbiota and schizophrenia research through bibliometric analysis. This study analysed 162 publications indexed in the WoS Core Collection and found that the gut–brain axis and microbial-based therapies for schizophrenia are key research hotspots involving schizophrenia and the gut microbiota. Wu et al. (2022) conducted a bibliometric analysis of dyslexia research published from 2000 to 2021. A total of 9,166 documents related to dyslexia were extracted from the Social Sciences Citation Index and Science Citation Index Expanded. The gathered data was analysed and evaluated based on factors like the co-occurrence of nation, institution, author and author keywords using Derwent Data Analyzer software. In another study, Wu et al. (2020) investigated the intimate partner violence research field using bibliometric techniques. Furthermore, a bibliometric study on delirium was carried out by Fei et al. (2022), which evaluated the 100 most-cited articles on delirium sourced from the WoS database. Lin et al. (2022) examined the research on cognitive behavioural therapy for cancer with data sourced from WoS during the period from 2012 to 2022 using different software such as Biblioshiny, VOSviewer and CiteSpace. Nie et al. (2022) used bibliometric techniques to investigate epigenetic research on childhood trauma during 2000–2021 with data gathered from the WoS Core Collection. The study found rapid growth in publications after 2010; however, a lack of international scientific collaboration was also observed. Furthermore, a co-occurrence analysis was conducted by Cai et al. (2022) regarding the connection between electroconvulsive therapy and depressive disorder research from 2012 to 2021. The study found that electroconvulsive therapy, treatment-resistant depression, bipolar disorder, hippocampus, efficacy and electrode location are key research hotspots. Several studies have also investigated other areas of psychology using bibliometric techniques; for example, Wang et al. (2021) conducted a bibliometric analysis on mindfulness and meditation research; Plusquellec and Denault (2018) examined 1,000 highly cited works related to visible nonverbal behaviour; Yeung (2018) analysed the functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) literature pertaining to chemosensory perception; Allik (2013) performed a bibliometric analysis of personality psychology in nine leading personality psychology journals; Guo et al. (2022) used bibliometric techniques and visualisation tools to analyse the scientific literature published on depression biomarkers; White-Gibson et al. (2018) assessed the top 50 publications on pelvic trauma management using bibliometric indicators; Baminiwatta and Solangaarachchi (2021) disclosed historical development and seminal studies in the field of mindfulness research by using bibliometric techniques; Francisco et al. (2006) analysed bipolar disorder literature published from 1980 to 2004; Dong et al. (2022) carried out a bibliometric study to investigate the area of emotional intelligence in organizations; and Gaggero et al. (2020) presented a scientometric review of 4,930 alexithymia-related articles from 1980 to 2020.
In the past, very few researchers (Ribero et al., 2013; Fernández-Álvarez et al., 2018) have also investigated emotion regulation research from the lens of bibliometric techniques, for example, Ribero et al. (2013) presented a bibliometric analysis of emotion regulation from the cognitive-behavioural approach based on a theoretical review of 1,711 articles gathered from EBSCO and PsycINFO produced between 1955 and 2012. Another bibliometric analysis of emotion regulation was conducted by Fernández-Álvarez et al. (2018), which evaluated 11,927 documents gathered from the WoS Core Collection. This study analysed the quantitative bibliometric parameters like publications per year, country-wise production, institutions, prominent authors, subject-wise categories and influential journals in emotion regulation research. However, some methodological limitations were observed in both the studies, such as Ribero et al. (2013), in their study focused on the research output of emotion regulation in a particular area, i.e. cognitive behaviour, as well as only performance analysis was conducted in the study. Similarly, Fernández-Álvarez et al. (2018) also investigated the field of emotion regulation through specific bibliometric indicators (e.g. authors, institutions, countries and journals) but ignored an in-depth keyword analysis, citation analysis, cluster analysis, and thematic analysis. Considering these methodological limitations, it may be reported that these studies could not capture a comprehensive picture of emotion regulation research conducted worldwide. Therefore, it is imperative to conduct a bibliometric study to present updated and current state-of-the-art emotion regulation research conducted worldwide.
This study investigated emotion regulation research using numerous techniques of bibliometric analysis, such as performance measurement, science mapping and network analysis. To date, none of the studies have analysed the literature on emotion regulation based on the WoS Core Collection database, which includes all publications published across the globe during the last 30 years (1992–2021). No study has presented the thematic evolution of emotion regulation research, which provides insight into various evolutionary links that illustrate field development and reveal the point of development direction and evolution pathways of emotion regulation research from 1992 to 2021. Furthermore, keyword analysis is not seen in any of the studies, which is significantly important to discover the research hotspots, research trends and research gaps in emotion regulation research. Therefore, this study is vital for filling this research gap and suggests areas for further investigation:
What is the research trend of scientific publications in emotion regulation research?
