Interpersonal Emotion Regulation Research Articles

Experienced emotions, emotion regulation strategies, and regulation depletion in collective team collapse and performance recovery situations

The collective collapse of a team’s performance is typically triggered by a critical event, such as performance failure or scoring of the opponent, evoking unhelpful emotions and their transfer between team members. These changes in emotional states also affect athletes’ cognitive processes and behaviors, maintaining the team collapse and prohibiting the team from recovering its performance. However, not every critical event and the emotions that accompany it evoke a team collapse, which is why athletes’ emotion regulation may play a key role in determining the performance outcome of a critical event for the team. To investigate this hypothesis, we conducted a retrospective-online survey study with 69 team sport athletes, assessing the emotion regulation strategies they applied in past team collapse vs. performance recovery situations, and how these strategies impacted them. We used quantitative measures to assess experienced emotions, individual and interpersonal emotion regulation, and depleting effects of emotion regulation in both situations and an open-ended qualitative question to assess interpersonal emotion regulation strategies in more detail. Athletes reported more unhelpful emotions and the increased use of affect-worsening and performance hindering individual and interpersonal emotion regulation strategies in the team collapse compared to the performance recovery situation. Athletes further indicated higher levels of effort regulating emotions and higher depletion levels in the team collapse situation. Our results highlight the importance of individual and interpersonal emotion regulation strategies in team collapse situations and indicate the use of more effective and less depleting strategies for sport teams to mitigate against a team collapse. Lay summary: This correlational study explored experienced emotions, individual and interpersonal emotion regulation, and its depleting effects in team collapse situations vs. situations where teams recovered their performance after a critical event. Athletes used inefficient, affect-worsening strategies, experienced more unhelpful emotions, and felt more depleted in team collapse vs. performance recovery situations.

The interpersonal risks of valuing happiness: Links to interpersonal emotion regulation and close others' mental health.

While most people want to feel happy, valuing happiness can paradoxically make people unhappy. We propose that such costs may extend to interpersonal contexts, given that valuing happiness may shape how people (i.e., regulators) manage others' (i.e., targets') emotions (i.e., extrinsic interpersonal emotion regulation). While valuing happiness could motivate regulators to reduce targets' distress using effective forms of emotion regulation, it may also push them to be intolerant toward targets' distress and, in turn, predict worse target well-being. The current investigation examines how two approaches to happiness (i.e., happiness aspiring and happiness concern) predict how regulators manage their children's and romantic partners' distress-two fundamental close relationship types that allow us to address the robustness of our findings. We obtained longitudinal reports across a year from socioculturally diverse regulators (N = 279, including partially overlapping groups of 155 parents and 248 partnered individuals) and cross-sectional reports from partners. We found that people who aspired to be happy were more successful at using reappraisal and distraction to manage targets' emotions, while those who were concerned about happiness were less successful at accepting targets' emotions (i.e., confirmed by partners' reports). In turn, more successful use of reappraisal and distraction predicted better target well-being, and less successful acceptance of targets' emotions predicted poorer target well-being across the next 8 months. These findings underscore the importance of understanding individual differences that shape consequential forms of interpersonal emotion regulation, thereby illuminating who is most likely to help their loved ones and who may be putting them at risk. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Intrinsic interpersonal emotion regulation strategy use and effectiveness across adulthood: The role of interaction partner age.

One way older adults may be able to maintain emotional well-being despite declining in cognitive ability is through leveraging social resources for intrinsic interpersonal emotion regulation. Additionally, given their increased life experience, older adults might also be particularly well-suited to regulate the emotions of others. To examine age difference in use and effectiveness of intrinsic interpersonal emotion regulation, community adults (N = 290, aged 25-85 years) were prompted 6×/day for 10 days to report their emotional experience, use of intrinsic emotion regulation strategies (including capitalization, social sharing, co-reappraisal, and reminiscing), and interaction partner age. Older age was associated with being less likely to engage in social sharing of negative emotions, and this effect was stable when controlling for negative emotion experience. Otherwise, there were no age differences in how often or how effectively people use intrinsic interpersonal emotion regulation. In terms of interaction partner age, older partner age was only associated with greater likelihood of using co-reappraisal and higher reports of negative emotion after social sharing. In summary, there was no strong evidence for the idea that interpersonal emotion regulation becomes more (or less) common or effective with age. However, though people may be less likely to share negative emotions and be seen as less effective partners for sharing these emotions later in life, older adults are preferable social partners for co-reappraisal potentially due to their life experience. Future work should explore motivational (i.e., attitudes toward negative emotions) and cultural (i.e., perceptions of roles and emotional abilities) mechanisms. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Supplemental Material for The Interpersonal Risks of Valuing Happiness: Links to Interpersonal Emotion Regulation and Close Others’ Mental Health

