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Interpersonal emotion regulation

Interpersonal emotion regulation (IER) refers to the processes through which individuals attempt to influence which emotions they or others have, when they have them, and how they experience and express them, via social interactions.^[1] This contrasts with intrapersonal emotion regulation, which involves self-directed strategies such as cognitive reappraisal or expressive suppression to manage one's own emotions independently.^[1] IER encompasses both intrinsic forms, where a person seeks to regulate their own emotions through others, and extrinsic forms, where one regulates the emotions of another person.^[1] Key strategies of IER include social modeling, in which individuals observe others' emotional expressions to influence their own; perspective-taking, where others help reframe emotional situations; soothing, involving comforting behaviors to reduce negative affect; and enhancing positive emotions, such as through encouragement or modeling of joyful expressions. These strategies are often response-dependent, relying on feedback from the interaction partner, or response-independent, such as simply observing another's emotional state.^[1] The Interpersonal Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (IERQ), a validated measure, assesses tendencies toward these strategies and has demonstrated good psychometric properties, including reliability and associations with empathy and social support.^[2] IER plays a foundational role in human development, originating in early caregiver-child interactions that provide emotional coregulation and attachment security.^[3] Across the lifespan, it supports relationship quality, reduces psychological distress, and enhances well-being by leveraging social baselines— the innate reliance on others to buffer emotional demands.^[3] However, maladaptive IER, such as excessive dependence or ineffective support, is implicated in mental health disorders including anxiety, depression, and interpersonal difficulties.^[3] Research continues to explore IER's neural underpinnings, cultural variations, and therapeutic applications in clinical settings.^[1]

History and Development

Origins of the Concept

The concept of interpersonal emotion regulation (IER) traces its early roots to social psychology and emotion theories emerging in the 1980s, particularly through the lens of attachment theory and developmental perspectives on emotional development. Researchers began exploring how social interactions, such as caregiver-child bonds, influence emotional states beyond individual control, building on foundational work like John Bowlby's attachment framework, which highlighted the role of social relationships in modulating distress from infancy onward. This period laid groundwork by emphasizing that emotions are inherently social, with early studies in developmental psychology examining how interpersonal processes shape emotional responses in normative contexts. A pivotal influence came from James Gross's process model of emotion regulation, introduced in 1998, which primarily focused on intrapersonal strategies but was soon adapted to social contexts to account for how individuals regulate emotions through interactions with others.^[4] Gross's model outlined antecedent- and response-focused regulation, providing a framework that later researchers extended to dyadic and group dynamics, recognizing that emotional modulation often involves external social inputs rather than solely internal mechanisms. Initial conceptualizations of IER as a distinct construct were advanced by Ralph Erber and Abraham Tesser in their 1992 work, which examined shared emotional experiences and the social sharing of emotions, proposing that individuals actively use social engagement to alleviate or maintain moods in anticipation of interactions.^[5] Their absorption hypothesis illustrated how task immersion in social settings serves as a regulatory tool, distinguishing IER by its emphasis on dyadic influences over solitary efforts. This marked a clear distinction from classic intrapersonal models, such as those centered on cognitive reappraisal or suppression, by highlighting how dyadic or group processes— like mutual emotional attunement—directly alter emotional trajectories through relational feedback loops. Unlike intrapersonal regulation, which operates within the individual, IER underscores the relational nature of emotions, where one person's state impacts another's via shared experiences or supportive exchanges. By the 2000s, the field shifted toward viewing IER as a bidirectional process, moving beyond unidirectional support-seeking to encompass reciprocal influences where both parties actively regulate each other's emotions, as evidenced in emerging models integrating social baseline perspectives.