Which are the most impactful and productive journals in emotion regulation research?
Who are the most influential authors in emotion regulation research?
What are the most highly cited studies on emotion regulation?
Which countries are the most productive in emotion regulation research, and what is the collaboration network among countries?
What is the thematic evolution of emotion regulation research?
What are the significant emerging research themes in emotion regulation research?
What is the cluster network of keyword co-occurrence in emotion regulation research?
Materials and methods
The quantitative method of bibliometric analysis was strategically chosen for analysing scientific production in the field of emotion regulation. In recent times, bibliometric techniques have been widely adopted in various subfields of psychology as a means of assessing research performance, identifying research trends and themes, uncovering research hotspots and research gaps, as well as for tracing the structure, evolution and development of knowledge within the fields (Dong et al., 2022; Guo et al., 2022; Lin et al., 2022; Fei et al., 2022; Nie et al., 2022; Rong et al., 2022; Wu et al., 2022; Yang et al., 2022). With this viewpoint, this research aimed to explore the field of emotion regulation using bibliometric techniques, including performance measurement, science mapping and network analysis. A detailed description of the methodology adopted in the present study is given below.
Source of data
The researchers selected the WoS Core Collection database as a data source to gather the literature published in the field of emotion regulation. With almost 1.9 billion cited references and over 171 million records, the WoS database is globally recognized as the most reliable and comprehensive citation database, allowing users to track ideas across disciplines and time (Clarivate, 2022). This study preferred the WoS over Scopus because of the following reasons:
A wide range of quality, high-impact scientific studies are hosted in WoS, making it a reliable and comprehensive resource for bibliometric analysis (Liu et al., 2018; Ekundayo and Okoh, 2018; Plusquellec and Denault, 2018; Nunen et al., 2017);
Many scholars have earlier used WoS database specifically in various subfields of psychology for bibliometric analysis, for example, emotional intelligence (Dong et al., 2022); depression biomarker (Guo et al., 2022); cognitive behavioural therapy for cancer (Lin et al., 2022); delirium (Fei et al., 2022); epigenetic and childhood trauma (Nie et al., 2022); autism spectrum disorder (Rong et al., 2022); dyslexia (Wu et al., 2022); mindfulness and meditation (Wang et al., 2021); schizophrenia (Yang et al., 2022); alexithymia (Gaggero et al., 2020); and fMRI (Yeung, 2018). Thus, the WoS database is deemed more pertinent and selected as a data source for the bibliometric analysis in the field of emotion regulation.
Search strategy and data retrieval
To collect the required raw data, a search strategy was framed utilizing the keywords “Emotion Regulation” OR “Emotional Regulation” in combination with the Boolean operator “OR”. The Boolean operator “OR” was used to locate records containing any of these words and retrieved them for high recall. Furthermore, the use of quotation marks around the keywords further improved the accuracy of the results.
The WoS database’s advanced search feature was used to conduct a literature search using the following search strategy:
TS = (“Emotion Regulation” OR “Emotional Regulation”), where TS stands for a topic search, which comprises four parts: Title, Abstract, Author Keywords, and Keywords Plus®
Document type: Article
Period: 1992–2021
On the basis of the above-mentioned search strategy, the researchers performed a search using the advanced search feature of the WoS database on 29 September 2022. This resulted in 17,951 research articles on emotion regulation published between 1992 and 2021 in English for the final data analysis. For a better understanding, the search strategy, including inclusion/exclusion criteria and data retrieval techniques adopted in the present study, is also explained through a flowchart, as shown in Figure 1.
Data analysis and visualization
There are many software for bibliometrics analysis, such as bibliometrix package in R, HistCite, VOSviewer, CitNetExplorer, SciMAT and CiteSpace. However, in the present study, bibliometrix R-package and VOSviewer were selected to meet the study’s objectives. Bibliometrix R package (Aria and Cuccurullo, 2017) was used for comprehensive science mapping and VOSviewer (Leiden University's Centre for Science and Technology Studies, Netherlands) for visualization mapping of scientific literature published in the field of emotion regulation. The characteristics of the extracted data are displayed in Table 1. A total of 17,951 research articles related to emotion regulation were published in 2,076 sources. The gathered research articles on emotion regulation have a 5.76 document average age, 31.47 average citations per document and 419,618 references. Furthermore, a total of 44,690 authors contributed to emotion regulation research conducted across the globe.
Results
RQ1. What is the research trend of scientific publications in emotion regulation research?
