It’s a match: Exploring joint emotion regulation profiles among mixed-sex couples

Abstract

How do couples differ from other couples in how they regulate their own and their partner’s emotions? Although research on emotion regulation is blooming, insights into joint emotion regulation profiles—that is, the overlap between partners’ specific strategies to regulate themselves and their partner—remain limited. To address this gap, we identified joint intra- and interpersonal emotion regulation profiles in 120 mixed-sex couples; clustering couples together based on both partners’ reported intra- and interpersonal emotion regulation strategies. Additionally, we examined associations between profile-membership and well-being indicators. The identified joint emotion regulation profiles differed in three ways: (1) degree of regulation (e.g., no use of any vs. high use of all strategies), (2) strategies predominantly used; and (3) degree of similarity—or lack thereof—between partners. Together, these findings provide the first insights into the role of joint emotion regulation profiles in the health of couples and their relationships, highlighting the unique roles played by both partners in regulating their own and their partner’s emotions. Further research is needed to assess if these results generalize to inclusive samples and daily life.

Keywords

Emotion Regulation profile interpersonal emotion regulation intimate relationships cluster analysis individual distress relational well-being

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Aldao

Nolen-Hoeksema

(2012). The influence of context on the implementation of adaptive emotion regulation strategies. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 50(7-8), 493–501. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brat.2012.04.004

Aldao

Nolen-Hoeksema

Schweizer

(2010). Emotion-regulation strategies across psychopathology: A meta-analytic review. Clinical Psychology Review, 30(2), 217–237. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpr.2009.11.004

Aldao

Tull

M. T.

(2015). Putting emotion regulation in context. Current Opinion in Psychology, 3, 100–107. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2015.03.022

Bailly

Pothier

Ouhmad

Deperrois

Cojean

Combalbert

(2022). Effects of gender and age on cognitive emotional regulation. Current Psychology, 42(31), 27228–27231. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-022-03557-2

Barelds

D. P. H.

Barelds-Dijkstra

(2007). Love at first sight or friends first? Ties among partner personality trait similarity, relationship onset, relationship quality, and love. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 24(4), 479–496. https://doi.org/10.1177/0265407507079235

Battaglini

A. M.

Rnic

Jameson

Jopling

LeMoult

(2023). Interpersonal emotion regulation flexibility: Effects on affect in daily life. Emotion, 23(4), 1048–1060. https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0001132

Bonanno

G. A.

Burton

C. L.

(2013). Regulatory flexibility: An individual differences perspective on coping and emotion regulation. Perspectives on Psychological Science: A Journal of the Association for Psychological Science, 8(6), 591–612. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691613504116

Butler

E. A.

(2017). Emotions are temporal interpersonal systems. Current Opinion in Psychology, 17, 129–134. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2017.07.005

Cameron

L. D.

Overall

N. C.

(2018). Suppression and expression as distinct emotion-regulation processes in daily interactions: Longitudinal and meta-analyses. Emotion, 18(4), 465–480. https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0000334

10.

Ceulemans

Kiers

H. A.

(2006). Selecting among three-mode principal component models of different types and complexities: A numerical convex hull based method. British Journal of Mathematical and Statistical Psychology, 59(Pt 1), 133–150. https://doi.org/10.1348/000711005X64817

11.

Chesney

Timmer-Murillo

S. C.

Gordon

N. S.

(2019). Establishment and replication of emotion regulation profiles: Implications for psychological health. Anxiety, Stress and Coping, 32(3), 329–345. https://doi.org/10.1080/10615806.2019.1573990

12.

Chesney

S. A.

Gordon

N. S.

(2017). Profiles of emotion regulation: Understanding regulatory patterns and the implications for posttraumatic stress. Cognition and Emotion, 31(3), 598–606. https://doi.org/10.1080/02699931.2015.1126555

13.

Christensen

K. A.

Seager van Dyk

Nelson

S. V.

Vasey

M. W.

(2020). Using multilevel modeling to characterize interpersonal emotion regulation strategies and psychopathology in female friends. Personality and Individual Differences, 165, Article 110156. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2020.110156

14.

