Author: Gabrielle    Sands

Major: Psychology

Graduation Year: 2022

Thesis Advisor: Emily A.P. Haigh

Description of Publication: Interpersonal Emotion Regulation (ER) refers to the use of social resources to influence the emotional response to stimuli. Given the novelty of the field and potential clinical applications, greater research is needed in this sub-field of Emotion Regulation. For this study, we investigated whether aspects of Interpersonal ER is related to an individual’s mood over a seven-day period. Furthermore, the study explored whether tendency (i.e., engagement) levels and efficacy (i.e., belief) levels would result in a change in overall emotional affect (either positive or negative). Lastly, the study added a binary gender moderating variable (i.e., men and women) to see whether there were differences in tendency and efficacy levels as a function of gender. Results demonstrated that there was no significant relationship in either positive or negative affect change with Interpersonal ER. Investigating between the binary gender groups, women reported higher levels of negative efficacy and positive tendency compared to men. Lastly, the individual groups difference showed that women have an inverse trending significance with negative tendency and positive affect.

Location of Publication:

URL to Thesis: https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/honors/754