Supplemental Material for The Interpersonal Risks of Valuing Happiness: Links to Interpersonal Emotion Regulation and Close Others’ Mental Health

Interpersonal emotion regulation and depressive symptoms in parent-adolescent dyads: A daily-diary investigation.

Deficient parental extrinsic interpersonal emotion regulation (IER, how people regulate others' emotions) is a known risk factor for adolescent depression. Although IER and depression development are transactional, dyadic processes, previous work has almost exclusively focused on how parental IER is associated with adolescent depression. The association between parental IER and adolescent depression, and the associations between adolescent IER and adolescent and parental depression have received little attention. Moreover, most studies have focused on the regulation of negative but not positive affect. We address these gaps by examining associations between parent and adolescent IER and depressive symptoms using the actor-partner interdependence model framework. For 28 days, 112 parent-adolescent dyads (12-18-year-old adolescents) completed a dyadic daily diary, reporting their own depressive symptoms and IER strategies employed in response to dyad members' positive and negative affect. Our results, based on 5,442 data points, show that the use of positive- and negative-affect-worsening IER is associated with more depression in the regulator (be it parent or adolescent). Surprisingly, parents' use of more negative-affect-improving IER was associated with higher levels of their own and adolescents' depression. Finally, adolescents' use of positive-affect-improving IER was associated with their own decreased depression. Overall, parents (vs. adolescents) used more negative- and positive-affect-improving extrinsic IER, whereas adolescents used more positive-affect-worsening extrinsic IER. Our results highlight the importance of using dyadic designs in studying depression and IER, as well as the need to consider who is regulating, the valence of the affect regulated, and the type of strategy used. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Will you boost my joy or dampen it? Cultural differences in hedonic interpersonal emotion regulation in romantic relationships.

A central tenet guiding contemporary research on emotions is that people are fundamentally motivated to feel good and avoid feeling bad. This principle translates from intrapersonal to extrinsic interpersonal emotion regulation; people not only strive to achieve the hedonic goal of managing their own emotions, but they also help others reach the same goal-the process called hedonic interpersonal emotion regulation (hedonic IER). Here, we challenge the centrality of this principle in romantic relationships by testing a hypothesis that, compared with European Americans, Asians use hedonic IER less and benefit less from their partners' use of this strategy. Findings across three studies (total N = 2,540) supported this hypothesis. First, European Americans used hedonic IER more than Asians both in positive and negative situations, and, moreover, this cultural difference was mediated by dialectical beliefs about emotions (Study 1). Second, compared with Chinese, European Americans anticipated greater relationship satisfaction in response to their partners' hedonic IER attempts in both positive and negative situations, and this effect was again mediated by dialectical emotion beliefs (Study 2). Third, compared with Asian couples, European American couples perceived that their partners used hedonic IER more in positive situations. Moreover, when European Americans perceived that their partners used hedonic IER more, they showed greater vagal withdrawal during a positive discussion (i.e., physiological reactivity linked to enhanced social sensitivity and engagement), while Asians did not show this association (Study 3). These findings highlight the critical role of sociocultural contexts in shaping IER and its relational consequences. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Divergence of children’s friendships and intrinsic interpersonal emotion regulation: Factoring in extrinsic interpersonal emotion regulation strategy use.

Divergence of children’s friendships and intrinsic interpersonal emotion regulation: Factoring in extrinsic interpersonal emotion regulation strategy use.

