Emotion regulation has the odd distinction of being a wildly popular construct whose scientific existence is in considerable doubt. In this article, the authors discuss the confusion about whether emotion generation and emotion regulation can and should be distinguished from one another. Authors describe a continuum of perspectives on emotion, and highlight how different (often mutually incompatible) perspectives on emotion lead to different views about whether emotion generation and emotion regulation can be usefully distinguished. Authors argue that making differences in perspective explicit serves the function of allowing researchers with different theoretical commitments to collaborate productively despite seemingly insurmountable differences in terminology and methods.