Emily A. Butler

Emotion Regulation and Culture: Are the Social Consequences of Emotion Suppression Culture-Specific?

Emotional suppression has been associated with generally negative social consequences (Butler et al., 2003; Gross & John, 2003). A cultural perspective suggests, however, that these consequences may be moderated by cultural values. We tested this hypothesis in a two-part study, and found that, for Americans holding Western-European values, habitual suppression was associated with self-protective goals and negative emotion. In addition, experimentally elicited suppression resulted in reduced interpersonal responsiveness during face-to-face interaction, along with negative partner-perceptions and hostile behavior. These deleterious effects were reduced when individuals with more Asian values suppressed, and these reductions were mediated by cultural differences in the responsiveness of the suppressors. These findings suggest that many of suppressions negative social impacts may be moderated by cultural values.

Emotion Regulation in Romantic Relationships: The Cognitive Consequences of Concealing Feelings

People frequently regulate the emotions that arise during tense social interactions. Common regulation strategies include cognitive reappraisal, which involves interpreting a situation in positive terms, and expressive suppression, which involves inhibiting overt signs of inner emotional states. According to our analysis, during tense social interactions reappraisal should (i) increase memory for what was said, whereas suppression should (ii) decrease memory for what was said, and (iii) increase memory for emotions. To test these predictions, we experimentally manipulated reappraisal and suppression in dating couples as they discussed a relationship conflict. As predicted, memory for conversation utterances was increased by reappraisal and decreased by suppression, and memory for emotional reactions was increased by suppression. Self-monitoring mediated the effect of suppression on memory for emotional reactions, but not for conversation utterances. These findings suggest that, if it is important to preserve the fidelity of cognitive functioning during emotionally trying social interactions, some forms of emotion regulation may have more to recommend them than others.

Temporal Interpersonal Emotion Systems The “TIES” That Form Relationships

Emotion is often framed as an intrapersonal system comprised of subcomponents such as experience, behavior, and physiology that interact over time to give rise to emotional states. What is missing is that many emotions occur in the context of social interaction or ongoing relationships. When this happens, the result can be conceptualized as a temporal interpersonal emotion system (TIES) in which the subcomponents of emotion interact not only within the individual but across the partners as well. The present review (a) suggests that TIES can be understood in terms of the characteristics of dynamic systems, (b) reviews examples from diverse research that has investigated characteristics of TIES, (c) attempts to clarify the overlapping terms that have been used to refer to those characteristics by mapping them to the statistical, mathematical, and graphical models that have been used to represent TIES, and (d) offers pragmatic advice for analyzing TIES data.

Emotional Coregulation in Close Relationships

Coregulation refers to the process by which relationship partners form a dyadic emotional system involving an oscillating pattern of affective arousal and dampening that dynamically maintains an optimal emotional state. Coregulation may represent an important form of interpersonal emotion regulation, but confusion exists in the literature due to a lack of precision in the usage of the term. We propose an operational definition for coregulation as a bidirectional linkage of oscillating emotional channels between partners, which contributes to emotional stability for both partners. We propose several distinctions and raise unanswered questions that will need to be addressed in order to understand the relevance of coregulation for well-being in adulthood.

Does Expressing Your Emotions Raise or Lower Your Blood Pressure? The Answer Depends on Cultural Context

Emotion-expressive behavior is often but not always inversely related to physiological responding. To test the hypothesis that cultural context moderates the relationship between expressivity and physiological responding, the authors have Asian American and European American women engage in face-to-face conversations about a distressing film in same-ethnicity dyads. Blood pressure is measured continuously, and emotional expressivity is rated from reviewing videotapes. Results indicate that emotion-expressive behavior is inversely related to blood pressure in European American dyads, but the reverse was true in Asian American dyads in which there is a trend toward a positive association. These results suggest that the links between emotion-expressive behavior and physiological responding may depend on cultural context. One possible explanation for this effect may be that cultural contexts shape the meaning that individuals give to emotional expressions that occur during social interactions.

Impact of fathers on risky sexual behavior in daughters: A genetically and environmentally controlled sibling study

Girls receiving lower quality paternal investment tend to engage in more risky sexual behavior (RSB) than peers. Whereas paternal investment theory posits that this effect is causal, it could arise from environmental or genetic confounds. To distinguish between these competing explanations, the current authors employed a genetically and environmentally controlled sibling design (N = 101 sister pairs; ages 18-36), which retrospectively examined the effects of differential sibling exposure to family disruption/father absence and quality of fathering. Consistent with a causal explanation, differences between older and younger sisters in the effects of quality of fathering on RSB were greatest in biologically disrupted families when there was a large age gap between the sisters (thus maximizing differential exposure to fathers), with greater exposure within families to higher quality fathering serving as a protective factor against RSB. Further, variation around the lower end of fathering quality appeared to have the most influence on RSB. In contrast, differential sibling exposure to family disruption/father absence (irrespective of quality of fathering) was not associated with RSB. The differential sibling-exposure design affords a new quasi-experimental method for evaluating the causal effects of fathers within families.