Key Milestones and Contributors

The concept of interpersonal emotion regulation (IER) was formally introduced in a seminal 2013 paper by Jamil Zaki and W. Craig Williams, who defined it as a core social process involving the act of one individual influencing another person's emotions, often through mechanisms like empathic accuracy and shared emotional experiences, distinguishing it from intrapersonal regulation.^[1] This work built on earlier social psychology insights but established IER as a distinct domain, emphasizing its role in affiliation and well-being, with Zaki's subsequent research further exploring how empathic accuracy— the ability to perceive others' emotions precisely—facilitates effective IER. In 2016, Stefan G. Hofmann and colleagues advanced the field by developing the Interpersonal Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (IERQ), a validated 20-item scale assessing four key factors: enhancing positive affect, perspective taking, soothing, and social modeling, thereby integrating IER into the broader emotion regulation literature dominated by James Gross's process model.^[2] Hofmann's contributions highlighted IER's measurement challenges and its overlap with intrinsic (self-focused) and extrinsic (other-focused) forms, providing empirical tools for future studies. Gross, a foundational figure in emotion regulation, extended his influential process model (originally intrapersonal) to encompass interpersonal dynamics, underscoring how social contexts modulate emotion generation, maintenance, and modification across individuals. The 2020s marked significant empirical progress, including meta-analyses evaluating the relationship between emotion regulation strategies and social affect and cognition, with effect sizes indicating moderate associations between adaptive regulation and improved relational outcomes comparable to intrapersonal strategies in controlled settings.^[6] For instance, research has examined cultural variations in IER, such as English et al. (2019) revealing differences in strategy use across individualistic and collectivistic cultures.^[7] These developments, alongside Zaki's ongoing work on empathic processes and Hofmann's scale validations across cultures, have solidified IER's place in clinical and social psychology.

Core Concepts

Definition and Scope

Interpersonal emotion regulation (IER) refers to the processes through which individuals actively influence or are influenced by others' emotions via social interactions, encompassing attempts to shape the type, intensity, or duration of affective experiences in oneself or others. This contrasts with intrapersonal emotion regulation, which involves solitary efforts to manage one's own emotional states without direct interpersonal involvement. IER highlights the inherently social nature of emotional processing, where regulation emerges from dynamic exchanges rather than isolated cognition.^[8] At its core, IER operates on emotions as multifaceted constructs comprising subjective cognitive appraisals, physiological arousal, and behavioral expressions, allowing regulation to target any or all of these elements within a social framework. The scope of IER extends to both deliberate, conscious strategies—such as providing reassurance—and automatic, unconscious influences, like subtle nonverbal cues that alter emotional trajectories. These processes unfold across varied social scales, from intimate dyads and family dynamics to broader group settings, underscoring IER's role in everyday relational maintenance.^[8] IER is differentiated from related phenomena like emotional contagion, which entails the passive, automatic transmission of emotions through mimicry and affiliation without intentional modification. In contrast, IER is typically goal-directed, involving proactive efforts to enhance, suppress, or redirect emotions for adaptive outcomes. Within this domain, IER includes intrinsic forms where individuals enlist others to regulate their own affective states, though extrinsic regulation of others' emotions also falls under its purview.