Clark

M. S.

Mills

J. R.

(2012). A theory of communal (and exchange) relationships. In Van Lange

P. A. M.

Kruglanski

A. W.

Higgins

E. T.

(Eds.), Handbook of theories of social psychology (pp. 232–250). Sage Publications Ltd. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781446249222.n38

15.

Dalmaijer

E. S.

Nord

C. L.

Astle

D. E.

(2022). Statistical power for cluster analysis. BMC Bioinformatics, 23(1), 205. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12859-022-04675-1

16.

De France

Hollenstein

(2017). Assessing emotion regulation repertoires: The regulation of emotion systems survey. Personality and Individual Differences, 119, 204–215. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2017.07.018

17.

Dixon-Gordon

Aldao

De Los Reyes

(2015). Repertoires of emotion regulation: A person-centered approach to assessing emotion regulation strategies and links to psychopathology. Cognition & Emotion, 29(7), 1314–1325. https://doi.org/10.1080/02699931.2014.983046. 25435338.

18.

Eftekhari

Zoellner

L. A.

Vigil

S. A.

(2009). Patterns of emotion regulation and psychopathology. Anxiety, Stress and Coping, 22(5), 571–586. https://doi.org/10.1080/10615800802179860

19.

Eldesouky

English

(2018). Regulating for a reason: Emotion regulation goals are linked to spontaneous strategy use. Journal of Personality, 87(5), 948–961. https://doi.org/10.1111/jopy.12447

20.

Everitt

B. S.

Landau

Leese

(2001). Cluster analyses (4th ed.). Hodder Arnold.

21.

Finkel

E. J.

Simpson

J. A.

(2015). Editorial overview: Relationship science. Current Opinion in Psychology, 1, 5–9. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2015.01.012

22.

Fletcher

G. J. O.

Simpson

J. A.

Thomas

(2000). The measurement of perceived relationship quality components: A confirmatory factor analytic approach. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 26(3), 340–354. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167200265007

23.

Ford

B. Q.

Gross

J. J.

Gruber

(2019). Broadening our field of view: The role of emotion polyregulation. Emotion Review, 11(3), 197–208. https://doi.org/10.1177/1754073919850314

24.

Gonzaga

Carter

Galen Buckwalter

(2010). Assortative mating, convergence, and satisfaction in married couples. Personal Relationships, 17(4), 634–644. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-6811.2010.01309.x

25.

Grommisch

Koval

Hinton

J. D. X.

Gleeson

Hollenstein

Kuppens

Lischetzke

(2020). Modeling individual differences in emotion regulation repertoire in daily life with multilevel latent profile analysis. Emotion, 20(8), 1462–1474. https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0000669

26.

Gross

J. J.

(1998). 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

27.

Gross

J. J.

(2015). The extended process model of emotion regulation: Elaborations, applications, and future directions. Psychological Inquiry, 26(1), 130–137. https://doi.org/10.1080/1047840X.2015.989751

28.

Guassi Moreira

J. F.

Sahi

Calderon Leon

M. D.

Saragosa-Harris

N. M.

Waizman

Sedykin

Ninova

Peris

Gross

J. J.

Silvers

J. A.

(2024). A data-driven typology of emotion regulation profiles. Emotion, 24(5), 1125–1136. https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0001306

29.

Hatzenbuehler

M. L.

(2009). How does sexual minority stigma “get under the skin”? A psychological mediation framework. Psychological Bulletin, 135(5), 707–730. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0016441

30.

Hofmans

Ceulemans

Steinley

Van Mechelen

(2015). On the added value of bootstrap analysis for K-means clustering. Journal of Classification, 32(2), 268–284. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00357-015-9178-y

31.

Horn

A. B.

Maercker

(2016). Intra- and interpersonal emotion regulation and adjustment symptoms in couples: The role of co-brooding and co-reappraisal. BMC psychology, 4(1), 51. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40359-016-0159-7

32.