The investigators have found that the research on emotion regulation began in 1992 and has received considerable attention from scholars across the globe. Figure 2 illustrates how the discipline of emotion regulation was in its infancy, and the growth of research publications was quite slow until 2005. After 2005, there was a surge in interest in emotion regulation research as many authors from other fields turned their attention toward it. As a result, during the past three decades, there has been a consistent increase in the number of research articles on emotion regulation.
RQ2. Which are the most impactful and productive journals in emotion regulation research?
Tables 2 illustrate the most impactful journals that publish articles on emotion regulation. The researchers have selected the top twenty journals based on their h and g indices. The Emotion journal has the highest h-index (76) and g-index (128), followed by Biological Psychiatry and Behaviour Research and Therapy. The study discovered that one of the most prestigious journals is Emotion, with 20,392 citations on emotion regulation. The study also revealed that Frontiers in Psychology is the most productive journal, with 599 publications, followed by Emotion, Personality and Individual Differences and Plos One as shown in Table 3.
RQ3. Who are the most influential authors in emotion regulation research?
Figure 3 demonstrates the top ten most productive authors in emotion regulation research. James Gross was found to be the most productive author, followed by Gratz, Wang and Tull, as demonstrated in Figure 3. Moreover, among the top authors, James Gross has also produced the articles for the most prolonged period of time at regular intervals and also produced the maximum number of articles, as shown in Figure 4.
RQ4. What are the most highly cited studies on emotion regulation?
Table 4 demonstrates the top twenty highly cited studies on emotion regulation published worldwide by authors based on their citation impact. The study revealed that the highly cited article “Individual differences in two emotion regulation processes: Implications for affect, relationships, and well-being” published by Gross in 2003, has 5,322 citations and an average of 266.10 citations per year. The other highly cited articles are “Multidimensional Assessment of Emotion Regulation and Dysregulation: Development, Factor Structure, and Initial Validation of the Difficulties in the Emotion Regulation Scale”, “Emotion Regulation: Affective, cognitive, and social consequences”, “Large-scale automated synthesis of human functional neuroimaging data” and “A model of neurovisceral integration in emotion regulation and dysregulation”.
RQ5. Which countries are the most productive in emotion regulation research, and what is the collaboration network among countries?
The study revealed that the USA, Germany, England and Canada are the top publishing nations in emotion regulation research. As seen in Table 5, the USA also held the top spot with 9,415 publications and 389,641 citations, followed by Germany, England and Canada. Regarding the collaborative network of countries, the analysed data reveals that a total of 13,913 units of collaboration between authors and countries are found in emotion regulation research, which indicates that the field of emotion regulation has received considerable attention from researchers across the globe. For a deeper understanding of the results, the investigators fixed a criterion of ten articles per country and found that 727 units met the eligibility. Finally, 727 units have been chosen to explore countries’ research collaboration in emotion regulation research, as demonstrated in Figure 5. The USA is at the epicenter of emotion regulation research and has found its collaboration with the majority of developed countries. However, developing countries, except China, are not doing well in the field of emotion regulation. It is worth noting that China is Asia’s leading publishing country on emotion regulation research.
RQ6. What is the thematic evolution of emotion regulation research?
In this section, the investigators presented the thematic evolution of emotion regulation research during the last three decades. The research articles are split into four sub-periods for this reason:
the first period (1992–2014);
the second period (2015–2017);
the third period (2018–2020); and
the fourth period (2021–2022).
The researchers have analysed these four periods through an alluvial diagram, as depicted in Figure 6. It is evident that emotion regulation appeared in the first period (1992–2014) and continued to draw attention till the last period (2021–2022). Furthermore, “trauma”, “mindfulness” and “fMRI” were some of the other research themes that emerged during the second period (2015–2017). Some themes, such as “emotional dysregulation”, “self-regulation”, “adolescents” and “Covid-19” have started to flourish in recent years, i.e. in the third period (2018–2020) and fourth period (2021–2022).
RQ7. What are the significant emerging research themes in emotion regulation research?
A strategic diagram is a two-dimensional structure made up of specific topics/research themes that are plotted in accordance with the centrality and density rank values (Cobo et al., 2011). The strategic diagrams visually represent research themes through the use of circles, with the size of the circles being proportional to the number of citations associated with each theme (Martínez-Martínez et al., 2022). Nowadays, strategic diagrams are being used in various branches of knowledge to explore the evolution of research themes in a particular field of study. Martínez-Martínez et al. (2022) explained that the strategic diagram is divided into four quadrants with different characteristics as listed below:
Motor themes: Themes found in the upper-right quadrant of the strategic diagrams are mature and play a vital role in shaping the structure of a research field. These themes are referred to as “motor themes” as they exhibit high levels of centrality and density within the specialty.