Intrinsic and Extrinsic Forms

Interpersonal emotion regulation (IER) is categorized into intrinsic and extrinsic forms based on the target of regulation. Intrinsic IER involves individuals seeking help from others to manage their own emotions, often through social sharing or support-seeking. For example, discussing a personal stressor with a friend to gain reassurance and reframe the situation, thereby reducing one's own distress. This form emphasizes reliance on interpersonal processes to influence self-experiences and is linked to benefits like enhanced emotional clarity and well-being when effective.^[1] Extrinsic IER, conversely, occurs when one person attempts to regulate another person's emotions. This can stem from prosocial motives, driven by empathy to benefit the target (e.g., comforting a grieving colleague to alleviate their pain), or egoistic motives, aimed at self-interest (e.g., distracting an upset coworker to minimize personal discomfort from the conflict). These motivational differences represent a continuum influenced by empathy levels and relational needs.^[9]^[1] Empirical evidence highlights distinct outcomes for extrinsic IER motives. Prosocial, other-oriented extrinsic IER correlates positively with relationship satisfaction and perceived social support (r = 0.32–0.43), fostering stronger interpersonal bonds. In contrast, egoistic, self-oriented extrinsic IER shows little to no positive associations and may incur relational costs, such as reduced trust due to perceived manipulation.^[10] In group settings, interpersonal emotion regulation (IER) manifests as collective processes where members influence and are influenced by shared emotional norms to manage affective experiences. Group norms, such as expectations for emotional expression or suppression, shape how individuals regulate their emotions in response to collective stressors, fostering cohesion and adaptive functioning. For instance, in sports teams, collective rituals like pre-game huddles or synchronized chants serve as normative practices that buffer stress and enhance emotional resilience by promoting a sense of unity and shared control. These rituals function as a form of extrinsic IER, where group members actively modify each other's anxiety through behavioral synchronization, leading to improved performance under pressure. IER dynamics in groups are inherently bidirectional, involving reciprocal influences that extend beyond dyads to the collective level, particularly in leader-follower interactions. Leaders often engage in affect-improving IER by modeling positive emotions, which tunes followers' affective states and elevates the group's overall positive tone, thereby enhancing outcomes like innovation and coordination. Conversely, affect-worsening regulation, such as expressing frustration, can propagate negative emotions through the group, undermining cohesion. Organizational psychology research demonstrates this through emotional contagion, where leaders' moods converge with followers' via mimicry and feedback loops, moderated by group interdependence and norms; for example, positive leader affect has been shown to boost team coordination in experimental groups. This bidirectionality underscores how IER in groups amplifies individual efforts into collective emotional tuning, distinct from unilateral regulation.^[11] Related processes like emotional co-regulation and social referencing intersect with but differ from IER in groups. Emotional co-regulation involves mutual, often automatic synchronization of affective states among members, such as physiological attunement during shared tasks, which stabilizes group emotions through negative feedback loops without deliberate direction. In contrast, IER entails intentional, directed influence to modify another's emotions, as seen when a team member actively reassures a distressed colleague to align with group goals. Social referencing, meanwhile, is a self-initiated process where individuals gauge others' emotional signals to appraise ambiguous situations and self-regulate, such as athletes scanning teammates' reactions to a coach's feedback; this informs personal emotional responses but lacks the active modification central to IER. Unlike mere empathy, which involves understanding without alteration, IER in groups requires proactive strategies to reshape emotional trajectories, ensuring alignment with collective norms.^[1]

Theoretical Frameworks

Social Baseline Theory (SBT) posits that humans are inherently social beings whose brains treat social relationships as a fundamental baseline for navigating the environment, thereby reducing the cognitive and neural effort required for emotion regulation. Developed by James A. Coan and colleagues, the theory views social proximity as a default state that distributes risk and shares regulatory load, allowing individuals to offload emotional processing to trusted others rather than relying solely on intrinsic mechanisms.^[12]^[13] This framework integrates evolutionary principles, suggesting that the brain anticipates social resources as bioenergetic aids, similar to how physical tools extend human capabilities, which in turn lowers the perceived demands of emotional challenges.^[13] At its core, SBT operates through mechanisms where perceived social support diminishes threat perception and regulatory demands. For instance, the presence of a supportive partner can attenuate neural responses to stressors by fostering a sense of shared burden, effectively recalibrating the individual's internal state to a lower-effort baseline. Empirical evidence from functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies supports this: in one seminal experiment, women holding their husband's hand during anticipated electric shocks exhibited significantly reduced activation in threat-related brain regions, such as the right anterior insula, superior frontal gyrus, and hypothalamus, compared to holding a stranger's hand or no hand, with the effect scaling with marital quality.^[14] This offloading mirrors how social connections integrate into neural representations of the self, enabling more efficient emotion regulation without exhaustive solo effort.^[13] In the context of interpersonal emotion regulation (IER), SBT explains why social isolation heightens distress and amplifies emotional reactivity, as the absence of a social baseline forces greater reliance on individual resources, increasing cognitive load and vulnerability to negative affect. Dyadic fMRI data further corroborate this, showing that partnered interactions during threat exposure lead to decreased prefrontal cortex engagement for regulation, indicating that social presence inherently buffers emotional demands.^[13] However, the theory assumes contexts of safe and trusting relationships; it applies less effectively in toxic or unsupportive dynamics, where social proximity may instead exacerbate distress rather than alleviate it.^[13]

