Abstract
Despite the social nature of emotions, research to date has focused on emotion regulation at the intrapersonal level. Thus, the efficacy of specific emotion regulation strategies within a social dynamic is unclear. This study investigated the relationship between affective convergence and the efficacy of two emotion regulation strategies: reappraisal and suppression. In Study 1, 37 university students in Korea participated in a 2 × 2 laboratory experiment that manipulated emotion regulation strategies and affective convergence (divergence) through a live social interaction with a confederate. The reduction in negative affect was measured to indicate the efficacy of emotion regulation strategies. In Study 2, 248 North American participants completed a 2 × 2 online experiment that included the manipulation of emotion regulation strategies and affective convergence (divergence). To assess each strategy’s efficacy, we measured participants’ reduction in negative affect and their working memory performance through Stroop task scores. The findings showed that reappraisal was more efficient than suppression when participants received a companion’s feedback that was affectively divergent from their own. However, reappraisal was less efficient than suppression in reducing negative affect when participants received a companion’s feedback that was affectively convergent with their own. In addition, using reappraisal resulted in better working memory performance in the affective divergence condition but not the affective convergence condition. The findings suggest that the efficacy of emotion regulation strategies depends on interpersonal-level affective constructs, namely, affective convergence (divergence). Future research should revisit the efficacy of emotion regulation strategies under a social dynamic.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Data Availability
The datasets generated and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
Code Availability
Not applicable.
References
Baddeley, A. (1992). Working memory. Science, 255(5044), 556–559. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1736359
Bagozzi, R. P., Baumgartner, H., Pieters, R., & Zeelenberg, M. (2003). The role of emotions in goal-directed behavior. In S. Ratneshwar, D. G. Mick, & C. Huffman (Eds.), The why of consumption (pp. 36–58). Routledge.
Barsade, S. G., & Knight, A. P. (2015). Group affect. Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, 2(1), 21–46. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-orgpsych-032414-111316
Baumeister, R. F., & Leary, M. R. (1995). The need to belong: Desire for interpersonal attachments as a fundamental human motivation. Psychological Bulletin, 117(3), 497–529. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.117.3.49
Baumeister, R. F., & Vohs, K. D. (2007). Self-Regulation, ego depletion, and motivation. Social and personality psychology compass, 1(1), 115–128. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1751-9004.2007.00001.x
Ben-Haim, M. S., Williams, P., Howard, Z., Mama, Y., Eidels, A., & Algom, D. (2016). The emotional Stroop task: Assessing cognitive performance under exposure to emotional content. JoVE (Journal of Visualized Experiments), (112), e53720. https://doi.org/10.3791/53720
Birk, J. L., & Bonanno, G. A. (2016). When to throw the switch: The adaptiveness of modifying emotion regulation strategies based on affective and physiological feedback. Emotion, 16(5), 657–670. https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0000157
Buck, R. (1984). The communication of emotion. Guilford Press.
Buckley, K. E., Winkel, R. E., & Leary, M. R. (2004). Reactions to acceptance and rejection: Effects of the level and sequence of relational evaluation. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 40(1), 14–28. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0022-1031(03)00064-7
Cohen, J. D., Dunbar, K., & McClelland, J. L. (1990). On the control of automatic processes: A parallel distributed processing account of the Stroop effect. Psychological Review, 97(3), 332–361. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.97.3.332
Diefendorff, J. M., Croyle, M. H., & Gosserand, R. H. (2005). The dimensionality and antecedents of emotional labor strategies. Journal of vocational behavior, 66(2), 339–357. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvb.2004.02.001
Diefendorff, J. M., Richard, E. M., & Yang, J. (2008). Linking emotion regulation strategies to affective events and negative emotions at work. Journal of Vocational behavior, 73(3), 498–508. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvb.2008.09.006
Egloff, B., Schmukle, S. C., Burns, L. R., & Schwerdtfeger, A. (2006). Spontaneous emotion regulation during evaluated speaking tasks: Associations with negative affect, anxiety expression, memory, and physiological responding. Emotion, 6(3), 356. https://doi.org/10.1037/1528-3542.6.3.356
Faul, F., Erdfelder, E., Lang, A. G., & Buchner, A. (2007). G*Power 3: A flexible statistical power analysis program for the social, behavioral, and biomedical sciences. Behavior Research Methods, 39, 175–191. https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03193146
Faul, F., Erdfelder, E., Buchner, A., & Lang, A. G. (2009). Statistical power analyses using G*Power 3.1: Tests for correlation and regression analyses. Behavior Research Methods, 41, 1149–1160. https://doi.org/10.3758/BRM.41.4.1149
Gohm, C. L. (2003). Mood regulation and emotional intelligence: Individual differences. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84(3), 594–607. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.84.3.594
Golden, C. J. (1978). Stroop colour and word test: A manual for clinical and experimental users. Stoelting Co.
