Guy Roth

Senior Academic

About the Lab

The Motivation and Emotion Research Lab studies emotion regulation and its implications for behavioral and social functioning. We investigate both adaptive and maladaptive regulatory processes, along with the individual and contextual factors that shape them. Grounded in Self-Determination Theory (Ryan & Deci, 2017), we define adaptive regulation as integrative emotion regulation - an open, curious, and reflective engagement with one’s emotional experience that facilitates psychological integration rather than defensive avoidance or suppression.

Our research

Our research on the outcomes of emotion regulation primarily focuses on contexts that elicit negative emotions, as these situations pose greater regulatory challenges.

Across diverse lines of inquiry, we examine topics such as:

Coping with stress and anxiety
Emotion regulation patterns and their role in learning from failure
Social relationship quality, including links between regulation patterns and empathic capacity
The quality of intimate relationships
Flexible versus rigid regulation strategies

Our research on the antecedents of adaptive emotion regulation centers on socialization processes, particularly within parent–child and teacher–student relationships.

Within this line of work, we investigate:

Autonomy-supportive and autonomy-thwarting practices as predictors of children’s emotion regulation patterns
Parental unconditional regard as a foundation for the development of adaptive regulation
Parents’ and teachers’ beliefs about negative emotions and their associations with caregiving behavior and children’s regulatory functioning