Process Model of Interpersonal Emotion Regulation

The Process Model of Interpersonal Emotion Regulation adapts James Gross's classic intrapersonal framework to social contexts, emphasizing how individuals influence their own or others' emotions through interactions. Proposed by Zaki and Williams in 2013, the model delineates five sequential stages—situation selection, situation modification, attentional deployment, cognitive change, and response modulation—each executed interpersonally to achieve emotional goals. This adaptation highlights the relational nature of regulation, where one person (the regulator) actively engages another (the target) to shape affective experiences, distinguishing it from solitary strategies.^[15] At the earliest stage, situation selection involves choosing or avoiding social settings to preempt emotional responses; for example, an individual might select a gathering with uplifting friends to cultivate joy or decline an invitation to a tense family event to evade anger.^[15] Situation modification follows, entailing alterations to the ongoing interaction, such as a partner diffusing a heated discussion by suggesting a break or redirecting conversation.^[15] In attentional deployment, regulators shift the target's focus away from distressing elements, like distracting a distressed colleague with an engaging story to lessen anxiety.^[15] Cognitive change, often via interpersonal reappraisal, reframes the emotional situation collaboratively; for instance, during a discussion, one person helps another reinterpret a failure as a learning opportunity, reducing its sting.^[15] Finally, response modulation targets the expression or experience of emotions post-generation, such as encouraging deep breathing together to dampen physiological arousal.^[15] Empirical research supports the model's sequential structure, with studies demonstrating that earlier-stage interventions enhance the efficacy of later ones in dyadic exchanges. For example, investigations into dyadic reappraisal have shown it sequentially downregulates negative affect and bolsters positive relational dynamics in real-time interactions.^[16] Daily diary studies further validate this progression, revealing that interpersonal strategies like reappraisal and distraction predict improved emotional and relational outcomes across multiple days, underscoring their cumulative impact.^[17] The model extends beyond linearity by incorporating feedback loops, wherein the target's evolving emotional response signals the regulator to refine or sustain strategies, fostering adaptive, bidirectional exchanges.^[18] This dynamic element aligns with broader social dependencies, such as those outlined in social baseline theory, enabling regulation within supportive networks.^[15]

Strategies and Mechanisms

Cognitive Strategies

Cognitive strategies in interpersonal emotion regulation involve mental processes through which individuals influence others' emotional states by altering their cognitive appraisals or perspectives of emotional events. These strategies emphasize internal shifts in thinking rather than overt actions, facilitating emotional change via verbal guidance, shared reflection, or empathetic reframing during social interactions. A primary cognitive strategy is interpersonal reappraisal, where one person helps another reinterpret the meaning of an emotional situation to reduce its negative impact. For instance, suggesting to a distressed individual that a criticism "is not personal" but rather reflective of the critic's own issues can transform feelings of rejection into understanding. This process works by changing the target's cognitive appraisal of the event, thereby decreasing negative affect and promoting adaptive emotional responses. Evidence from laboratory experiments demonstrates its efficacy; in a study of couples discussing adjustment disorder symptoms, co-reappraisal—jointly reframing stressors—predicted lower levels of emotional distress and better relational adjustment compared to co-brooding, a maladaptive counterpart.^[19] Another key strategy is perspective-taking, in which the regulator encourages the target to adopt an alternative viewpoint, such as imagining the situation from another person's angle or considering broader contexts, to guide emotional regulation. This fosters empathy by promoting a deeper understanding of the target's experience while redirecting focus from self-centered distress. The Interpersonal Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (IERQ) identifies perspective-taking as a distinct subscale, with items reflecting its use in everyday social support, such as reminding someone of others facing similar challenges to normalize their feelings. Studies validating the IERQ show that frequent perspective-taking correlates with reduced worry and enhanced emotional resilience in interpersonal contexts.^[2] These strategies offer advantages like enhanced empathy and stronger social bonds, improving emotional attunement between individuals. However, risks arise when applications are mismatched; for example, over-rationalizing profound grief through reappraisal may invalidate the target's emotions, leading to increased isolation or intensified distress if the reframing feels dismissive. In maladaptive forms, such as excessive co-rumination disguised as reappraisal, it can exacerbate symptoms rather than alleviate them.^[19] Culturally, cognitive strategies like verbal reframing via reappraisal are more prevalent in individualistic societies, such as Western European contexts, where direct cognitive restructuring aligns with norms emphasizing personal agency and explicit emotional processing. In contrast, collectivist East Asian cultures favor perspective-taking and social modeling to maintain harmony, reflecting interdependent self-construals that prioritize relational balance over individual reinterpretation.^[7]

