Does interpersonal emotion regulation effort pay off?

Interpersonal emotion regulation shapes people's emotional and relational experiences. Yet, researchers know little about the regulation processes that influence these outcomes. Recent works in the intrapersonal emotion regulation space suggest that motivational strength, or effort, people invest in regulation might be the answer. We applied this motivated approach for the first time in the interpersonal space-looking at both intrinsic and extrinsic forms of interpersonal emotion regulation-in order to identify the potential emotional and relational outcomes of putting effort into regulating one's own emotions through others, and regulating others' emotions. In daily diary (N = 171) and experience sampling (N = 239) studies, we examined participants' interpersonal emotion regulation behaviors and socioemotional experiences in everyday social interactions over the course of 1 week. These methods allowed us to examine effort at both momentary and person levels. We found that people who habitually put in more intrinsic effort to feel better through others felt worse overall. People also felt worse on occasions when they put in more effort to extrinsically help others feel better, although at the person level extrinsic effort was associated with higher interaction quality. Together, our findings suggest that interpersonal emotion regulation success is not simply a matter of trying hard. This observation opens new research avenues to investigate the interplay of different factors that determine when, and for whom, investing effort in interpersonal emotion regulation pays off. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Putting Effort into Emotion Regulation: Manipulating Desirability and Motivational Strength

Although people often want to regulate their emotions, they are sometimes reluctant to invest the necessary effort in doing so. We propose that people could be motivated to invest effort in emotion regulation, by rendering the target emotional state more desirable. Rendering an emotion goal more desirable can motivate people to invest effort in emotion regulation, ultimately facilitating successful emotion regulation. In three studies (N = 452), we show that both inside and outside the lab, rendering calmness more desirable, boosted the motivational strength to increase calmness, increasing the effort people invested to increase calmness, and ultimately made people calmer. This investigation points to the importance of motivational strength as a potential means to promote effort and success in emotion regulation.

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s42761-022-00155-0.

Incremental theories of emotion across time: Temporal dynamics and correlates of change

Accumulating research points to the importance of incremental theories of emotion. Yet, little is known about whether these beliefs change in adulthood across long time spans, and if so, whether such changes are prospectively linked to emotion regulation outcomes. In the present investigation, we tested how incremental theories of emotion change during college, and whether such changes are linked to emotion regulation practices. We followed 394 undergraduates as they entered and ultimately graduated from college. Focusing on the temporal dynamics of incremental theories of emotion, we found that they were somewhat stable, and their mean-level increased over time. Focusing on the correlates of such changes, we found that students who during college came to believe that emotions (but not intelligence) are more controllable, ended up using more cognitive reappraisal (but not expressive suppression) at the end of college. Similarly, students who during college came to use cognitive reappraisal (but not expressive suppression) more frequently, ended up believing that emotion (but not intelligence) is more controllable at the end of college. This pattern could not be explained by differences in initial levels or by differences in underlying affective experiences. We discuss potential implications of these findings for understanding the interplay between beliefs and emotion regulation. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Evaluating the quality of the list of occupations recommended for further exploration

Access to online career information increases the complexity of career decisions (choosing a major or job). When the number of alternatives is large, the first step is to compile a list of promising career alternatives for further exploration, often by using interest inventories (e.g., the Self-Directed Search). But what makes such a list useful? The judgments of 20 career counselors and 103 graduate students supported the hypothesis that higher list quality is associated with a greater similarity between the occupations on the list, fewer occupational fields represented by the occupations on the list, and a list length approximating seven occupations.

Burned-Out: Middle School Teachers After One Year of Online Remote Teaching During COVID-19

During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, teachers around the globe had been forced to move their teaching to full-time online, remote teaching. In this study, we aimed at understanding teacher burnout during COVID-19. We conducted a survey among 399 teachers at the peak of a prolonged physical school closure. Teachers reported experiencing more burnout during (vs. before) the COVID-19 pandemic. Contributing factors to this burnout were high family work conflict and low online teaching proficiency. Burnout was associated with lower work-related wellbeing: Lower work commitment, and higher turnover intentions. It was also associated with lower psychological wellbeing: More depressive and anxiety symptoms, and lower subjective wellbeing. Approach (but not avoid) coping strategies served as a protective factor against the burnout-turnover intentions association. We conclude with recommendations on how to mitigate teacher burnout, thereby contributing to teacher wellbeing.

Emotion regulation is motivated

Because emotion regulation is a motivated process, one must adopt a motivational perspective to understand it. We build on the distinction between goal setting (i.e., selecting end-states to achieve) and goal striving (i.e., engaging in behaviors to achieve desired end-states). First, we discuss how these concepts apply to regulation in the emotion domain. Second, we review existing research on setting emotion goals and striving for them. Third, we highlight how goal setting and goal striving can operate in tandem to shape emotion regulation. Finally, we highlight the importance of considering emotion regulation as a motivated process, and how doing so informs key topics explored in this special issue, including those pertaining to determinants (e.g., culture as setting emotion goals), consequences (e.g., monitoring emotion goal progress and mental health), and interventions (e.g., manipulating features of emotion goal setting and striving to promote adaptive emotion regulation). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

The Cue-Approach Task as a General Mechanism for Long-Term Non-Reinforced Behavioral Change

Recent findings show that preferences for food items can be modified without external reinforcements using the cue-approach task. In the task, the mere association of food item images with a neutral auditory cue and a speeded button press, resulted in enhanced preferences for the associated stimuli. In a series of 10 independent samples with a total of 255 participants, we show for the first time that using this non-reinforced method we can enhance preferences for faces, fractals and affective images, as well as snack foods, using auditory, visual and even aversive cues. This change was highly durable in follow-up sessions performed one to six months after training. Preferences were successfully enhanced for all conditions, except for negative valence items. These findings promote our understanding of non-reinforced change, suggest a boundary condition for the effect and lay the foundation for development of novel applications.

Successful emotion regulation requires both conviction and skill: beliefs about the controllability of emotions, reappraisal, and regulation success

To succeed in self-regulation, people need to believe that it is possible to change behaviour and they also need to use effective means to enable such a change. We propose that this also applies to emotion regulation. In two studies, we found that people were most successful in emotion regulation, the more they believed emotions can be controlled and the more they used an effective emotion regulation strategy - namely, cognitive reappraisal. Cognitive reappraisal moderated the link between beliefs about the controllability of emotion and success in emotion regulation, when reappraisal was measured as a trait (Study 1) or manipulated (Study 2). Such moderation was found when examining the regulation of disgust elicited by emotion-inducing films (Study 1), and the regulation of anger elicited by real political events (Study 2). We discuss the implications of our findings for research and practice in emotion regulation.