Interpersonal Emotion Research Articles

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

Are self-conscious emotions about the self? Testing competing theories of shame and guilt across two disparate cultures.

The emotions of guilt and shame play major roles in forgiveness, social exclusion, face-saving ploys, suicide, and honor killings. Understanding these emotions is thus of vital importance. The outputs of guilt and shame are already well understood: Guilt motivates amends; shame motivates evasion. However, the elicitors and functions of these emotions are disputed. According to attributional theory, guilt and shame are intrapersonal emotions elicited when negative outcomes are attributed to controllable/unstable (guilt) or uncontrollable/stable (shame) aspects of the self. By contrast, functionalist theory claims that guilt and shame are interpersonal emotions for minimizing the imposition of harm on valued others (guilt) and the cost of reputational damage on the self (shame). Although there is confirmatory evidence consistent with both theories, evidence ostensibly supporting one theory has been argued to actually support the other. To solve this problem of data interpretation, here we report contrastive critical tests of the two theories performed on online participant pools in the United States and India in 2021 (N = 853). Results in both countries support functionalist theory over attributional theory, suggesting that the intrapersonal effects reported in the emotion literature are tributary or incidental to the interpersonal functions of guilt and shame. Functionalist theory presents a promising framework for understanding the interpersonal and intrapersonal aspects of guilt, shame, and other self-conscious emotions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Turning Crisis into Opportunity:Negative Emotion and Leader Interpersonal Emotion Management

Turning Crisis into Opportunity:Negative Emotion and Leader Interpersonal Emotion Management

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.

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

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

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).

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.

Loneliness and shyness from the perspective of emotion regulation

Research aim: Loneliness and shyness are two of our increasing psychological problems today. It is considered important to understand how emotion regulation dimensions affect these two problem areas, as one of the main factors underlying our psychological problems. In this study, it was aimed to determine how both intra and interpersonal emotion regulation strategies and difficulties in emotion regulation predict loneliness and shyness. Method: For this aim, it was carried out with the participation of 462 people (58.4% women and 41.6% men; Rage:18-69; Mage: 28.08) from two different countries, Turkey (51.5%) and Pakistan (48.5%). It is quantitative research and descriptive and relational analyzes were made. Findings: When the findings were examined, it was found that difficulties in emotion regulation predicted both loneliness and shyness. In terms of emotion regulation strategies, while ‘expressive suppression’ and ‘social modelling’ predicts loneliness; ‘expressive suppression’ and ‘enhancing positive affect’ seem to predict shyness. It was found that other emotion regulation strategies did not predict statistically significantly. In addition, the findings obtained according to the relevant demographic variables (according to gender, country, being in a romantic relationship, having a child/children) and emotion regulation strategies were discussed in the context of the relevant literature. Conclusions: As a result of the study, it was seen that there are emotion regulation types and strategies associated with loneliness and shyness.

The impact of Perceived Value Determinants on Brand Loyalty: The moderating role Customer Trust

This study aims to determine the impact of Product quality, customer engagement, Perceived Experience, and Perceived risk on Perceived value, with Customer trust as a moderating variable. In today’s increasingly competitive business environment, identifying the sources of perceived value is an essential step for any brand that aims to improve customer satisfaction and reinforce customer loyalty. For this study, an attempt to analyze data quantitatively is made, and a survey methodology is used to collect data from a sample of 282 respondents who are consumers in various fields of industry. A structured questionnaire was used to collect the relevant data. In the data analysis process, Structural Equation Modeling was utilized to assess the direct impacts of the studied variables. The interaction terms were used to determine the effect of Customer Trust on the aforementioned impacts. The data show that product quality, customer engagement, and perceived experience have a strong positive impact on perceived value, which is also significant, while perceived risk results in a significant negative impact on perceived value. At the same time, Customer trust has a positive impact on value while strengthening the positive impacts of product quality, engagement, and experience. Additionally, Customer trust suppresses the negative impact of perceived risk. The results of the study imply that establishing trust is one of the most effective ways of improving the perceived value of a product or service. This conclusion also provides marketing professionals, who are responsible for providing quality, interpersonal emotions, and experience while managing the levels of perceived risk with practical guidelines for value enhancement. The theoretical implications are rooted in certain requirements concerning the further elaboration of the concept of value. The general management implications are connected with the possible development of customer relations as a strategic path leading to enhanced brand loyalty.

Psychological care for cancer survivors: a 2 × 2 model of interpersonal emotion regulation by caregivers.

