Do unto others: People use similar strategies to regulate their own emotions and the emotions of others

Abstract

Do people use similar strategies to regulate their own emotions (i.e., intrapersonal or self-oriented emotion regulation) and to regulate the emotions of others (i.e., interpersonal or other-oriented emotion regulation)? By answering this question, we try to shed light on why people regulate the emotions of others the way they do. We reasoned that because people imagine themselves as the target when deciding how to regulate others' emotions (Ball et al., 2013), they would use similar emotion regulation strategies to regulate their own and targets' emotions (Hypothesis 1). People are more likely to imagine a target is similar to them, the better their relationship is with the target (e.g., Murray et al., 2002). Thus, we expected people who have better relationships with the target to use more similar emotion regulation strategies to regulate their own and the target's emotions (Hypothesis 2). To test these ideas, we ran a cross-cultural study (Study 1, Nparticipants = 3,960, 19 countries), a survey study on close relationships during wartime (Study 2, Nparticipants = 530) and an ecological momentary assessment study on close relationships in daily life (Study 3, Nparticipants = 136). Across all studies, we found that people used similar emotion regulation strategies to regulate their own emotions and the emotions of others. In Studies 2 and 3, we further found that people do so to a greater extent when they felt their relationship with the target was better. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).