Abstract
Accurately judging emotion regulation (ER) may help facilitate and maintain social relationships. We investigated the accuracy and bias of ER judgments and their social correlates in a two-part study with 136 married couples (ages 23–85 years). Couples completed trait measures of their own and their partner’s suppression, reappraisal, and situation selection. On a separate day, they discussed a conflict, then rated their own and their partner’s suppression during the discussion. Couples accurately judged their partner’s trait level use of all ER strategies, but they were most accurate for suppression. In contrast, they did not accurately judge state suppression; they showed a similarity bias, such that their own use of state suppression predicted judgments of their partner’s suppression. Greater relationship satisfaction predicted positive biases at the trait level (e.g., overestimating reappraisal, underestimating suppression), but not the state level. Relationship length did not predict ER accuracy or bias. Findings suggest ER is more detectable at the trait level than state level and for strategies with more behavioral cues. Greater relationship satisfaction may signal positive perceptions of partners’ ER patterns.
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Lameese Eldesouky was supported by the T32 AG00030-32 grant from the National Institute on Aging.
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L.E., Y.G. K.B., and T.E. conceptualized the study. Y.G. and K.B. collected the data. L.E. analyzed the data and wrote the manuscript, and Y.G., K.B., and T.E. provided feedback on the manuscript.
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The research reported in this manuscript was approved by the Washington University in St. Louis Institutional Review Board (Approval No. 201407009), and the study was performed to ethical standards as laid down in the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki.
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Eldesouky, L., Guo, Y., Bentley, K. et al. Decoding the Regulator: Accuracy and Bias in Emotion Regulation Judgments. Affec Sci 3, 827–835 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42761-022-00144-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s42761-022-00144-3