Supplemental Material for Interpersonal Emotion Regulation and Depressive Symptoms in Parent–Adolescent Dyads: A Daily-Diary Investigation

Supplemental Material for Interpersonal Emotion Regulation and Depressive Symptoms in Parent–Adolescent Dyads: A Daily-Diary Investigation

Supplemental Material for A Multisample Investigation of Links Between Individual Differences in Emotion Dysregulation and Perceived Helpfulness of Interpersonal Emotion Regulation Interactions

Supplemental Material for A Multisample Investigation of Links Between Individual Differences in Emotion Dysregulation and Perceived Helpfulness of Interpersonal Emotion Regulation Interactions

An Integrative Framework for Capturing Emotion and Emotion Regulation in Daily Life.

When studying emotion and emotion regulation, typical approaches focus on intrapersonal processes. Although this emphasis clarifies what transpires within a person, it does not capture that much of emotional experience and regulation occurs between people. In this commentary, we highlight how the Cognitive-Affective Processing System (CAPS) approach-originally developed by Mischel and Shoda and extended to dyadic interactions by Zayas, Shoda, and Ayduk-can provide a unifying framework for understanding the complexity of everyday affective experiences. We discuss how this framework can be fruitfully applied to the study of emotion and emotion regulation broadly, and particularly to interpersonal emotion regulation, by considering both the mediating psychological processes within individuals, as well as the behavioral processes that transpire between individuals. To illustrate these points, we discuss some of the thought-provoking work in the special double issue on the Future of Affective Science edited by Shiota et al. (2023), and we offer forward-thinking suggestions and propose future research directions informed by the CAPS approach. By employing the CAPS framework, we can better capture the complexity of everyday affective experiences and synthesize the growing body of research in affective science.

Adult Attachment and Emotion Regulation Flexibility in Romantic Relationships.

Adults with attachment insecurity often struggle in romantic relationships due to difficulties in emotion regulation (ER). One potentially influential yet understudied factor is the inflexible over-reliance on either intrapersonal (self-directed, e.g., suppression) or interpersonal (involving others, e.g., sharing) ER. This study investigates the association between attachment insecurity and flexibility in using interpersonal versus intrapersonal ER in response to daily stressors in romantic relationships. We hypothesized that higher attachment avoidance and anxiety are associated with (H1) higher reliance on either intrapersonal or interpersonal ER over the other, respectively; (H2) less variable use of interpersonal compared to intrapersonal ER over time; and (H3) less flexible use of interpersonal compared to intrapersonal ER depending on the availability of a romantic partner. Study 1 (N = 174; 133 females, Mage = 23.79, SDage = 7.63) used an online cross-sectional survey to measure average inter/intrapersonal ER, addressing H1. Study 2 (N = 124; 104 females, Mage = 22.45, SDage = 6.39), combined a baseline survey with experience sampling (7 days, 8 notifications/day), addressing H1, H2, and H3. Results showed that higher attachment avoidance was associated with lower interpersonal compared to intrapersonal ER. Higher attachment anxiety was associated with less variable use of interpersonal compared to intrapersonal ER and less flexible use of interpersonal ER depending on partner availability. These findings suggest distinct associations between attachment orientations and ER flexibility, explaining ER difficulties in individuals with high attachment insecurity.

Interpersonal Emotion Regulation in Young Adults With Low and High Psychosis Proneness: A Diary Study

Abstract Purpose Emotion regulation is a complex process that often involves the presence of others, also known as interpersonal emotion regulation (IER). However, little is known about how psychotic symptoms relate to IER. We investigated whether young adults with elevated psychosis proneness engage in IER less frequently and find it less helpful than those with low psychosis proneness. Methods Psychosis-prone young adults with attenuated negative (PP-NES, n = 37) and positive symptoms (PP-POS, n = 20) and a low psychosis-prone control group (CG, n = 52) were recruited based on a priori defined cut-offs for the Community Assessment of Psychic Experiences. Participants provided daily diaries over one week, reporting negative symptoms, paranoia, positive and negative affect, and the frequency and efficacy of IER strategies to upregulate positive and downregulate negative emotions. Results Multilevel models showed that PP-NES reported using IER less frequently and found it less effective compared to CG. PP-POS reported turning to others for advice in distressing situations more than the CG. These group differences were related to aberrant affect levels in PP-NES. Across groups, participants used IER less on days on which they reported more negative symptoms and used it more on days on which they reported more paranoia. Conclusions These findings suggest symptom-specific aberrations in everyday IER in psychosis-prone young adults. Moreover, from day to day, young adults (psychosis-prone or not) appear to adjust their use of IER depending on current social motivation and distress levels. Future research should investigate whether these aberrations are dysfunctional regarding social inclusion and symptom trajectories.