Behavioral Strategies

Behavioral strategies in interpersonal emotion regulation encompass observable actions and interactions that directly modulate another individual's emotional experience, often driven by motives such as empathy or relational bonding. These approaches focus on external behavioral interventions rather than internal cognitive shifts, providing immediate, tangible support to alter emotional trajectories. Observational studies highlight their prevalence in everyday interactions, particularly in close dyads like parent-child or romantic relationships, where such behaviors facilitate emotional recovery and strengthen social ties. A key example is social sharing, where individuals disclose their emotions to others to elicit support and validation, a common intrinsic strategy that promotes emotional processing and reduces isolation.^[20]^[2]^[21] Prominent behavioral strategies include distraction, physical comforting, and humor. Distraction involves redirecting the target's attention from distressing stimuli to neutral or positive alternatives, such as suggesting a change in activity or conversation topic to interrupt negative rumination.^[22] This strategy is supported by process models of emotion regulation, which emphasize its role in antecedent-focused modulation before emotions intensify fully.^[20] Physical comforting employs tactile actions like hugging or holding hands to convey reassurance and reduce arousal, proven effective in enhancing emotional security through intimacy.^[23] Humor, meanwhile, uses playful remarks or actions to elicit laughter and diffuse tension, lightening the mood and promoting positive affect.^[24] Soothing behaviors, such as verbal reassurance or calming presence, also directly target negative affect reduction and are captured in measures like the IERQ.^[2] The effectiveness of these strategies is highly context-dependent, influenced by relational closeness and situational norms. For example, physical touch succeeds in intimate bonds by bolstering psychological closeness but risks boundary violations in casual or unfamiliar interactions.^[23]^[20] Recent research as of 2023-2025 highlights IER flexibility—adapting strategies like distraction or humor based on context—as key to efficacy, including in digital interactions via text or video.^[25]^[26] Observational research on dyadic interactions shows that combining these behaviors with attuned responsiveness yields faster emotion stabilization during distress.^[21] In group contexts, behavioral strategies extend to collective practices like shared activities that enable mutual emotional expression and support. Group venting sessions, for instance, allow participants to engage in synchronized behavioral cues—such as nodding or communal storytelling—to validate and diffuse shared negative emotions, enhancing overall relational cohesion. These variants draw on social modeling and altruism, making them particularly adaptive in therapeutic or communal settings where individual actions amplify through group dynamics. Enhancing positive emotions through encouragement or modeling joyful expressions is another group-oriented approach, linked to improved well-being.^[20]^[2]

Clinical and Applied Contexts

Role in Psychopathology

Interpersonal emotion regulation (IER) plays a critical role in the onset and maintenance of various psychopathologies, where dysfunctional patterns contribute to symptom perpetuation through maladaptive social interactions. In anxiety disorders, excessive extrinsic IER, such as compulsive reassurance seeking, often manifests as a strategy to alleviate distress but fosters dependency cycles that exacerbate symptoms. For instance, individuals with generalized anxiety disorder may repeatedly solicit validation from others to mitigate uncertainty, which reinforces avoidance behaviors and interpersonal strain, ultimately hindering independent emotion management. In depression, reduced intrinsic IER capacity—referring to the diminished ability to utilize social interactions for self-soothing—frequently leads to social withdrawal and isolation, amplifying negative affect. This deficit impairs the leveraging of supportive relationships for emotional stabilization, creating a feedback loop where withdrawal further erodes social resources needed for recovery. Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is characterized by erratic IER patterns, including manipulative strategies driven by intense fear of abandonment, such as provocative behaviors to elicit reassurance or emotional responses from others. These tactics, often rooted in heightened emotional reactivity to perceived interpersonal threats, disrupt stable relationships and perpetuate affective instability. The borderline interpersonal-affective systems model highlights how such dysregulated IER maintains BPD symptoms by escalating conflict and invalidation in social exchanges. Bidirectional links between poor IER and psychopathology are evident across disorders, where initial deficits predict symptom exacerbation and relapse. For example, in depression, emotion regulation impairments, including interpersonal components, are associated with sustaining rumination and reducing adaptive social engagement. Similarly, in anxiety and BPD, maladaptive IER reinforces core symptoms, while symptom severity further impairs regulatory capacities, underscoring the need to target these cycles in understanding disorder trajectories.

