Efficacy of natural enemies against the tobacco thrips Thrips parvispinus (Karny) in laboratory and greenhouse studies.

The regulation of emotions is central to health and adequate psychosocial functioning. Many individuals use a cognitive way of regulating emotions when something stressful happens, such as trying to put a stressful event in perspective (Garnefski et al. ). Cognitive emotion regulation is associated with better physical and mental health outcomes such as reduced risk of depression and cardiovascular diseases (Aldao et al. ; Gross ). Insight into ways that stimulate cognitive emotion regulation is therefore vital. Research shows that emotions are less negative and more positive after only one bout of exercise (e.g., Liao et al. ; J. Reed and Ones ) and that exercise promotes brain functions involved in the emotion regulation processes (Wang et al. ). Moreover, exercise is associated with higher use of emotion regulation strategies (Bernstein and McNally , ; Liu et al. ). It has therefore been inferred that exercise helps to regulate emotions. However, the effect of exercise on the full presumed underlying cognitive emotion regulation process that starts with a relevant emotional cue, comprises cognitive actions to change the experienced emotions in the desired direction, and if successful, results in changes in these emotions (McRae and Gross ) has not been demonstrated yet. This means that it is unclear and exercise promotes the presumed cognitive emotion regulation process, which prevents us from using exercise to its full potential. In this study, our point of departure is that exercise enhances cognitive emotion regulation due to the dominance of cognitive processes during exercise (Ekkekakis et al. ; Liu et al. ), which leads to more positive and less negative emotions post‐exercise. More specifically, we aim to make four contributions. First, we contribute to the emotion regulation literature by synthesising exercise with cognitive emotion regulation into an embodied process (Füstös et al. ; Pollatos and Ferentzi ). Building on the extended process model of emotion regulation (Gross ), we propose that exercise functions as a physical catalyst that triggers and optimises the cognitive emotion regulation process. Second, we contribute to the exercise psychology literature by investigating exercise fosters the up‐ and down‐regulation of positive and negative emotions. We suggest that exercise promotes the use of cognitive emotion regulation strategies after recalling a personally relevant stressor, which, in turn increases positive and decreases negative emotions. In doing so, we test whether cognitive emotion regulation is a working mechanism that can explain the well‐studied down‐regulation of negative emotions and the up‐regulation of positive emotions through exercise (Liao et al. ; J. Reed and Ones ). Third, we investigate benefits the most from using exercise as an emotion regulation strategy, suggesting that individuals who are generally effective in dealing with emotions (who possess higher levels of emotional intelligence; Mayer and Salovey ) are better equipped to use exercise for this purpose. And finally, in a practical sense, this study contributes to better insights into how exercise can be used to cognitively cope with difficult emotional situations. Emotions can be conceptualised as multi‐faceted reaction patterns, including physiological, behavioural, and motivational elements, towards personally relevant stimuli (Frijda ). They have unique features that help people adapt to their environment by signalling that something important is happening and needs attention (Frijda ). Although many different and subtle emotions exist, they can generally be organised by their varying degrees of valence and arousal (Posner et al. ). Valence refers to the degree of pleasure/displeasure people feel and arousal refers to the degree of activation/deactivation people experience. As such, emotions can be placed in a quadrant of four different types: (i) positive activated emotions (e.g., excitement, happiness), (ii) positive deactivated emotions (e.g., calmness, relaxation), (iii) negative activated emotions (e.g., anger, tension), and (iv) negative deactivated emotions (e.g., sadness, boredom) (Posner et al. ). These affective quadrants have shown to differentially and meaningfully relate to exercise behaviours (Evmenenko and Teixeira ), such as that—generally—negative emotions are gradually being replaced by positive emotions during exercise, and are therefore useful building blocks for the current study.