Hiding feelings in social contexts; Out of sight is not out of mind

Contents: P. Philippot, R.S. Feldman, Preface. Part I:Basic Physiological and Cognitive Processes in the Regulation of Emotion. A. Bechara, A Neural View of the Regulation of Complex Cognitive Functions by Emotion. G. Stemmler, Physiological Processes During Emotion. P. Philippot, C. Baeyens, C. Douilliez, B. Francart, Cognitive Regulation of Emotion: Application to Clinical Disorders. Part II:Social and Motivational Aspects of Emotional Regulation. E.A. Butler, J.J. Gross, Hiding Feelings in Social Contexts: Out of Sight Is Not Out of Mind. M.N. Shiota, B. Campos, D. Keltner, M.J. Hertenstein, Positive Emotion and the Regulation of Interpersonal Relationships. E. Zech, B. Rime, F. Nils, Social Sharing of Emotion, Emotional Recovery, and Interpersonal Aspects. A. Fisher, A.S.R. Manstead, C. Evers, M. Timmers, G. Valk, Motives and Norms Underlying Emotion Regulation. Part III:Self-Presentation and Emotion Regulation. D.M. Tice, R.F. Baumeister, L. Zhang, The Role of Emotion in Self-Regulation: Differing Role of Positive and Negative Emotions. D. Hrubes, R.S. Feldman, J. Tyler, Emotion-Focused Deception: The Role of Deception in the Regulation of Emotion. S. Kitayama, M. Karasawa, B. Mesquita, Collective and Personal Processes in Regulating Emotions: Emotion and Self in Japan and the United States. Part IV:Individual Differences and the Development of Emotion Regulation. N. Eisenberg, T.L. Spinrad, C.L. Smith, Emotion-Related Regulation: Its Conceptualization, Relations to Social Functioning, and Socialization. S.D. Calkins, R.B. Howse, Individual Differences in Self-Regulation: Implications for Childhood Adjustment. C.A. Pauls, Physiological Consequences of Emotion Regulation: Taking Into Account the Effects of Strategies, Personality, and Situation. A.M. Kring, K.H. Werner, Emotion Regulation and Psychopathology.

Emotion and Emotion Regulation: Integrating Individual and Social Levels of Analysis

Rimé makes the important observation that the literature on adult emotion and emotion regulation has largely focused on the individual level of analysis. He argues, we believe correctly, that emotion research would benefit by addressing the fact that emotional events provoke not only individual responses, but systematic social responses as well. We present examples of our own research that are in accord with Rimés central claims, and that demonstrate the benefits of considering the goals that are provoked and satisfied by emotions, as well as the social context of emotional responding. We conclude by advocating a dynamic systems approach that would allow an integration of individual and social levels of analysis in the study of adult emotion and emotion regulation.

Emotion control values and responding to an anger provocation in Asian-American and European-American individuals

The present research examined whether Asian-American (AA) versus European-American (EA) women differed in experiential, expressive, or autonomic physiological responding to a laboratory anger provocation and assessed the mediating role of values about emotional control. Results indicate that AA participants reported and behaviourally displayed less anger than EA participants, while there were no group differences in physiological responses. Observed differences in emotional responses were partially mediated by emotion control values, suggesting a potential mechanism for effects of cultural background on anger responding.

Interpersonal Affect Dynamics: It Takes Two (and Time) to Tango

Everything is constantly changing. Our emotions are one of the primary ways we track, evaluate, organize, and motivate responsive action to those changes. Furthermore, emotions are inherently interpersonal. We learn what to feel from others, especially when we are children. We “catch” other people’s emotions just by being around them. We get caught in escalating response–counterresponse emotional sequences. This all takes place in time, generating complex patterns of interpersonal emotional dynamics. This review summarizes theory, empirical findings, and key challenges for future research regarding three processes that contribute to interpersonal affective dynamics: (a) Convergence of social partners’ emotional responses to the external world, (b) emotional reactivity of social partners to each other, and (c) interpersonal emotion regulation.