Impett

E. A.

Kogan

English

John

Oveis

Gordon

A. M.

Keltner

(2012). Suppression sours sacrifice: Emotional and relational costs of suppressing emotions in romantic relationships. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 38(6), 707–720. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167212437249

33.

Impett

E. A.

B. M.

Kogan

Oveis

Keltner

(2014). When you think your partner is holding back: The costs of perceived partner suppression during relationship sacrifice. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 5(5), 542–549. https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550613514455

34.

Jurkiewicz

McGarrigle

C. B.

Oveis

(2023). How to improve others’ emotions: Reappraise and be responsive. Affec Sci, 4(2), 233–247. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42761-023-00183-4

35.

Kalokerinos

E. K.

Tamir

Kuppens

(2017). Instrumental motives in negative emotion regulation in daily life: Frequency, consistency, and predictors. Emotion, 17(4), 648–657. https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0000269

36.

Kenny

D. A.

Kashy

D. A.

Cook

W. L.

(2006). Dyadic data analysis. Guilford Press.

37.

Lougheed

J. P.

Hollenstein

(2012). A limited repertoire of emotion regulation strategies is associated with internalizing problems in adolescence. Social Development, 21(4), 704–721. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9507.2012.00663.x

38.

Lovibond

S. H.

Lovibond

P. F.

(1995). Depression anxiety stress scales (DASS--21, DASS--42) [database record]. APA PsycTests. https://doi.org/10.1037/t01004-000

39.

MacCann

Olderback

Austin

Pinkus

R. T.

Double

K. S.

Walker

S. A.

Kunst

Niven

(2019). What do we do to help others feel better? Eight extrinsic emotion regulation processes linked to affective and interpersonal outcomes. [Conference session]. Australasian Congress for Personality & Individual Differences, Bond University, QLD.

40.

Marroquín

(2011). Interpersonal emotion regulation as a mechanism of social support in depression. Clinical Psychology Review, 31(8), 1276–1290. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpr.2011.09.005

41.

McRae

Gross

J. J.

(2020). Emotion regulation. Emotion, 20(1), 1–9. https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0000703

42.

Medland

De France

Hollenstein

Mussoff

Koval

(2020). Regulating emotion systems in everyday life. European Journal of Psychological Assessment, 36(3), 437–446. https://doi.org/10.1027/1015-5759/a000595

43.

Naragon-Gainey

McMahon

T. P.

Chacko

T. P.

(2017). The structure of common emotion regulation strategies: A meta-analytic examination. Psychological Bulletin, 143(4), 384–427. https://doi.org/10.1037/bul0000093

44.

Niven

Macdonald

Holman

(2012). You spin me right round: Cross-relationship variability in interpersonal emotion regulation. Frontiers in Psychology, 3, 394. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00394

45.

Niven

Totterdell

Holman

(2009). A classification of controlled interpersonal affect regulation strategies. Emotion, 9(4), 498–509. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0015962

46.

Nolen-Hoeksema

(2012). Emotion regulation and psychopathology: The role of gender. Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, 8, 161–187. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-clinpsy-032511-143109

47.

Nozaki

Mikolajczak

(2020). Extrinsic emotion regulation. Emotion, 20(1), 10–15. https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0000636

48.

Olderbak

Uusberg

MacCann

Pollak

K. M.

Gross

J. J.

(2023). The process model of emotion regulation questionnaire: Assessing individual differences in strategy stage and orientation. Assessment, 30(7), 2090–2114. https://doi.org/10.1177/10731911221134601

49.

Parkinson

Totterdell

(1999). Classifying affect-regulation strategies. Cognition and Emotion, 13(3), 277–303. https://doi.org/10.1080/026999399379285

50.

Pauw

L. S.

Rui

Zoppolat

Righetti

Milek

(2023). I help you? The relationship between interpersonal emotion regulation and emotional and relational wellbeing in daily life. https://doi.org/10.31219/osf.io/2mwfq

51.

Peters

B. J.

Jamieson

J. P.

(2016). The consequences of suppressing affective displays in romantic relationships: A challenge and threat perspective. Emotion, 16(7), 1050–1066. https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0000202

52.

