[1] The field of psychology has traditionally focused on intrapersonal processes in which a person manages their own emotions individually outside of the social context.
Examples include calling a friend for advice, venting to a partner about a stressful situation, or engaging in conversation as a distraction from distress.
[5] Examples include trying to cheer up a friend who is upset, trying to make one's partner feel guilty for neglecting oneself, or trying to calm a stressed coworker.
More recently, social and organizational psychologists have also documented the use of interpersonal emotion regulation within romantic and familial relationships[13][14] and in a range of work settings (e.g., hospitals,[15] law firms,[16] debt collection agencies,[17] and prisons[18]).
Interpersonal emotion regulation may even be used towards complete strangers as a way of making social interactions run more smoothly.
[28][29] Social proximity is hypothesized to confer emotion regulatory benefits through three mechanisms: 1) risk distribution, 2) load sharing, and 3) capitalization.
A prominent model proposed by Jamil Zaki and Craig Williams (2013) conceptualizes different classes of interpersonal emotion regulation along two orthogonal dimensions.
Processes that rely upon how others respond or behave are considered response-dependent, while strategies that do not depend upon others' behavior are classified as response-independent.
This model yields four classes of interpersonal emotion regulation: There are potentially hundreds of strategies that people can use to influence others' feelings.
A series of studies reported by Niven and colleagues generated almost 400 unique strategies that could be differentiated primarily according to whether they are used to improve or to worsen others' feelings.
[40][41] However, Marroquin (2011) proposes adaptive interpersonal emotion regulation as a mechanism of the positive effects of social support.
Social interaction that diverts attention away from self-referential negative thinking and promotes cognitive reappraisal may help to alleviate depression.
Dialectical behavioral therapy, originally developed for individuals with borderline personality disorder, teaches clients interpersonal effectiveness, which includes a variety of skills for communicating emotions in a clear and socially acceptable manner.
[51] There is low item endorsement for the affect-worsening dimension, suggesting that people rarely make deliberate attempts to worsen their own or others' emotions.
[7] However, extrinsic affect-worsening is associated with health-related impairments, suggesting detrimental effects of engaging in these strategies likely due to negative social repercussions.
The 4 factors include Enhancing Positive Affect (seeking social interaction to enhance happiness), Perspective Taking (recruiting others to point out that other people are in a worse situation), Soothing (seeking comfort and sympathy from others), and Social Modeling (observing others for examples of how to cope).
Respondents rate how likely they would be to use a variety of strategies in response to three vignettes about stressful hypothetical scenarios (task-oriented, romantic, social).
The DIRS consists of four factors, including two intrapersonal (Accept, Avoid) and two interpersonal (Reassurance-seek, Vent) classes of strategies.
Both reassurance-seeking and venting are associated with negative affect, interpersonal problems, stress, and borderline personality disorder symptoms.