Grandey, A. A. (2003). When “the show must go on”: Surface acting and deep acting as determinants of emotional exhaustion and peer-rated service delivery. Academy of Management Journal, 46(1), 86–96. https://doi.org/10.5465/30040678
Gross, J. J. (1998a). Antecedent- and response-focused emotion regulation: Divergent consequences for experience, expression, and physiology. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74(1), 224–237. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.74.1.224
Gross, J. J. (1998b). The emerging field of emotion regulation: An integrative review. Review of General Psychology, 2(3), 271–299. https://doi.org/10.1037/1089-2680.2.3.271
Gross, J. J. (2002). Emotion regulation: Affective, cognitive, and social consequences. Psychophysiology, 39(3), 281–291. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0048577201393198
Gross, J. J. (2015). Emotion regulation: Current status and future prospects. Psychological Inquiry, 26(1), 1–26. https://doi.org/10.1080/1047840X.2014.940781
Gross, J. J., & John, O. P. (2003). Individual differences in two emotion regulation processes: Implications for affect, relationships, and well-being. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85(2), 348–362. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.85.2.348
Gross, J. J., & Levenson, R. W. (1997). Hiding feelings: The acute effects of inhibiting negative and positive emotion. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 106(1), 95–103. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-843X.106.1.95
Gross, J. J., Richards, J. M., & John, O. P. (2006). Emotion regulation in families: Pathways to dysfunction and health. In D. K. Snyder, J. A. Simpson, & J. N. Hughes (Eds.), Emotion regulation in everyday life: Pathways to dysfunction and health (pp. 13–35). American Psychological Association. https://doi.org/10.1037/11468-001
Heerdink, M. W., Van Kleef, G. A., Homan, A. C., & Fischer, A. H. (2013). On the social influence of emotions in groups: Interpersonal effects of anger and happiness on conformity versus deviance. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 105(2), 262–284. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0033362
Hertel, G., & Kerr, N. L. (2001). Priming in-group favoritism: The impact of normative scripts in the minimal group paradigm. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 37(4), 316–324. https://doi.org/10.1006/jesp.2000.1447
Hobfoll, S. E., Halbesleben, J., Neveu, J. P., & Westman, M. (2018). Conservation of resources in the organizational context: The reality of resources and their consequences. Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, 5, 103–128. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-orgpsych-032117-104640
Jetten, J., & Hornsey, M. J. (2014). Deviance and dissent in groups. Annual Review of Psychology, 65, 461–485. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-010213-115151
Jetten, J., Spears, R., & Manstead, A. S. (1996). Intergroup norms and intergroup discrimination: Distinctive self-categorization and social identity effects. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 71(6), 1222–1233. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.71.6.1222
Kiyonaga, A., & Egner, T. (2014). The working memory Stroop effect: When internal representations clash with external stimuli. Psychological Science, 25(8), 1619–1629. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797614536739
Kwon, H., Yoon, K. L., Joormann, J., & Kwon, J. H. (2013). Cultural and gender differences in emotion regulation: Relation to depression. Cognition & Emotion, 27(5), 769–782. https://doi.org/10.1080/02699931.2013.792244
Lopes, P. N., Salovey, P., Côté, S., Beers, M., & Petty, R. E. (2005). Emotion regulation abilities and the quality of social interaction. Emotion, 5(1), 113–118. https://doi.org/10.1037/1528-3542.5.1.113
MacLeod, C. M. (1991). Half a century of research on the Stroop effect: An integrative review. Psychological bulletin, 109(2), 163–203. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.109.2.163
Magee, J. C., & Tiedens, L. Z. (2006). Emotional ties that bind: The roles of valence and consistency of me-group emotion in inferences of cohesiveness and common fate. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 32(12), 1703–1715. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167206292094
McRae, K. (2016). Cognitive emotion regulation: A review of theory and scientific findings. Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences, 10, 119–124. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cobeha.2016.06.004
Megías-Robles, A., Gutiérrez-Cobo, M. J., Gómez-Leal, R., Cabello, R., Gross, J. J., & Fernández-Berrocal, P. (2019). Emotionally intelligent people reappraise rather than suppress their emotions. PloS One, 14(8), https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0220688
Noel, J. G., Wann, D. L., & Branscombe, N. R. (1995). Peripheral ingroup membership status and public negativity toward outgroups. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 68(1), 127–137. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.68.1.127
Nook, E. C., Satpute, A. B., & Ochsner, K. N. (2021). Emotion naming impedes both cognitive reappraisal and mindful acceptance strategies of emotion regulation. Affective Science, 2(2), 187–198. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42761-021-00036-y
Peña-Sarrionandia, A., Mikolajczak, M., & Gross, J. J. (2015). Integrating emotion regulation and emotional intelligence traditions: A meta-analysis. Frontiers in Psychology, 6, 160. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00160
Ray-Yol, E., Ülbe, S., & Temel, M. (2020). Interpersonal emotion regulation strategies: Can they function differently under certain conditions? Current Psychology, 1–8. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-020-00771-8
Richards, J. M., & Gross, J. J. (2000). Emotion regulation and memory: The cognitive costs of keeping on’’s cool. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79(3), 410–424. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.79.3.410
Rimé, B. (2007). Interpersonal emotion regulation. In J. Gross (Ed.), Handbook of emotion regulation (pp. 466–485). Guilford Press.