The critical mediating roles of the middle temporal gyrus and ventrolateral prefrontal cortex in the dynamic processing of interpersonal emotion regulation

Interpersonal emotion regulation (IER) is a crucial ability for effectively recovering from negative emotions through social interaction. It has been emphasized that the empathy network, cognitive control network, and affective generation network sustain the deployment of IER. However, the temporal dynamics of functional connectivity among these networks of IER remains unclear. This study utilized IER task-fMRI and sliding window approach to examine both the stationary and dynamic functional connectivity (dFC) of IER. Fifty-five healthy participants were recruited for the present study. Through clustering analysis, four distinct brain states were identified in dFC. State 1 demonstrated situation modification stage of IER, with strong connectivity between affective generation and visual networks. State 2 exhibited pronounced connectivity between empathy network and both cognitive control and affective generation networks, reflecting the empathy stage of IER. Next, a ‘top-down’ pattern is observed between the connectivity of cognitive control and affective generation networks during the cognitive control stage of state 3. The affective response modulation stage of state 4 mainly involved connections between empathy and affective generation networks. Specifically, the degree centrality of the left middle temporal gyrus (MTG) mediated the association between one's IER tendency and the regulatory effects in state 2. The betweenness centrality of the left ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC) mediated the association between one's IER efficiency and the regulatory effects in state 3. Altogether, these findings revealed that dynamic connectivity transitions among empathy, cognitive control, and affective generation networks, with the left VLPFC and MTG playing dominant roles, evident across the IER processing.

Interpersonal emotion regulation during relationship conflict: Daily and longitudinal associations with couples' sexual well-being.

Relationship conflicts, which are common among committed couples, provoke negative emotions with implications for sexual well-being (i.e., satisfaction, desire, low distress). Couples might manage these emotions through extrinsic interpersonal emotion regulation (IER; attempting to influence the emotions of a romantic partner). In a preregistered dyadic, daily diary, and longitudinal study, we examined how four distinct IER strategies-responsiveness, cognitive support, physical presence, hostility-perceived by a romantic partner during relationship conflict related to both partners' sexual well-being. Over 28 days, community couples (N = 122; recruited between 2022 and 2023) completed brief measures of IER and sexual satisfaction, desire, and distress on days of relationship conflict and full versions of these measures 4 months later. Results may be generalizable to community couples in North America; however, improving the diversity of samples in future research would extend generalizability. Generally, greater perceived responsiveness, cognitive support, and physical presence IER on conflict days were each associated with higher daily sexual satisfaction and desire for couples, while greater perceived hostility was associated with lower daily satisfaction and desire. Greater perceived physical presence averaged across diaries was associated with one's own increased desire 4 months later. Most effects were similar for men and women; however, on days when women perceived greater responsiveness and cognitive support from partners, their partners reported more sexual distress, but there was no association between men's perceived IER and partners' distress. Findings expand models of IER to include sexual well-being and support IER as a target for interventions aimed at promoting sexual well-being. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

The Interpersonal Emotion Regulation Roots of Leader Affective Presence in Teams

The Interpersonal Emotion Regulation Roots of Leader Affective Presence in Teams

Group psychological counseling to contrast academic burnout: a research protocol for a randomized controlled trial.

Academic burnout is a condition characterized by exhaustion, cynicism, a distant attitude toward studying, and diminished self-efficacy in academic activities. Preliminary scientific findings indicate that interventions designed to alleviate work burnout also hold promise for mitigating academic burnout, however clear evidence based on randomized controlled trials is still missing. This research protocol describes a randomized controlled trial aimed at evaluating the efficacy of an online group psychological intervention to contrast academic burnout. Participants with high levels of burnout will be assigned to a psychological counseling group or a waiting list control group. The research comprises several phases: (T0) Screening, Recruitment, and Randomization; (T1) Baseline assessment (pre-intervention); (T2) Outcome Assessment (post-intervention); and (T3) Follow-up Assessment (3 months post-intervention). The primary outcomes include burnout symptoms, general wellbeing, and academic achievement. Additionally, secondary variables such as effort-reward imbalances, satisfaction/frustration of basic psychological needs, intrapersonal and interpersonal emotion regulation, coping strategies, and social support will be examined. The psychological intervention strategies will encompass psychoeducation, self-awareness enhancement, cognitive restructuring, and promotion of social support. This research protocol is an initial step toward evidence-based psychological interventions to treat academic burnout.