Niche themes: Themes located in the upper-left quadrant of the strategic diagrams possess well-established internal relationships but exhibit minimal external connections, making them of relatively minor regional significance. These themes are considered highly specialized and secondary in nature.
Emerging or declining themes: Themes in the lower-left quadrant are both marginal and underdeveloped. These themes possess low levels of density and centrality, and frequently represent nascent or declining areas of research.
Basic and transversal themes: Themes located in the lower-right quadrant of the strategic diagrams are considered significant for a research topic, although they are still in a state of development. This quadrant encompasses both transversal and general themes.
In this study, the strategic map (Figure 7) for each sub-period shows how different research themes in the field of emotion regulation are changing over time, as listed below.
Sub-period 1(1992–2014)
Emerging themes: emotion, regulation, attention, affect, aging
Niche themes: fMRI, amygdala, prefrontal cortex, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, cognitive control, fear, borderline personality disorder, well-being, trauma, emotion dysregulation, meditation, PTSD
Motor themes: emotion regulation, reappraisal, self-regulation
Basic themes: depression, anxiety, stress, adolescence, emotional regulation, coping, attachment, anger, aggression, suppression, emotions
Sub-period 2 (2015–2017)
Emerging themes: Trauma, emotion dysregulation, psychopathology, post-traumatic stress disorder, functional connectivity, neuroimaging
Niche themes: fMRI, amygdala, borderline personality disorder, prefrontal cortex, mindfulness, self-regulation, well-being, intervention, meditation, adolescent, treatment
Motor themes: adolescents, cognitive reappraisal, aggression, children, emotions, depression, anxiety
Basic themes: emotion, regulation, attachment, parenting, alexithymia, adolescents, stress, coping, emotional regulation, rumination
Sub-period 3 (2018–2020)
Emerging themes: adolescents, attachment, heart rate variability, emotion dysregulation, trauma, PTSD, emotion, regulation, fMRI, amygdala, alexithymia, borderline personality disorder
Niche themes: executive function, attention, autism, ADHD, mood;
Motor themes: emotion regulation, adolescence, reappraisal, cognitive reappraisal, parenting, rumination, suppression, depression, mindfulness, anxiety, stress
Basic themes: emotional regulation, coping, emotions, regulation, fMRI, amygdala, alexithymia, borderline personality disorder
Sub-period 4 (2021–2022)
Emerging themes: emotion, regulation, self-regulation, alexithymia, empathy, depression, anxiety, trauma, PTSD, intervention, intimate partner violence, adolescent
Niche themes: emotion regulation, reappraisal, fMRI, affect, cognitive reappraisal, rumination, parenting
Motor themes: Adolescents, emotion dysregulation, attachment, borderline personality disorder, children, heart rate vitality, covid-19, mindfulness, stress
Basic themes: emotional regulation, resilience, coping
RQ8. What is the cluster network of keyword co-occurrence in emotion regulation research?
The co-occurrence of keywords is evaluated to determine the cluster network for a given field of study. Researchers applied VOSviewer software to investigate cluster networks in emotion regulation via network visualisation and density visualisation. The researchers assessed 20,088 author-specific keywords found in all the publications related to emotion regulation. Investigators fixed a criterion of the minimum number of occurrences of keywords as 20 as a threshold. As a result, 546 keywords met the eligibility. The network visualisation depicts circles of varying sizes and colours. Each colour represented a distinct group or cluster, and the size of the circle indicated the keyword’s occurrence frequency. The smaller circle size explains the low frequency of occurrence of the keywords and vice versa. The keyword co-occurrence analysis found eight primary clusters with distinct study paradigms on emotion regulation, as demonstrated in Figures 8 and 9. The most significant key terms are emotion regulation, depression, borderline personality disorder, parenting, psychopathology, bipolar disorder, reappraisal, mindfulness, adolescent, rumination, suppression, prefrontal cortex, aging, aggression, self-regulation, rumination, well-being, post-traumatic stress disorder and autism spectrum disorder. Moreover, the emotion regulation research trend is also displayed in Figure 10, which reveals that emotion regulation research in recent times focuses on subjects such as Covid-19, non-suicidal self-injury, psychological distress, intimate partner violence and mental health.
