The Way I Make You Feel: Unpicking the Features, Processes, and Consequences of Interpersonal Emotion Regulation

Emotion regulation, that is, the processes aimed at initiating, inhibiting, or changing emotional experiences or expressions, has been a mainstay of both basic and applied psychological investigations. The majority of this research has focused on how people regulate their own emotions and how such intrapersonal emotion regulation affects adaptive or maladaptive outcomes and well-being and mental health. Taking into account the social nature of managing emotions, there has been an increasing interest in investigating interpersonal emotion regulation, the attempt to change someone else’s emotions. Indeed, everyday examples of interpersonal emotional regulation abound, from providing support to a loved one to dampen stress to making a competitor feel worse so that they fail at a task. In this presentation I will present recent and ongoing empirical research with children, adolescents, and adults that aims to illuminate the features (what is interpersonal emotion regulation and how is it different from intrapersonal emotion regulation?), processes (people’s willingness and strategies they use to change others’ emotions), and consequences (when is interpersonal emotion regulation adaptive?) of interpersonal emotion regulation.