What Do You Believe About Emotions?
Whether you think feelings can be steered, and whether the bad ones are worth having
Long before anyone tries to manage an emotion, they hold a belief about what that emotion is for and whether it can be changed at all - and that belief, researchers have found, quietly shapes how well the managing goes. Someone convinced that fear serves no purpose will fight it differently than someone who expects it to pass on its own information. Someone convinced that emotional patterns are fixed for life will not bother trying to shift them. None of these beliefs are usually stated out loud, which is exactly why measuring them is useful.
Before you start There are no right answers. Pick what is usually true for you, not what sounds best.
Answer with what you actually believe, not with the answer that sounds the most emotionally healthy.
What it measures
The three beliefs from the published Emotion Beliefs Questionnaire - that emotions can be controlled once they start, that positive emotions serve a real purpose, and that negative emotions serve a real purpose too, rather than being pure malfunction - plus a related fourth belief from a separate line of research: whether you think your emotional patterns can develop over time at all, the emotional equivalent of a growth mindset. This is not our mindset test, which is about ability and character, and not our emotion-regulation test, which asks what you actually do with a feeling rather than what you believe about feelings in general.
Based on: Emotion Beliefs Questionnaire (Becerra, Preece & Gross, 2020)
Possible results
Controllability
Believing an emotion, once triggered, can be managed rather than just endured.
Usefulness of the good ones
Believing positive emotions serve a real purpose, not just a pleasant one.
Usefulness of the hard ones
Believing negative emotions carry useful information, not just unpleasant noise.
Malleability
Believing your emotional patterns can develop over time, not just your control in the moment.
Common questions
Is this the same as your growth mindset test?
Related but distinct. Our mindset test asks whether you think ability and character can develop; this one asks specifically about emotions - whether they can be controlled in the moment, whether the good and the bad ones serve a purpose, and whether your emotional style can develop over years. You could have a strong growth mindset about skills and still believe your temper is fixed for life.
Is this the same as emotion regulation?
No - beliefs come first, strategies come after. Our emotion-regulation test measures what you actually do with a feeling once it arrives, like reframing it or holding it in; this test measures the beliefs that shape whether you bother trying those strategies at all, and how confident you are that they will work.
Are negative emotions always useful?
Not always, and not in the same amount forever. The useful-signal idea applies best to emotions that are proportionate to what triggered them; a fear or sadness that has become disconnected from any real cause, or that lasts far longer than the situation warrants, is a different matter and worth taking seriously rather than reasoning about as pure information.
Can I change what I believe about emotions?
Beliefs like these are not fixed traits, and the research this is based on comes from studying exactly this kind of change across a stressful life transition. Noticing what an uncomfortable emotion is actually pointing at, rather than just trying to make it go away, is usually where the shift starts.
Sources
- Becerra, R., Preece, D. A., & Gross, J. J. (2020). Assessing beliefs about emotions: Development and validation of the Emotion Beliefs Questionnaire. PLoS ONE. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0231395
- Tamir, M., John, O. P., Srivastava, S., & Gross, J. J. (2007). Implicit theories of emotion: Affective and social outcomes across a major life transition. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.92.4.731
An honest note The first three bars adapt the Emotion Beliefs Questionnaire; the fourth adapts a separate line of research on implicit beliefs about emotion. Wording throughout is Quinthea's own, so scores are not comparable to published norms, and nobody has validated all four beliefs together as a single instrument. These are beliefs, not facts about emotion - the research is correlational, so it shows these beliefs travel with certain outcomes, not that changing the belief alone guarantees the outcome.