Psychological care for cancer survivors: a 2 × 2 model of interpersonal emotion regulation by caregivers.

“It Takes More Than a Pill to Kill”: Bounded Accountability in Disciplining Professional Misconduct Despite Heightened Transparency

Existing theory suggests that professionals are ineffective at regulating the work of their peers, especially when it comes to disciplining misconduct, because of professional norms of collegiality. In response, transparency measures have been put in place over the years to increase accountability toward key external audiences, such as the public, and to ensure that professionals hold guilty peers accountable for misconduct. Few studies, however, have sufficiently investigated how professionals discipline peer misconduct in the face of transparency measures. We gained access to a state medical board’s internal deliberations about how to discipline physicians guilty of overprescribing opioids, endangering public health. We found that even in the most egregious cases, the board predominantly refrained from implementing stringent disciplinary action despite extensive transparency measures. Our data allow us to theorize what we call bounded accountability, which refers to individuals charged with holding guilty actors accountable for their misconduct instituting only limited discipline. We found four mechanisms that constrained the exercise of accountability: information asymmetries between regulatory bodies, bureaucratic inefficiencies of the disciplinary apparatus, shared professional beliefs among decision makers, and interpersonal emotions between decision makers and the guilty professionals whom they are put in charge of disciplining. We found that these mechanisms operated at the field, occupational, organizational, and interpersonal levels, respectively. Utilizing a highly consequential study context, our findings suggest that when professional misconduct is disciplined by members of the same occupation, bounded accountability is the most likely outcome, even with extensive transparency measures in place. Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2023.17932 .

Interpersonal emotion regulation as a source of positive relationship perceptions: The role of emotion regulation dependence.

The current research unveils a novel mechanism through which interpersonal emotion regulation enhances romantic relationship quality and affective experience. Across three studies, we tested the hypothesis that depending on interactions with a romantic partner for emotion regulation (emotion regulation dependence [ERD]) motivates people to see their partner as more supportive and responsive, and evaluate their partner's traits more positively. In turn, we expected these elevated perceptions to partially account for the positive effect of ERD on relationship satisfaction and affective experience. In Studies 1 and 2 (N = 395 and 397), experimental manipulations of subjective ERD increased perceived partner support provision, perceived partner responsiveness, and, in Study 2, evaluation of partner traits. In Study 3, a multimethod dyadic study (N = 470), ERD predicted greater perceived partner support provision, perceived partner responsiveness, and positive evaluation of the partner's traits independently of the partner's self-reports and objective observers' assessments of partner behavior. ERD also predicted change over time in these perceptions. These findings were replicated in terms of everyday experiences using daily diary methods (daily n = 9,653). Global and daily ERD indirectly predicted greater relationship satisfaction and mood through positive interpersonal perceptions. Results underscore the importance of intrapsychic processes in interpersonal emotion regulation and suggest that positively biased interpersonal perceptions may be a common pathway through which depending on interactions with romantic partners for emotion regulation improves relationship quality and affective experience. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

The dynamics of interpersonal emotion regulation: How sharers elicit desired (but not necessarily helpful) support.

When in distress, people often seek help in regulating their emotions by sharing them with others. Paradoxically, although people perceive such social sharing as beneficial, it often fails to promote emotional recovery. This may be explained by people seeking-and eliciting-emotional support, which offers only momentary relief. We hypothesized that (1) the type of support sharers seek shapes corresponding support provided by listeners, (2) the intensity of sharers' emotions increases their desire for emotional support and decreases their desire for cognitive support, and (3) listeners' empathic accuracy promotes support provision that matches sharers' desires. In 8-min interactions, participants (N = 208; data collected in 2016-2017) were randomly assigned to the role of sharer (asked to discuss an upsetting situation) or listener (instructed to respond naturally). Next, participants watched their video-recorded interaction in 20-s fragments. Sharers rated their emotional intensity and support desires, and listeners rated the sharer's emotional intensity and their own support provision. First, we found that the desire for support predicted corresponding support provision. Second, the intensity of sharers' emotions was associated with an increased desire for emotional and cognitive support. Third, the more accurately listeners judged sharers' emotional intensity, the more they fulfilled sharers' emotional (but not cognitive) support desire. These findings suggest that people have partial control over the success of their social sharing in bringing about effective interpersonal emotion regulation. People elicit the support they desire at that moment, explaining why they perceive sharing as beneficial even though it may not engender emotional recovery. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Supplemental Material for Interpersonal Emotion Regulation as a Source of Positive Relationship Perceptions: The Role of Emotion Regulation Dependence

Supplemental Material for Interpersonal Emotion Regulation as a Source of Positive Relationship Perceptions: The Role of Emotion Regulation Dependence

Supplemental Material for The Dynamics of Interpersonal Emotion Regulation: How Sharers Elicit Desired (but Not Necessarily Helpful) Support

Supplemental Material for The Dynamics of Interpersonal Emotion Regulation: How Sharers Elicit Desired (but Not Necessarily Helpful) Support

The development of a novel scale to assess intra- and interpersonal emotion regulation strategies: The Emotion Regulation Strategy Scale (ERSS).

