I know you so I will regulate you: Closeness but not target's emotion type affects all stages of extrinsic emotion regulation

Other-Oriented Empathetic Concern as the Underlying Factor of Extrinsic Emotion Regulation Motives and Its Positive Application for Social Well-Being

Purpose

In recent years, research on interpersonal emotion regulation has garnered increasing attention. Extrinsic emotion regulation (EER) or the regulation of others' emotions is associated with individual personal relationships and mental health outcomes. However, investigations into why people engage in extrinsic emotion regulation are relatively rare. The current study aimed to identify the underlying factor structure of the motives of extrinsic emotion regulation, based on the Extrinsic Emotion Regulation Motives Scale (EERMS), to examine how these factors related to people's moral identity and social relationships during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Participants and Methods

The participants of this study were 464 adults (73.1% females) from China who completed an online survey based on EERMS and other related measures. An exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was utilized to examine the underlying structure of EER motives followed by a bifactor EFA (bi-EFA).

Results

Analyses revealed that the bi-EFA model, with an overarching factor (other-oriented empathetic concern) and three specific factors (self-orientation, reciprocation, and obligation), was best applied to the data. These factors were differently associated with social well-being indicators (moral self-identity, peer relationship quality, and perceived social support).

Conclusion

This preliminary study supports the use of a hierarchical perspective to understand the different dimensions of motives for extrinsic emotion regulation.

The Influence of Personality on Interpersonal Emotion Regulation in the Context of Psychosocial Stress

Interpersonal emotion regulation is common in everyday life and important to various outcomes. However, there is a lack of understanding about the personality profiles of people who are good at regulating others' emotions. We conducted a dyadic study, pairing 89 'regulators' and 'targets', with the targets subjected to a psychosocial stressor in the form of a job interview, and the regulators instructed to manage the targets' feelings prior to the interview. We did not observe any relationship between the regulators' personality traits and the strategies that they reported using when trying to manage the targets' feelings, nor between the regulators' personalities and the targets' job interview performance. However, the anxiety levels of the targets who were paired with more extraverted regulators fluctuated less across the multiple measures throughout the study, suggesting more effective interpersonal emotion regulation. Our findings suggest that extraversion may be the most relevant trait in shaping interpersonal emotion regulation, and that the influence of personality on regulatory effectiveness is unlikely to arise due to preferences for using different types of strategies.

Understanding the benefits of extrinsic emotion regulation in depression

Depression is a serious psychiatric illness that negatively affects people's feelings, thoughts, and actions. Providing emotion regulation support to others, also termed Extrinsic Emotion Regulation (EER), reduces depressive symptoms such as perseverative thinking and negative mood. In this conceptual review paper, we argue that EER may be especially beneficial for individuals with depression because it enhances the cognitive and affective processes known to be impaired in depression. Behavioral studies have shown that EER recruits processes related to cognitive empathy, intrinsic emotion regulation (IER), and reward, all impaired in depression. Neuroimaging data support these findings by showing that EER recruits brain regions related to these three processes, such as the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex which is associated with IER, the ventral striatum, which is associated with reward-related processes, and medial frontal regions related to cognitive empathy. This conceptual review paper sheds light on the mechanisms underlying the effectiveness of EER for individuals with depression and therefore offers novel avenues for treatment.

Emotionally Intelligent People Use More High-Engagement and Less Low-Engagement Processes to Regulate Others' Emotions

Existing research has linked emotional intelligence (EI) with intrinsic emotion regulation (processes people use to regulate their own emotions). However, there has not yet been an empirical examination of whether EI abilities relate to extrinsic emotion regulation (processes people use to regulate other people's emotions). This study (N = 178 undergraduates) examines whether ability EI (as measured by the Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test) correlates with eight extrinsic regulation processes (as measured by the Regulation of Others' Emotions Scale, including downward comparison, expressive suppression, humour, distraction, direct action, reappraisal, receptive listening and valuing). Total ability EI score is significantly positively correlated with three high-engagement processes (r = .24, .40, and .16 for reappraisal, receptive listening, and valuing) and negatively correlated with two low-engagement processes (r = -.30 and -.38 for downward comparison and expressive suppression). When all four EI branches predicted each regulation process in multiple regression, only emotion management significantly predicted downward comparison, receptive listening and valuing, and only emotion management and understanding predicted expressive suppression (no significant regression coefficients for reappraisal). We conclude that the drivers of EI/extrinsic regulation associations are engagement with the target's emotion and the emotion management branch of EI.