“Interpersonal emotion regulation: Implications for affiliation, perceived support, relationships, and well-being”: Correction to Williams et al. (2018).

When individuals experience empathy , they often seek to bolster others’ well-being. But what do empathizers want others to feel? Though psychologists have studied empathy and prosociality for decades, this question has yet to be clearly addressed. This is because virtually all existing research focuses on cases in which improving others’ well-being also comprises heightening their positive affect or decreasing their negative affect and helping them reach their own emotional goals. In this review, I argue that real-life empathic goals encompass a broader range—including sometimes worsening targets’ affect or contravening their wishes in order to improve their well-being—that can be productively integrated into the framework of interpersonal emotion regulation (IER). I review the empathic IER spectrum in a number of contexts, including close relationships, professional caregiving, and group-based emotions. Integrating empathy and IER provides a synthetic and generative way to ask new questions about how social emotions produce prosocial actions.

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Using multilevel modeling to characterize interpersonal emotion regulation strategies and psychopathology in female friends

10.31234/osf.io/abkug ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Kara Alise Christensen ◽

Ilana Seager van Dyk ◽

Sarah V. Nelson ◽

Michael Vasey

Keyword(s):

Emotion Regulation ◽

Predictive Power ◽

Interactive Effect ◽

Positive Association ◽

Well Being ◽

Expressive Suppression ◽

Interpersonal Emotion Regulation ◽

Regulation Strategies ◽

Multi Level ◽

Unique Predictor

Although people frequently rely on others to help manage affect, it is unknown the extent to which interpersonal emotion regulation (ER) strategies are similar to intrapersonal ER or have incremental predictive power for psychopathology. Female friend dyads (N = 120) completed questionnaires assessing habitual intrapersonal and interpersonal ER strategy use and symptoms of psychopathology. We utilized multi-level models entering respondent’s perceived reception of interpersonal ER, friend’s perceived provision of interpersonal ER, and the interaction between the two, covarying for respondent’s intrapersonal ER, to predict respondent psychopathology. There was a positive association with psychopathology for friend provision of brooding rumination and a negative association for friend provision of cognitive reappraisal, suggesting incremental effects (in the same direction) of interpersonal ER. There was an interactive effect for interpersonal expressive suppression, such that when friends provided low-to-average levels of suppression (< 50.41st percentile), respondent-reported reception of suppression was positively associated with respondent psychopathology. When friends provided average-to-high levels of suppression (> 50.41st percentile), there was no association between respondent report and psychopathology. Results suggest that although interpersonal ER may function similarly to intrapersonal ER, it is a unique predictor of well-being. This underscores the necessity of evaluating interpersonal ER to understand regulation processes.

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Cruel to Be Kind: Factors Underlying Altruistic Efforts to Worsen Another Person’s Mood

Psychological Science ◽

10.1177/0956797617696312 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 28 (7) ◽

pp. 862-871 ◽

Cited By ~ 16

Author(s):

Belén López-Pérez ◽

Laura Howells ◽

Michaela Gummerum

Keyword(s):

Emotion Regulation ◽

Video Game ◽

Perspective Taking ◽

Negative Emotion ◽

Well Being ◽

Empathic Concern ◽

Short Term ◽

Interpersonal Emotion Regulation ◽

Computer Based

When aiming to improve another person’s long-term well-being, people may choose to induce a negative emotion in that person in the short term. We labeled this form of agent-target interpersonal emotion regulation altruistic affect worsening and hypothesized that it may happen when three conditions are met: (a) The agent experiences empathic concern for the target of the affect-worsening process, (b) the negative emotion to be induced helps the target achieve a goal (e.g., anger for confrontation or fear for avoidance), and (c) there is no benefit for the agent. This hypothesis was tested by manipulating perspective-taking instructions and the goal to be achieved while participants ( N = 140) played a computer-based video game. Participants following other-oriented perspective-taking instructions, compared with those following objective perspective-taking instructions, decided to induce more anger in a supposed fellow participant who was working to achieve a confrontation goal and to induce more fear in a supposed fellow participant who was working to achieve an avoidance goal.