Why do we engage in everyday interpersonal emotion regulation?

Interpersonal emotion regulation occurs when people influence others' emotions (extrinsic regulation) or turn to others to influence their own emotions (intrinsic regulation). Research on interpersonal regulation has tended to focus on how people regulate emotions, with little interrogation of why people do it, despite the importance of motives in driving emotion regulation goals and strategy selection. To fill this gap, we conducted a systematic exploration of interpersonal emotion regulation motives, employing a participant-driven approach to document the breadth of motives that people hold across different social contexts. Study 1a (N = 100) provided an initial qualitative examination of motives for both intrinsic and extrinsic interpersonal emotion regulation. Study 1b (N = 399) quantitatively catalogued these motives in recalled social interactions. Study 2 (N = 200), a daily diary study, used the motive taxonomy generated in Studies 1a and 1b to understand why people regulated their own and others' emotions in everyday social interactions over the course of 14 days. Together, our findings reveal the diversity of intrinsic and extrinsic interpersonal emotion regulation motives and open avenues to further explore motives both as a precursor to and an outcome of regulatory processes in daily life. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Supplemental Material for Why Do We Engage in Everyday Interpersonal Emotion Regulation?

Supplemental Material for Why Do We Engage in Everyday Interpersonal Emotion Regulation?

The development and validation of the Emotional Entitlement Questionnaire (EEQ).

Beliefs about what one is entitled to emotionally may make a unique contribution to emotional and interpersonal experiences. In the present study, we introduce the concept of emotional entitlement, the degree to which people believe they have the right to experience different emotions (e.g., the right to feel happy, angry, sad, etc.). Our aim was to develop and validate the Emotional Entitlement Questionnaire (EEQ). In the first study (N = 200), we constructed a three-factor, 15-item EEQ, in Hebrew. Factor analysis revealed a three-factor structure of emotional entitlement to positive emotions (EEP), emotional entitlement to negative emotions (EEN), and the maladaptive aspect of emotional entitlement which we termed uncompromised emotional entitlement (EEU). The second study (N = 672) replicated this three-factor structure in a new independent sample and established test-retest reliability using two timepoints. In the third study (N = 495), we translated the EEQ into English and replicated the three-factor structure in another independent sample while establishing initial validity using the entitlement questionnaire, the positive and negative affect schedule, and the interpersonal emotion regulation questionnaire. Different dimensions of the EEQ were related to different levels of life satisfaction and loneliness, above and beyond the contribution of global entitlement. Overall, we would suggest that EEP represents an adaptive aspect of emotional entitlement, EEU represents a maladaptive aspect, and EEN has both adaptive and maladaptive aspects. The results indicate that emotional entitlement is a multidimensional construct and that the EEQ is a reliable and valid tool with good psychometric properties. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Interpersonal emotion regulation and physiological synchrony: cognitive reappraisal versus expressive suppression

ABSTRACT The present study aimed to explore the effectiveness of two typical intrapersonal strategies (cognitive reappraisal, CR; expressive suppression, ES) on interpersonal emotion regulation (IER), and uncover the physiological synchrony pattern underlying this. A sample of 90 friend dyads (N = 180) was randomly assigned to the CR, the ES, or the control group. In each dyad, the target underwent a negative emotional task (induce sadness by recalling a negative event), and the regulator was assigned to implement the CR strategy, the ES strategy, or no action to down-regulate the targets’ negative emotions. Self-reported results showed that compared to the control group, both CR and ES strategies decreased the targets’ negative emotions, and increased the targets’ positive emotions, indicating a successful IER effect. And the ECG results revealed that relative to the control condition, both CR and ES strategies evoked stronger physiological synchrony (heart rate synchrony and heart rate variation synchrony) during the emotion regulation stage of IER. Overall, these findings demonstrated the similar efficacy of reappraisal and suppression strategies implemented by the regulators to improve the targets’ negative emotions, and suggested that the physiological synchrony might have an important relational meaning during the IER process.