Applications in Psychotherapy and Interventions

In psychotherapy, Emotion-Focused Therapy (EFT) trains couples in co-regulation by guiding partners to express and validate each other's emotions during structured dialogues, fostering secure attachment and mutual emotional support.^[27] This approach emphasizes empathy-based techniques where therapists facilitate the release and integration of emotions, leading to improved relational bonds and reduced distress, as evidenced by meta-analyses showing EFT's efficacy in couple therapy.^[27] Similarly, Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) modules for borderline personality disorder (BPD) enhance intrinsic interpersonal emotion regulation (IER) through the interpersonal effectiveness skill set, which teaches patients to assert needs, maintain relationships, and self-validate emotions independently.^[28] By integrating group sessions and coaching, DBT reduces interpersonal dysfunction and promotes adaptive emotional responses in social contexts, with studies demonstrating decreased non-suicidal self-injury and emotion dysregulation over treatment.^[28] Group interventions, such as support groups modeled on 12-step programs like Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), foster shared emotion regulation by encouraging members to openly discuss and synchronize emotional experiences in a peer-supported environment.^[29] For instance, Emotions Anonymous adapts AA principles to help participants cope with anxiety, depression, and anger through mutual storytelling and empathy, promoting collective emotional alignment and reduced isolation.^[29] Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) provide evidence that IER training reduces mental health symptoms; for example, an interpersonal emotion regulation intervention improved depression scores in multiple sclerosis patients, though effects on stress were mixed.^[30] A 2023 meta-review by Wehner et al. on social prescribing interventions, including group-based activities and support groups, found consistent improvements in loneliness, social support, and mental health outcomes like reduced depression and anxiety among older adults, highlighting the role of enhanced social interactions in emotion regulation.^[31] Broader applications include workplace programs that train teams in IER to prevent burnout; systematic reviews show that emotional competency trainings, incorporating empathy and regulation skills, yield moderate effects on emotional intelligence (SMD = 0.44) and sustained well-being, irrespective of profession.^[32] In developmental contexts, parenting classes use emotion socialization interventions to teach caregivers validation and coaching techniques, resulting in small-to-medium improvements in children's emotional competence (g = 0.44) and parental practices (g = 0.50), as demonstrated by meta-analyses of RCTs targeting young children.^[33]