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Half human, half machine – augmenting service employees with AI for interpersonal emotion regulation

Journal of Service Management ◽

10.1108/josm-05-2019-0160 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 31 (2) ◽

pp. 247-265 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Alexander P. Henkel ◽

Stefano Bromuri ◽

Deniz Iren ◽

Visara Urovi

Keyword(s):

Emotion Regulation ◽

Emotion Recognition ◽

Goal Attainment ◽

Real Life ◽

Well Being ◽

Service Firms ◽

Content Type ◽

Service Employees ◽

Interpersonal Emotion Regulation ◽

Recognition Software

PurposeWith the advent of increasingly sophisticated AI, the nature of work in the service frontline is changing. The next frontier is to go beyond replacing routine tasks and augmenting service employees with AI. The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether service employees augmented with AI-based emotion recognition software are more effective in interpersonal emotion regulation (IER) and whether and how IER impacts their own affective well-being.Design/methodology/approachFor the underlying study, an AI-based emotion recognition software was developed in order to assist service employees in managing customer emotions. A field study based on 2,459 call center service interactions assessed the effectiveness of the AI in augmenting service employees for IER and the immediate downstream consequences for well-being relevant outcomes.FindingsAugmenting service employees with AI significantly improved their IER activities. Employees in the AI (vs control) condition were significantly more effective in regulating customer emotions. IER goal attainment, in turn, mediated the effect on employee affective well-being. Perceived stress related to exposure to the AI augmentation acted as a competing mediator.Practical implicationsService firms can benefit from state-of-the-art AI technology by focusing on its capacity to augment rather than merely replacing employees. Furthermore, signaling IER goal attainment with the help of technology may provide uplifting consequences for service employee affective well-being.Originality/valueThe present study is among the first to empirically test the introduction of an AI-fueled technology to augment service employees in handling customer emotions. This paper further complements the literature by investigating IER in a real-life setting and by uncovering goal attainment as a new mechanism underlying the effect of IER on the well-being of the sender.

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The Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS)

Swiss Journal of Psychology ◽

10.1024/1421-0185/a000093 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 72 (1) ◽

pp. 5-11 ◽

Cited By ~ 29

Author(s):

Elise S. Dan-Glauser ◽

Klaus R. Scherer

Keyword(s):

Emotion Regulation ◽

Well Being ◽

French Translation ◽

French Version ◽

Inappropriate Behaviors ◽

Initial Validation ◽

Difficulties In Emotion Regulation ◽

Instrument Measuring ◽

Highly Correlated ◽

Psychopathological Disorders

Successful emotion regulation is a key aspect of efficient social functioning and personal well-being. Difficulties in emotion regulation lead to relationship impairments and are presumed to be involved in the onset and maintenance of some psychopathological disorders as well as inappropriate behaviors. Gratz and Roemer (2004 ) developed the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS), a comprehensive instrument measuring emotion regulation problems that encompasses several dimensions on which difficulties can occur. The aim of the present work was to develop a French translation of this scale and to provide an initial validation of this instrument. The French version was created using translation and backtranslation procedures and was tested on 455 healthy students. Congruence between the original and the translated scales was .98 (Tucker’s phi) and internal consistency of the translation reached .92 (Cronbach’s α). Moreover, test-retest scores were highly correlated. Altogether, the initial validation of the French version of the DERS (DERS-F) offers satisfactory results and permits the use of this instrument to map difficulties in emotion regulation in both clinical and research contexts.

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Assessment of health related issues in individuals’, couples’, and families’ daily life

Zeitschrift für Gesundheitspsychologie ◽

10.1026/0943-8149.16.3.146 ◽

2008 ◽

Vol 16 (3) ◽

pp. 146-149 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Meinrad Perrez ◽

Michael Reicherts ◽

Yves Hänggi ◽

Andrea B. Horn ◽

Gisela Michel ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Emotion Regulation ◽

Daily Life ◽

Ecological Validity ◽

Reliability And Validity ◽

Well Being ◽

Computer Assisted ◽

Emotional States ◽

Self Reports ◽

Health Related ◽

Lower Variability

Abstract. Most research in health psychology is based on retrospective self reports, which are distorted by recall biases and have low ecological validity. To overcome such limitations we developed computer assisted diary approaches to assess health related behaviours in individuals’, couples’ and families’ daily life. The event- and time-sampling-based instruments serve to assess appraisals of the current situation, feelings of physical discomfort, current emotional states, conflict and emotion regulation in daily life. They have proved sufficient reliability and validity in the context of individual, couple and family research with respect to issues like emotion regulation and health. As examples: Regarding symptom reporting curvilinear pattern of frequencies over the day could be identified by parents and adolescents; or psychological well-being is associated with lower variability in basic affect dimensions. In addition, we report on preventive studies to improve parental skills and enhance their empathic competences towards their baby, and towards their partner.

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