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Intra- and interpersonal emotion regulation

University of British Columbia

The process by which emotional experiences are managed is known as emotion regulation. Two types of emotion regulation strategies are commonly compared: rumination (focusing on one’s problems and feelings) and distraction (focusing away from one’s problems and feelings). Whereas rumination typically increases negative affect, distraction typically decreases negative affect. Past research has focused on emotion regulation as an intrapersonal endeavor (managing one’s own emotions), whereas interpersonal emotion regulation (IER; receiving support from another person to regulate one’s emotions) lacks the same degree of investigation. This study sought to compare the effects of intrapersonal emotion regulation (rumination, distraction) and IER (co-rumination, co-distraction) on affect and relationship quality and closeness. Participants completed the Fast Friends paradigm; following, participants privately recalled a stressful event. Finally, participants were randomized into one of four emotion regulation conditions: rumination, distraction, co-rumination, or co-distraction. Affect and relationship quality and closeness measures were completed throughout the study session. I predicted that rumination and co-rumination would increase negative affect compared to distraction and co-distraction. I also predicted that co-distraction would decrease negative affect more than distraction. Finally, I predicted that co-rumination would provide the highest relationship quality and closeness compared to all conditions. Results showed that negative affect did not differ after the emotion regulation conditions. However, negative affect decreased significantly more for participants in the distraction condition compared to participants in the rumination and co-rumination conditions. Finally, there were no differences in relationship quality and closeness across conditions. The limitations and implications of this study are discussed.

Text

2020-08-14

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/75552

Psychology

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/