From dyadic coping to emotional sharing and multimodal interpersonal synchrony: Protocol for a laboratory experiment

Area of Science:

• Psychology
• Social Psychology
• Relationship Science

Background:

• Interpersonal emotion regulation involves partners mutually influencing each other's emotional states.
• Existing research often focuses on one or two timescales (phasic, tonic, chronic) of emotion regulation simultaneously.
• A comprehensive understanding requires examining regulation across all three timescales.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate interpersonal emotion regulation in close relationships across phasic, tonic, and chronic timescales.
• To explore the connections between immediate emotional synchrony, mood changes, and long-term relationship factors.
• To integrate theories of interpersonal emotion regulation by considering multiple timescales.

Main Methods:

• 150 romantic couples participated in an emotional sharing task (natural sharing or co-rumination).
• Phasic outcomes: interpersonal synchrony in movement and cardiovascular responses.
• Tonic outcomes: mood and emotional appraisals pre- and post-task; Chronic outcomes: relationship quality and coping style.

Main Results:

• Hypothesizes that phasic patterns (e.g., movement synchrony) relate to tonic patterns (e.g., mood change).
• Further hypothesizes that tonic patterns relate to chronic patterns (e.g., relationship quality).
• Aims to demonstrate meaningful relationships between patterns across timescales.

Conclusions:

• This research will integrate interpersonal emotion regulation theories across different timescales.
• Findings are expected to illuminate how immediate emotional dynamics are shaped by and shape long-term relationship quality.
• Contributes a multi-timescale framework to understanding how couples manage emotions together.