Discussion and conclusion
In the contemporary world, bibliometric techniques have been widely used to highlight the research trends and progress in various branches of knowledge (Ülker et al., 2022; Wani et al., 2022). Accordingly, bibliometric techniques used in the present study provided new insights into the current status and development of emotion regulation research published worldwide. The study’s findings show that emotion regulation research has undergone tremendous expansion and has observed exponential growth in the literature over the past three decades. These findings are consistent with Fernández-Álvarez et al. (2018), who reported a significant increase in the number of publications on emotion regulation. In this regard, it may be reported that emotion regulation research has received considerable attention from academics and institutions across the globe. Furthermore, journal analysis provides researchers with a means of understanding the distribution of articles across different journals, which can aid in identifying key journals in the field of emotion regulation and evaluating the overall quality of the articles (Fei et al., 2022). Consequently, Emotion journal published by American Psychological Association, USA and Frontiers in Psychology published by Frontiers Media, Switzerland found to be the most impactful and productive journals in the field of emotion regulation, respectively. These journals are highly influential in the emotion regulation field because of the publication of quality papers has raised these journals’ scientific impact. This may be anticipated that seminal work related to emotion regulation in the near future has a maximum probability of appearing in these journals. As a matter of fact, journals with high impact factors usually have high academic influence and attract high-quality papers (Borgohain et al., 2022). Furthermore, author analysis was presented in this study, which aims to identify the structure of the scientific community in a specific field (Zupic and Čater, 2015). Through the author's analysis of the research articles published in the emotion regulation field, we found that James Gross (Stanford University, USA) has made the most significant impact in the field of emotion regulation over the past thirty years, followed by Kim L. Gratz (University of Toledo, USA), Matthew T. Tull (University of Toledo, USA) and Maya Tamir (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel). This indicates that most influential authors engaged in emotion regulation research are from developed nations. It is due to the fact that the developed countries have strong economies and offer excellent research facilities and funding to the academic community, which ultimately influences the research output of the nation (Ekundayo and Okoh, 2018; Peng et al., 2015; Liu et al., 2011; Zhang et al., 2010).
Nowadays, there has been an emerging interest in using highly cited papers to evaluate the impact of the research (Aksnes et al., 2019; So et al., 2015). Notably, empirical assessments of research activities and accomplishments in any field of learning can be easily done through the application of citation data, and they have proven to play an essential role in policy and decision-making (Akhavan et al., 2016). Considering the importance of citation, this study identified the top 20 highly cited studies related to emotion regulation. We found that Gross’s research paper entitled “Individual differences in two emotion regulation processes: Implications for affect, relationships, and well-being” is the most cited paper in the field of emotion regulation, with 5,322 citations and an average of 266.10 citations per year; followed by Gratz’s work entitled as “Multidimensional Assessment of Emotion Regulation and Dysregulation: Development, Factor Structure, and Initial Validation of the Difficulties in the Emotion Regulation Scale” with 4,212 citations and an average of 221.68 citations per year. The highly cited studies mentioned in this study are significantly important to the academicians engaged in emotion regulation research in understanding the key concepts, research quality and research trends in the field of emotion regulation. Furthermore, academic institutions and organizations working in the field of emotion regulation may also consult highly cited studies for practical applications and policy-making.
The network analysis was conducted in the present study to understand the contribution and collaboration pattern among countries in emotion regulation research. This is crucial for the formulation of research and development policies aimed at fostering collaborative research efforts among nations, promoting knowledge sharing and policy transfer and enabling the creation of effective global policies (Adabre et al., 2021; Darko et al., 2020). Therefore, a network diagram (Figure 5) of countries engaged in emotion regulation research was developed using VOSviewer software, which revealed that the USA has the highest number of published papers in the field of emotion regulation and has collaborated with most of the developed countries like Germany, England and Canada. This indicates that a high collaboration exists in most of the developed nations which are engaged in emotion regulation research. Notably, scientific collaboration mainly occurs between countries with similar research profiles. Two developed countries can, therefore, collaborate in all major scientific areas (Srivastava, 2012). However, conducting R&D activities in or together with developing countries is very challenging for a developed nation because of weak intellectual property rights regimes, uncertain political and economic contexts (De Rassenfosse and Seliger, 2020). An additional finding from the analysis was that out of the top 10 highly productive countries in emotion regulation research, China was the only Asian country that achieved the sixth place in terms of productivity and impact of emotion regulation research. The weak collaboration and underrepresentation of many developing countries in emotion regulation research urge that the developing countries should formulate policies or scholarship programs that motivate researchers to collaborate at the international level for possible knowledge or policy transfer and thus strengthen their international influence.