Reis

H. T.

(2014). Responsiveness: Affective interdependence in close relationships. In Mikulincer

Shaver

P. R.

(Eds.), Mechanisms of social connection: From brain to group (pp. 255–271). American Psychological Association. https://doi.org/10.1037/14250-015

53.

Rimé

Bouchat

Paquot

Giglio

(2020). Intrapersonal, interpersonal, and social outcomes of the social sharing of emotion. Current Opinion Psychology, 31, 127–134. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2019.08.024

54.

Ruan

Reis

H. T.

Clark

M. S.

Hirsch

J. L.

Bink

B. D.

(2020). Can I tell you how I feel? Perceived partner responsiveness encourages emotional expression. Emotion, 20(3), 329–342. https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0000650

55.

Sasaki

Overall

N. C.

Chang

V. T.

Low

R. S. T.

(2022). A dyadic perspective of expressive suppression: Own or partner suppression weakens relationships. Emotion, 22(8), 1989–1994. https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0000978

56.

Schouten

Boiger

Kirchner-Häusler

Uchida

Mesquita

(2020). Cultural differences in emotion suppression in Belgian and Japanese couples: A social functional model. Frontiers in Psychology, 11, 1048. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01048

57.

Steinley

(2003). Local optima in K-means clustering: What you don't know may hurt you. Psychological Methods, 8(3), 294–304. https://doi.org/10.1037/1082-989X.8.3.294

58.

Steinley

Brusco

M. J.

(2011). Choosing the number of clusters in Κ-means clustering. Psychological Methods, 16(3), 285–297. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0023346

59.

Tamir

(2016). Why do people regulate their emotions? A taxonomy of motives in emotion regulation. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 20(3), 199–222. https://doi.org/10.1177/1088868315586325

60.

Tran

Greenaway

K. H.

Kostopoulos

O’Brien

S. T.

Kalokerinos

E. K.

(2023). Mapping interpersonal emotion regulation in everyday life. Affective Science, 4(4), 672–683. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42761-023-00223-z

61.

Tran

Greenaway

K. H.

Kostopoulos

Tamir

Gutentag

Kalokerinos

E. K.

(2024). Does interpersonal emotion regulation effort pay off? Emotion, 24(2), 345–356. https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0001289

62.

Van Eck

Warren

Flory

(2017). A variable-centered and person-centered evaluation of emotion regulation and distress tolerance: Links to emotional and behavioral concerns. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 46(1), 136–150. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-016-0542-y

63.

Velotti

Balzarotti

Tagliabue

English

Zavattini

G. C.

Gross

J. J.

(2016). Emotional suppression in early marriage: Actor, partner, and similarity effects on marital quality. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 33(3), 277–302. https://doi.org/10.1177/0265407515574466

64.

Walker

S. A.

Pinkus

R. T.

Double

K. S.

Xiao

MacCann

(2023). It’s what I think you do that matters: Comparing self, partner, and shared perspectives of what a romantic partner does to regulate your emotions. Under Review.

65.

Walker

S. A.

Pinkus

R. T.

Olderbak

MacCann

(2023). People with higher relationship satisfaction use more humor, valuing, and receptive listening to regulate their partners’ emotions. Current Psychology, 43(3), 1–9. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-023-04432-4

66.

Webb

T. L.

Miles

Sheeran

(2012). Dealing with feeling: A meta-analysis of the effectiveness of strategies derived from the process model of emotion regulation. Psychological Bulletin, 138(4), 775–808. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0027600

67.

Wilderjans

T. F.

Ceulemans

Meers

(2013). CHull: A generic convex-hull-based model selection method. Behavior Research Methods, 45(1), 1–15. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-012-0238-5

68.

Zaki

Williams

W. C.

(2013). Interpersonal emotion regulation. Emotion, 13(5), 803–810. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0033839

Supplementary Material

Please find the following supplemental material available below.

For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.

For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.

0.00 MB

0.46 MB