Make your emotions heard: How emotion sharing boosts interpersonal emotion regulation across various interpersonal distances

Key Points

• This research examines the influence of interpersonal distance and emotional expression on emotion regulation strategies and outcomes.
• Conducted two experiments to analyze interpersonal distance effects on emotion regulation strategies.
• Measured pupil diameter changes to assess cognitive resource involvement during emotion regulation.
• Compared emotion regulation strategies used for friends versus strangers under varying interpersonal distances.
• Experiment 1 showed that regulators prefer more adaptive strategies for friends than for strangers.
• Experiment 2 revealed that interpersonal distance affects the phases of emotion recognition, strategy selection, and outcome generation.
• Emotional expression from the regulated can significantly mitigate the negative effects of increased interpersonal distance.