To comprehend the knowledge structure of emotion regulation research over the last three decades, i.e. 1992–2021, a thematic evolution analysis was conducted, as illustrated in Figure 6. The thematic analysis discovered numerous research themes, which evolved and changed with respect to time in the field of emotion regulation. In the first period (1992–2014), thematic evolution is observed only in five research areas: “depression”, “fMRI”, “adolescence”, “emotion” and “emotion regulation”. Moreover, two new research themes, “mindfulness” and “trauma”, emerged in the second period (2015–2017) and three new research areas, such as “emotion dysregulation”, “self-regulation” and “Covid-19”, emerged in the third (2018–2020) and fourth (2021–2022) periods. In addition, Figure 7 also highlighted the specific research themes that emerged in the field of emotion regulation from 1992 to 2021 through a strategic diagram. In essence, it may be concluded that many diverse research themes flourished and developed over a period of thirty years in the field of emotion regulation. This highlights the expanding depth and breadth of research in the field of emotion regulation, resulting in the emergence of a diverse array of research branches. It is worth noting that other than “emotion” and “emotion regulation”, “depression” is the only research theme that continued to draw attention from the first to last period, i.e. 1992–2021. In this regard, Hong et al. (2016) reported that the prevalence of depression in the general public has constituted a major health burden around the world in the last two decades of the 20th century, and by 2030, depression will be the leading cause of the world’s disease burden (Tehrani et al., 2022). As a result, scholars and academicians are conducting intensive research in this area to mitigate this crisis. Therefore, with thematic evolution, “depression” as a research theme was detected in all the periods of emotion regulation research.
Keywords analysis further discovered the research hotspots, research gap and research trends in the field of emotion regulation. A good number of studies (Rong et al., 2022; Nie et al., 2022; Fei et al., 2022) explained that keyword analysis is the process of identifying and analysing the keywords used in the scientific literature of a particular field of study. By analysing the frequency and distribution of keywords, researchers can identify the research hotspots (high-frequency keywords) and research gap (low-frequency keywords) and the research trends in a particular field. In this regard, we found that the current research hotspots of emotion regulation research are depression, borderline personality disorder, parenting, psychopathology, bipolar disorder, reappraisal, mindfulness, adolescent, rumination, suppression, prefrontal cortex, aging, aggression, self-regulation, rumination, well-being, post-traumatic stress disorder and autism spectrum disorder as shown in Figures 8 and 9. This finding is consistent with earlier studies (Guo et al., 2022; Rong et al., 2022; Wang et al., 2021; Baminiwatta and Solangaarachchi, 2021; Yeung, 2018) which reported that these research areas in the spectrum of emotion regulation are currently attracting a significant amount of attention from researchers and practitioners around the globe due to their potential impact and relevance. In addition to this, Figure 10 demonstrated the research trends of emotion regulation and disclosed that Covid-19, non-suicidal self-injury, psychological distress and intimate partner violence are the most recent research themes that emerged in the past few years. The emergence of these research areas is likely due to the Covid-19 pandemic, which has significantly impacted the mental health of the general public worldwide (Płomecka et al., 2020; Rossi et al., 2020). Several studies have reported a significant increase in non-suicidal self-injury behaviours, psychological distress and intimate partner violence among the general public due to job loss, financial stress and uncertainty caused by the pandemic and the resulting isolation and confinement (Rossi et al., 2023; Sampogna et al., 2022; Xiong et al., 2020). However, some research areas are found to be under-researched in the field of emotion regulation, such as anhedonia, atypical respiratory sinus arrhythmia, late positive potential, oxytocin, exposure and response prevention. Therefore, scholars and practitioners engaged in emotion regulation research may explore these areas for better prospects.
Contributions to theory and implications for practice
The bibliometric analysis employed in this study profoundly contributes to emotion regulation research. Hence, the present study offers some implications from the perspective of theory and practices. Firstly, this study quantitatively analysed the impact and productivity of authors, journals, institutions and countries engaged in emotion regulation research. This finding is helpful to the scholars and practitioners working in the field of emotion regulation so that they can identify the prominent authors for research collaboration in future research projects, influential journals for publishing their research to maximize their impact and reach the most relevant audience and leading institutions and countries for better research opportunities. Furthermore, this result is also useful to the funding agencies and organizations to make more informed decisions about which research projects to fund based on the past performance and potential for the future success of the researchers and institutions involved.
Secondly, the citation analysis disclosed the highly cited authors and highly cited studies in the field of emotion regulation, which can be helpful for researchers and practitioners who want to stay informed about the latest research and findings in their area. In addition to this, academic institutions and organizations working in the field of emotion regulation may also consult highly cited studies for practical applications and policymaking.
Thirdly, the network analysis provided valuable insights into the structure and dynamics of international scientific collaboration in the field of emotion regulation. This finding revealed that a strong collaboration exists among developed nations, but collaboration between developed and developing nations was weaker in emotion regulation research. It is therefore suggested that both developed and developing countries should formulate policies and programs to bridge the gap in research by keeping in mind the numerous aspects such as funding for joint research projects, exchange programmes for researchers, building research capacity, facilitating collaboration, encouraging open access, promoting technology transfer and promoting equity and diversity.