Assessment and Measurement

Self-Report Questionnaires

Self-report questionnaires are widely used to assess individuals' use of interpersonal emotion regulation (IER) strategies, capturing subjective experiences of seeking or providing emotional support from others. These tools typically involve Likert-scale items that evaluate frequency or tendencies in interpersonal contexts, distinguishing IER from intrapersonal regulation by focusing on social interactions. Common measures target both adaptive and maladaptive aspects, providing insights into how people perceive their reliance on others for emotion management. The Interpersonal Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (IERQ), developed by Hofmann et al. in 2016, is a 20-item self-report scale designed to measure the use of others to regulate one's own emotions.^[34] It assesses four key factors—Enhancing Positive Affect (e.g., seeking others to amplify positive feelings), Perspective Taking (e.g., using others' viewpoints to reframe emotions), Soothing (e.g., relying on others for comfort during distress), and Social Modeling (e.g., observing others to learn regulation techniques)—with five items per factor rated on a 5-point Likert scale from 1 (not at all) to 5 (very much).^[35] The IERQ demonstrates strong internal consistency, with Cronbach's alpha coefficients ranging from 0.73 to 0.85 across subscales in the original validation sample of 408 adults, and good convergent validity through correlations with related constructs like social support (r = 0.40–0.60).^[34] The Difficulties in Interpersonal Regulation of Emotion (DIRE) scale, introduced by Dixon-Gordon et al. in 2018, evaluates maladaptive barriers to IER, such as challenges in providing or receiving emotional support from others.^[36] Comprising 27 items rated on a 5-point Likert scale, it includes subscales assessing low empathy, interpersonal distrust, and difficulties in using others for regulation, focusing on how these impediments manifest in daily social interactions.^[37] Initial validation in undergraduate samples (N = 142) showed adequate reliability (Cronbach's α = 0.82–0.91) and predictive validity, with DIRE scores associating with increased psychopathology symptoms like depression (β = 0.25, p < 0.01) over 14-day daily assessments.^[36] The Emotion Regulation of Others and Self (EROS) scale, developed by Niven et al. in 2011, is a 24-item measure that differentiates strategies for regulating one's own emotions versus those of others.^[38] Participants rate items on a 5-point Likert scale (1 = not at all to 5 = a great deal), with 12 items each for self-regulation (e.g., suppressing own negative emotions) and other-regulation subscales (e.g., distracting others from distress), allowing comparison of intrinsic and extrinsic regulation tendencies.^[38] Validation across three studies (total N > 500) confirmed a two-factor structure with high internal reliability (Cronbach's α = 0.84 for self, 0.88 for others) and discriminant validity from general personality traits.^[38] More recent measures include the External Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (EERQ; 2025), a 32-item scale assessing interpersonal resources for emotion regulation with five subscales—Problem-solving/Reappraisal, Invalidation, Empathy, Avoidance, and another—rated on a Likert scale, validated in adult samples showing good reliability (α > 0.80) and links to well-being.^[39] Additionally, the Regulation of Others' Emotions Scale (ROES; 2025) captures eight extrinsic strategies, such as expressive suppression and downward social comparison, with strong psychometric properties in diverse populations.^[40] Across these questionnaires, psychometric properties are robust, with Cronbach's α typically exceeding 0.80 for subscales in diverse adult and clinical samples, supporting internal consistency.^[35]^[36]^[38] Construct validity is evidenced by moderate to strong correlations with intrapersonal regulation measures (e.g., r = 0.30–0.50 with ERQ) and social functioning indices in samples from the US, Europe, and Asia. However, limitations include potential self-report biases, such as social desirability, which may inflate adaptive strategy endorsements in non-clinical populations.^[41] These tools complement objective measures like behavioral coding for a fuller assessment of IER.

Behavioral and Physiological Measures

Behavioral coding of interpersonal emotion regulation (IER) involves systematic video analysis of dyadic interactions to identify and quantify observable regulation attempts, such as comforting gestures or verbal reassurances. One widely adopted method is the Specific Affect Coding System (SPAFF), originally developed for marital interactions, which has been adapted for dyadic contexts to score specific emotional behaviors like validation or anger suppression that facilitate IER.^[42]^[43] In parent-child dyads, for instance, coders analyze sequences of affective exchanges to detect co-regulation patterns, where one partner's soothing actions reduce the other's distress signals.^[44] The Inter-Personal Affect Regulation Test (IPART), developed in the early 2020s, is a performance-based assessment evaluating the ability to improve others' emotions through responses to video scenarios of distressed individuals; validation studies (N > 200) demonstrate reliability (α = 0.85–0.90) and correlations with empathy measures (r = 0.40–0.60).^[45] This approach provides granular insights into the temporal dynamics of IER, revealing how behavioral cues synchronize to downregulate shared negative affect. Physiological measures offer objective indices of IER by capturing biological synchrony during social exchanges. Heart rate variability (HRV) synchronization between interaction partners serves as a proxy for effective IER, with increased interpersonal HRV coherence indicating successful emotional attunement and reduced stress in romantic couples or close friends.^[46]^[47] Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) further elucidates neural mechanisms, demonstrating overlap in the anterior insula activation during empathic regulation, where observing a partner's distress engages shared circuits for affective sharing and modulation.^[48] A 2018 review highlighted the insula's role in this neural overlap, drawing on meta-analytic evidence linking it to the integration of self- and other-oriented emotional processing in IER contexts.^[49] Ecological momentary assessment (EMA) complements these methods by prompting real-time reporting of IER events through mobile apps, capturing dyadic regulation in naturalistic settings without relying solely on retrospective recall. In studies of adolescents, EMA via smartphones has revealed how parental or peer support downregulates momentary negative emotions, with prompts assessing the type and immediacy of interpersonal strategies used.^[50]^[17] This technique tracks fluctuations in IER efficacy across daily interactions, such as sharing positive events to amplify joy or seeking reassurance during stress.^[51] These measures reduce self-report biases inherent in questionnaires by providing verifiable behavioral and biological data, though they face challenges like high equipment costs and laboratory constraints that limit ecological validity.^[52] Emerging wearable technologies, such as smartwatches monitoring HRV in real-world dyads, address these limitations by enabling field-based assessments of IER synchrony with minimal intrusion (as of 2025).^[53]^[54]