Existing emotion regulation research focuses on how individuals use different strategies to manage their own emotions-also called intra-personal emotion regulation. However, people often leverage connections with others to regulate their own emotions-interpersonal emotion regulation. The goal of the present studies was to develop a comprehensive and efficient scale-the Emotion Regulation Strategies Scale (ERSS)-to assess nine specific emotion regulation strategies that individuals use both intra-personally and interpersonally. These emotion regulation strategies were cognitive reappraisal, distraction, situation selection, problem solving, acceptance, calming, savoring, rumination, and expressive suppression. Data were collected between 2020 and 2022. Study 1 adopted a qualitative approach to establish original scale items. Results of the confirmatory factor analysis in Study 2 confirmed a nine-factor solution for both the intra- and the interpersonal scales and finalized scale items. A second confirmatory factor analysis in Study 3 found the ERSS for both the intra-personal and interpersonal scale models to possess good model fit. Correlations from Study 3 showed the ERSS subscales to be related in expected ways to existing emotion regulation scales, yet not redundant with these scales. The degree to which individuals used the range of intra- and interpersonal emotion regulation strategies assessed on the ERSS also related to the levels of clinical symptoms. The ERSS represents a comprehensive novel scale that can flexibly assess a range of specific emotion regulation strategies used both intra- and interpersonally. Future work should be conducted using the ERSS cross culturally and in clinical samples. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Empathy is associated with interpersonal emotion regulation goals in everyday life.

Responding to the emotions of the people around us is a phenomenon traversing human lives; however, research has only recently started exploring the predictors of interpersonal emotion regulation (IER). In two ecological momentary assessment studies conducted in 2021 and 2022, we tested whether facets of empathy (i.e., mentalizing, experience sharing, empathic concern, and personal distress) are associated with other-focused IER goals and their attainment in everyday life (Ns = 125 and 204). Study 1 examined associations between mentalizing, experience sharing, and global hedonic and counter-hedonic IER goals (i.e., making others feel better or worse) in a relatively young and predominantly female student sample in Germany. Study 2 expanded these findings to empathic concern, personal distress, and specific types of hedonic and counter-hedonic IER goals (i.e., increasing, decreasing, and/or maintaining others' positive and/or negative emotions) in a more diverse U.S. community sample. Participants primarily endorsed hedonic IER goals, which were associated with higher mentalizing and experience sharing in both studies and higher empathic concern and lower personal distress in Study 2. Counter-hedonic IER goals were positively associated with experience sharing and personal distress in Study 2. Conversely, empathic concern and mentalizing were negatively related to counter-hedonic IER goals. We also found differential associations for state and trait empathy with IER goals. All empathy facets except personal distress were positively associated with goal attainment in Study 2. These findings address a major gap in our knowledge about everyday IER and offer a novel perspective on empathy in social emotion regulation processes. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Prevalence of phubbing behaviour in school and university students in Spain.

This study examined the prevalence of phubbing behavior among school and university students in Spain and analyzed the correlation of phubbing with other indicators of psychological well-being and mental health. The study sample comprised a total of 1,351 school and university students, with ages ranging from 12 to 21 years. The study used the Phubbing Scale (PS), the Compulsive Internet Use Scale (CIUS), the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (RSE), and the Interpersonal Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (IERQ) for data collection. The results showed evidence of phubbing among approximately half of the students. Statistically significant differences were found based on gender and educational level in the Phone Obsession subscale and the PS total score, with male students and university students scoring higher in their respective parameters. In addition, phubbing was positively correlated with problematic internet use and negatively correlated with self-esteem. Phubbing behavior is highly prevalent among adolescents aged 12-21 years and is positively correlated with low self-esteem and problematic internet use. Developing strategies for addressing this widespread issue at early ages, particularly within the educational context, such as schools, is crucial for implementing preventive measures. The inappropriate use of technological devices, including smartphones, in schools has the potential to negatively affect students' well-being and ability to adapt to school.