Niven, K. orcid.org/0000-0002-6675-5532, Henkel, A.P. and Hanratty, J. (2019) Prosocial versus instrumental motives for interpersonal emotion regulation. Journal of Theoretical Social Psychology, 3 (2). pp. 85-96.
Abstract
Why do people try to influence the way others feel? Previous research offers two competing accounts of people’s motives for attempting to regulate others’ emotions. The instrumental account holds that people use interpersonal emotion regulation to benefit their own goal pursuit. Conversely, the prosocial account holds that people use interpersonal emotion regulation to benefit others’ goals. This article juxtaposes these accounts across two studies. Study 1 demonstrates that when given the chance to benefit themselves through their interpersonal emotion regulation, people choose to do so, even when this involves making a friend feel unpleasant. Yet when given the chance to benefit a friend through interpersonal emotion regulation, with no personal gains, people also choose to do so. Study 2 reveals no overall tendencies toward either motive when people can choose between benefitting themselves or a friend through their interpersonal emotion regulation. However, people’s motives can be reliably predicted by their values: individuals with high values of care and concern for others show a greater tendency to regulate a friend’s emotions prosocially and a lower tendency toward instrumentality.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2018 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. This is an author-produced version of a paper subsequently published in Journal of Theoretical Social Psychology. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy. |
Keywords: | interpersonal emotion regulation; emotion regulation; motivation; prosocial; instrumental |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Social Sciences (Sheffield) > Management School (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 10 Mar 2022 12:24 |
Last Modified: | 10 Mar 2022 12:24 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Wiley |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1002/jts5.36 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:184579 |