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Aug 7, 2025 · In Study 2, 142 undergraduate students completed the DIRE and daily measures of emotion regulation and coping for 14 days. Preliminary findings ...
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The Difficulties in Interpersonal Regulation of Emotions Scale (DIRE)
Feb 8, 2024 · Several differences in emotion regulation between Eastern and Western cultures have been identified in previous studies, reflecting culture- ...1. Introduction · 3. Results · 3.1. Factor Analysis
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(PDF) Emotion Regulation of Others and Self (EROS) - ResearchGate
Aug 9, 2025 · It evaluates the deliberate, positive, or negative intention to regulate a partner's emotions (extrinsic emotional regulation) among couples in ...
[34]
Interpersonal emotion regulation questionnaire: psychometric ...
Interpersonal emotion regulation: A review of social and developmental components. Behaviour Change, 35(4), 203-216. doi:10.1017/bec.2018.19. DOI: https ...
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(PDF) The Specific Affect Coding System (SPAFF) - ResearchGate
This method involves videotaping a conversation between two individuals and identifying interpersonal emotional behaviors (e.g., interest, validation, anger) ...
[36]
[PDF] Interpersonal Emotion Dynamics in Adolescence and Emerging ...
Specific Affect Coding System (SPAFF) Coding Categories. Emotion. Function. Indicators. Negative Emotion. Contempt. Belittle, hurt, humiliate. • Sarcasm. • ...<|separator|>
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Co-regulation in dyadic parent–child relationships: a video analysis ...
Nov 21, 2023 · This study identifies basic elements of co-regulation between parents and children in relatively well-functioning interactions.
[38]
How our hearts beat together: a study on physiological ... - Nature
Jul 25, 2023 · HRV has consistently been linked to both stress responses (decreasing HRV) as well as emotional regulation and social engagement (increasing HRV) ...
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Individual patterns and synchrony of heart rate variability in ...
Apr 9, 2025 · A physiological marker commonly associated with emotional and social regulation is vagally-mediated heart rate variability (HRV), i.e. beat-to- ...
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Is Empathy for Pain Unique in Its Neural Correlates? A Meta ...
Evidence suggests a core neural network—including anterior insula (AI) and mid-cingulate cortex (MCC)—is involved in empathy for pain. However, a similar ...
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Neural Mechanisms With Respect to Different Paradigms ... - Frontiers
Jul 23, 2018 · In this review, we briefly introduce the neural networks of empathy for pain, including common brain areas and those that differ depending on the paradigm.
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The link between adolescent girls' interpersonal emotion regulation ...
Nov 7, 2023 · Findings suggest that both parents and peers effectively help adolescent girls down-regulate everyday negative emotions.
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Daily-Life Benefits of Extrinsic Interpersonal Emotion Regulation
Nov 5, 2025 · Using ecological momentary assessment, 52 adults (26 with MDD and 26 matched controls) reported their engagement in EIER and momentary ...<|control11|><|separator|>
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Digital Technologies for Emotion-Regulation Assessment and ...
In the context of emotion regulation research, smart-home devices have the potential to detect individuals' emotional state, regulation strategies implemented, ...
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Wearable Solutions Using Physiological Signals for Stress ... - NIH
Dec 20, 2024 · Therefore, wearables can provide real-time feedback and assist individuals with ASD in implementing customized self-regulation strategies, ...