Fourthly, the thematic analysis provided a deeper understanding of the evolution and development of emotion regulation field in the last three decades, i.e. 1992–2021. This finding is quite useful to the scholars and practitioners as it highlighted the new research themes that are emerging and receiving considerable attention across the globe as well as the research areas that are declining in importance over time in the field of emotion regulation so that they can explore the opportunities for future research.
Lastly, the keyword analysis discovered the research hotspots, research trends and research gap in the field of emotion regulation. This can help academicians and practitioners as it identified the numerous research areas related to emotion regulation that have seen a significant amount of research activity in recent years and the areas that have seen little or no research activity indicating potential areas for future research.
Limitations of the study
The present study significantly contributed to the field of emotion regulation; however, it has a few limitations. The WoS Core Collection database was used to gather the data for this study. Although the WoS is one of the world’s most extensive and trustworthy databases, researchers can conduct comparable studies using data from other databases like Scopus for a deeper bibliometric analysis.
Figures
Figure 1
Flowchart showing various phases of bibliometric search and bibliometric analysis in the field of emotion regulation
Figure 2
Chronological annual scientific production of emotion regulation research
Figure 3
Most productive authors in emotion regulation research
Figure 4
Top authors’ production over time in emotion regulation research
Figure 5
Countries' collaboration network in emotion regulation research
Figure 6
Thematic evolution of emotion regulation research
Figure 7
Strategic diagrams of emotion regulation research
Figure 8
Network visualization mapping of co-occurrences of most frequent keywords in emotion regulation research
Figure 9
Density map of keywords (deeper the colour, the more frequently the keyword occurs)
Figure 10
Trending topics in research on emotion regulation (minimum word frequency 10 and number of words per year 3)
Summary of data retrieved from web of science on “emotion regulation”
| Description | Counts and rates |
|---|---|
| Timespan | 1992:2021 |
| Sources (journals) | 2,076 |
| Documents | 17,951 |
| Annual growth rate % | 21.1 |
| Document average age | 5.76 |
| Average citations per doc | 31.47 |
| References | 419,618 |
| Document contents | |
| Author’s keywords (DE) | 20,088 |
| Keywords Plus (ID) | 16,069 |
| Authors | |
| Authors | 44,690 |
| Authors collaboration | |
| International co-authorships % | 24.43 |
| Co-authors per doc | 4.37 |
| Single-authored docs | 803 |
| Document types | |
| Article | 17,951 |
Source: Table by authors
Top 20 most impactful journals in the field of emotion regulation
| Rank | Journal | h_index | g_index | TC |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Emotion | 76 | 128 | 20,392 |
| 2 | Biological Psychiatry | 52 | 81 | 12,040 |
| 3 | Behaviour Research and Therapy | 51 | 97 | 9,738 |
| 4 | Development and Psychopathology | 50 | 88 | 8,592 |
| 5 | Neuroimage | 50 | 89 | 8,602 |
| 6 | Personality and Individual Differences | 48 | 90 | 10,147 |
| 7 | Developmental Psychology | 47 | 85 | 7,525 |
| 8 | Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry | 46 | 76 | 5,929 |
| 9 | Journal of Personality and Social Psychology | 46 | 66 | 15,972 |
| 10 | Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience | 46 | 84 | 8,075 |
| 11 | Cognition & Emotion | 43 | 77 | 7,364 |
| 12 | Frontiers in Psychology | 43 | 64 | 8,616 |
| 13 | Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology | 43 | 71 | 5,661 |
| 14 | PLOS One | 42 | 67 | 6,565 |
| 15 | Journal of Affective Disorders | 40 | 72 | 6,996 |
| 16 | Child Development | 39 | 72 | 8,376 |
| 17 | Cognitive Therapy and Research | 38 | 64 | 4,763 |
| 18 | Biological Psychology | 37 | 65 | 4,858 |
| 19 | Psychological Science | 36 | 49 | 5,923 |
| 20 | Journal of Clinical Psychology | 34 | 66 | 4,594 |
TC = total citation
Source: Table by authors
Top 20 most productive journals in emotion regulation research
| Rank | Journal | Articles |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Frontiers in Psychology | 599 |
| 2 | Emotion | 369 |
| 3 | Personality and Individual Differences | 297 |
| 4 | PLOS One | 276 |
| 5 | Journal of Affective Disorders | 264 |
| 6 | Cognition & Emotion | 217 |
| 7 | Mindfulness | 208 |
| 8 | Development and Psychopathology | 188 |
| 9 | Frontiers in Psychiatry | 182 |
| 10 | Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience | 173 |
