What is it about?
People often try to help others feel better, but how do they do it? We developed a new scale to measure eight strategies for regulating others’ emotions, such as listening, humor, and reframing (helping others to see things differently). Our findings show that better wellbeing and relationships are linked to three strategies: valuing, reframing, and listening.
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Why is it important?
While emotion regulation research has focused on how people manage their own emotions, no existing tool captures the full range of strategies used to regulate others’ emotions. The Regulation of Others’ Emotions Scale (ROES) is the first to assess eight distinct strategies. This tool can help researchers understand what people do in different situations, and what techniques work best in relationships, teams and classrooms when emotions run high. This tool can also be applied by practitioners to understand the strategies people use to make others feel better in school, work or families. The research also shows that high-engagement strategies (which involve paying attention to the other person's thoughts and feelings) show better outcomes than low-engagement strategies.
Perspectives
This article started with the idea that regulating emotions is all about interacting with other people--we live in a world full of people and social interactions. The idea for this research started with a visit to Professor Austin in Edinburgh and grew over the years into a large team spanning three countries and five institutions--a worldwide research team full of people and social interactions! It is clear that the people around us change the emotions we feel and when we feel them. This paper provides a language and framework for talking about the different things that people do to regulate others' emotions.
Professor of Psychology Carolyn MacCann
The University of Sydney
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: What do we do to help others feel better? The eight strategies of the Regulating Others’ Emotions Scale (ROES)., Emotion, March 2025, American Psychological Association (APA),
DOI: 10.1037/emo0001459.
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