(PS11-91) Responding to the Call: Extrinsic IER in Positive and Negative Scenarios

Extrinsic interpersonal emotion regulation (IER; Zaki & Williams, 2013) involves regulation of another person’s emotional experience. While common (Nozaki & Mikolajczak, 2020), little empirical work has examined what predicts engagement in extrinsic IER, specifically how the valence (positive or negative) of an emotion predicts the response of a regulator. Research on negativity bias (e.g., giving negative information or stimuli more consideration or attention than positive; Taylor, 1991) suggests that individuals, particularly individuals with elevated emotion dysregulation (e.g., Bardeen et al., 2017), may respond differently to positive, compared to negative, information presented by others.

            Participants (N = 105) were presented with 16 scenarios in which someone else (i.e., a friend, classmate, or family member) was experiencing either a positive or negative event and emotion. Participants reported whether and how urgently they would provide extrinsic IER in each scenario, reported on their hypothetical levels of positive and negative affect in each scenario, and completed a measure of emotion dysregulation. We hypothesized that participants would be more likely to respond and to respond more urgently in negative scenarios compared to positive scenarios. We also hypothesized that these relationships would be stronger (i.e., exhibit more of a negativity bias) at higher levels of self-reported emotion dysregulation.

            We found that in negative scenarios, compared to positive scenarios, participants reported greater likelihood of engagement, β = -0.73, SE = 0.19, p < .0001. We found that emotion dysregulation was negatively associated with likelihood of engagement, β = -0.11, SE = 0.00, p = .0007, and that both positive, β = 0.46, SE = 0.02, p = .0007, and negative emotions, β = 0.05, SE = 0.03, p = .017, reported by the responder were positively associated with engagement. Emotion dysregulation did not moderate the association between scenario type and engagement.

            We found a similar pattern of results for urgency, where participants reported greater urgency to respond for negative versus positive scenarios, β = -0.92, SE = 0.17, p < .0001. Emotion dysregulation was negatively associated with urgency regardless of scenario type and affect, β = -0.09, SE = 0.00, p = .002. Positive, β = 0.27, SE = 0.02, p < .0001, and negative, β = 0.06, SE = 0.02, p = .010, emotions were positively associated with urgency. We found a significant interaction between emotion dysregulation and scenario type, where higher emotion dysregulation is associated with lower urgency in negative scenarios, but higher urgency in positive scenarios, β = 0.30, SE = 0.00, p = .002.
           These findings add to the literature on IER by examining the nuanced ways in which individuals reported they would respond to the positive and negative experiences of others. We found preliminary evidence of a negativity bias in extrinsic IER, suggesting the valence of another person’s emotional experience, and the emotion dysregulation of the responder, influence the responder’s regulatory engagement. Future studies could explore longitudinal outcomes of extrinsic IER practices to better understand how these interactions contribute to emotional well-being and relationship satisfaction.