| 11 | Psychiatry Research | 165 |
| 12 | Current Psychology | 162 |
| 13 | Cognitive Therapy and Research | 160 |
| 14 | Journal of Child and Family Studies | 151 |
| 15 | Neuroimage | 147 |
| 16 | Biological Psychology | 134 |
| 17 | International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health | 134 |
| 18 | Behaviour Research and Therapy | 132 |
| 19 | Developmental Psychology | 121 |
| 20 | Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology | 120 |
Source: Table by authors
Top 20 highly cited studies in emotion regulation research
| Rank | Author (year), Journal | Title | TC | TC/Y |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Gross (2003), Journal of Personality and Social Psychology | Individual differences in two emotion regulation processes: Implications for affect, relationships, and well-being | 5322 | 266.10 |
| 2 | Gratz (2004), Journal of Psychopathology and Behavioral Assessment | Multidimensional Assessment of Emotion Regulation and Dysregulation: Development, Factor Structure, and Initial Validation of the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale | 4212 | 221.68 |
| 3 | Gross (2002), Psychophysiology | Emotion regulation: Affective, cognitive, and social consequences | 2198 | 104.67 |
| 4 | Yarkoni (2011), Nature Methods | Large-scale automated synthesis of human functional neuroimaging data | 1744 | 145.33 |
| 5 | Thayer (2000), Journal of Affective Disorders | A model of neurovisceral integration in emotion regulation and dysregulation | 1611 | 70.04 |
| 6 | Tugade and Fredrickson (2004), Journal of Personality and Social Psychology | Resilient Individuals Use Positive Emotions to Bounce Back from Negative Emotional Experiences | 1609 | 84.68 |
| 7 | Michie (2005), BMJ Quality & Safety | Making psychological theory useful for implementing evidence based practice: a consensus approach | 1607 | 89.28 |
| 8 | Pezawas et al. (2005), Nature Neuroscience | 5-HTTLPR polymorphism impacts human cingulate-amygdala interactions: a genetic susceptibility mechanism for depression | 1470 | 81.67 |
| 9 | Hölzel et al. (2011), Perspectives on Psychological Science | How Does Mindfulness Meditation Work? Proposing Mechanisms of Action from a Conceptual and Neural Perspective | 1395 | 116.25 |
| 10 | Gross (2015), Psychological Inquiry | Emotion Regulation: Current Status and Future Prospects | 1371 | 171.38 |
| 11 | Wong (2002), The Leadership Quarterly | The effects of leader and follower emotional intelligence on performance and attitude: An exploratory study | 1348 | 64.19 |
| 12 | Hagger et al. (2010), Psychological Bulletin | Ego depletion and the strength model of self-control: A meta-analysis | 1296 | 99.69 |
| 13 | John (2004), Journal of Personality | Healthy and Unhealthy Emotion Regulation: Personality Processes, Individual Differences, and Life Span Development | 1209 | 63.63 |
| 14 | Kashdan and Rottenberg (2010), Clinical Psychology Review | Psychological flexibility as a fundamental aspect of health | 1175 | 90.38 |
| 15 | Gross (1997), Journal of Abnormal Psychology | Hiding feelings: The acute effects of inhibiting negative and positive emotion | 1141 | 43.88 |
| 16 | Goldin et al. (2007), Biological Psychiatry | The Neural Bases of Emotion Regulation: Reappraisal and Suppression of Negative Emotion | 1131 | 75.40 |
| 17 | Thayer (2009), Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews | Claude Bernard and the heart–brain connection: Further elaboration of a model of neurovisceral integration | 1082 | 77.29 |
| 18 | Wager (2008), Neuron | Prefrontal-Subcortical Pathways Mediating Successful Emotion Regulation | 1072 | 71.47 |
| 19 | Ochsner et al. (2012), Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences | Functional imaging studies of emotion regulation: a synthetic review and evolving model of the cognitive control of emotion | 1058 | 96.18 |
| 20 | Carstensen et al. (2003), Motivation and Emotion | Socioemotional Selectivity Theory and the Regulation of Emotion in the Second Half of Life | 1046 | 52.30 |
TC = total citation; TC/Y = total citation per year
Source: Table by authors
Top 10 highly productive countries in emotion regulation research
| Rank | Country | Total article | Total citation |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | USA | 9,415 | 389,641 |
| 2 | Germany | 1,578 | 48,730 |
| 3 | England | 1,316 | 41,108 |
| 4 | Canada | 1,276 | 37,455 |
| 5 | Australia | 1,088 | 27,250 |
| 6 | China | 1,280 | 22,065 |
| 7 | Netherlands | 955 | 33,148 |
| 8 | Italy | 724 | 13,242 |
| 9 | Spain | 617 | 10,222 |
| 10 | Switzerland | 463 | 13,920 |
Source: Table by authors
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