Rimé, B. (2009). Emotion elicits the social sharing of emotion: Theory and empirical review. Emotion review, 1(1), 60–85. https://doi.org/10.1177/1754073908097189Sarmany, I. (1977). Different performance in Stroo’’s interference test from the aspect of personality and sex. Studia Psychologica, 19(1), 60–67.
Sarmány, I. (1977). Different performance in Stroop’s interference test from the aspect of personality and sex. Studia Psychologica, 19(1), 60–67.
Shulei, M., & Miner, H. (2006). Emotional labor; surface acting and deep acting, which one is better? Acta Psychologica, 38(2), 262–270.
Spreen, O., & Strauss, E. (1991). A compendium of neuropsychological tests: Administration, norms, and commentary. Oxford University Press.
Stemmler, G. (1997). Selective activation of traits: Boundary conditions for the activation of anger. Personality and Individual Differences, 22(2), 213–233. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0191-8869(96)00189-4
Tamir, M., Mitchell, C., & Gross, J. J. (2008). Hedonic and instrumental motives in anger regulation. Psychological Science, 19(4), 324–328. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2008.02088.x
Thompson, R. A. (1994). Emotion regulation: A theme in search of definition. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 59(2–3), 25–52. https://doi.org/10.2307/1166137
Thompson, E. R. (2007). Development and validation of an internationally reliable short-form of the positive and negative affect schedule (PANAS). Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 38(2), 227–242. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022022106297301
Troth, A. C., Lawrence, S. A., Jordan, P. J., & Ashkanasy, N. M. (2018). Interpersonal emotion regulation in the workplace: A conceptual and operational review and future research agenda. International Journal of Management Reviews, 20(2), 523–543. https://doi.org/10.1111/ijmr.12144
Van Der Schalk, J., Fischer, A., Doosje, B., Wigboldus, D., Hawk, S., Rotteveel, M., & Hess, U. (2011). Convergent and divergent responses to emotional displays of ingroup and outgroup. Emotion, 11(2), 286–298. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0022582
Van Kleef, G. A., Van Doorn, E. A., Heerdink, M. W., & Koning, L. F. (2011). Emotion is for influence. European Review of Social Psychology, 22(1), 114–163. https://doi.org/10.1080/10463283.2011.627192
Van Kleef, G. A., Homan, A. C., & Cheshin, A. (2012). Emotional influence at work: Take it EASI. Organizational Psychology Review, 2(4), 311–339. https://doi.org/10.1177/2041386612454911
Watson, D., Clark, L. A., & Tellegen, A. (1988). Development and validation of brief measures of positive and negative affect: The PANAS Scales. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 54(6), 1063–1070. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.54.6.1063
Westerlund, M., Antfolk, J., & Santtila, P. (2019). Negative views of out-groups and emotion regulation strategies: Evidence for an association with the tendency to suppress emotion expression, but not with cognitive reappraisal or emotion dysregulation. Current Psychology, 40(10), 5094–5105. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-019-00430-7
Williams, W. C., Morelli, S. A., Ong, D. C., & Zaki, J. (2018). Interpersonal emotion regulation: Implications for affiliation, perceived support, relationships, and well-being. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 115(2), 224. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspi0000132
Yhan, D. H., & Li, X. (2012). The effect of ego-depletion on working memory and its elimination. Journal of Psychological Science, 35(3), 608–613. http://psysci.org/EN/Y2012/V35/I3/608
Yıldız, M. A., & Duy, B. (2019). The predictive role of emotion regulation strategies on depressive and psychosomatic symptoms in adolescents. Current Psychology, 38(2), 387–396. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-017-9616-6
Zaki, J., & Williams, W. C. (2013). Interpersonal emotion regulation. Emotion, 13(5), 803–810. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0033839
Acknowledgements
None.
Funding
Not applicable.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
Ethics approval
We complied with APA ethical standards for the treatment of our sample. The study protocol was approved by the IRB of Yonsei University (approval code: 1040917-201507-SB-177-02). The IRB approved the procedures that included deception, as they were necessary for the study and involved no more than minimal risk to the participants.
Consent to participate
Written informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.
Consent for publication
The authors affirm that human research participants provided written informed consent for publication.
Additional information
Publisher’s Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
About this article
Cite this article
Han, K., Kim, M.Y. Do you feel the same way I do? Relationship between efficacy of emotion regulation strategies and affective convergence. Curr Psychol 43, 9216–9229 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-023-05037-7
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-023-05037-7