What is it about?
This paper summarizes multidisciplinary evidence to provide an account of how and why people manage their own and others’ feelings through social interactions and what happens when they do so. It also explains how abilities and difficulties in managing emotions socially develop through the lifespan and highlights key challenges and opportunities for future research in these areas.
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Why is it important?
People try to manage their own and others’ feelings through social interactions across virtually all domains of life and in many everyday exchanges. Understanding this process and how abilities and difficulties within it emerge can give insight into how seemingly minor interpersonal behaviors shape people’s relationships and wellbeing and why some people struggle in those areas whereas others thrive.
Perspectives
We hope this article makes people understand that managing emotions is not usually a private process that happens in a social vacuum; people use others to regulate their feelings and deliberately shape the feelings of others in all areas of life. The article introduces our special issue, which represents a culmination of over 20 years working on this topic and a celebration of how much our knowledge of ‘interpersonal emotion regulation’ has progressed.
Karen Niven
University of Sheffield
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Interpersonal emotion regulation: Reflecting on progress and charting the path forward., Emotion, March 2025, American Psychological Association (APA),
DOI: 10.1037/emo0001472.
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