Trait emotion regulation similarity and well-being

The ways people manage their emotions (emotion regulation; ER) have been found to affect their own well-being and the well-being of others. In the present research, we extended prior work by examining whether similarity between people's ER habits is also associated with well-being. The study consisted of 254 American romantic couples (N = 508) who completed self-report measures of habitual, or trait-level, use of a wide range of ER strategies (when regulating positive emotions and negative emotions), as well as psychological well-being and relational well-being indices. Contrary to our hypothesis, similarity in trait ER was not associated with any well-being index. This was the case across all ER strategies and the results converged across analyses that used three different metrics of similarity (difference scores, profile correlations, actor x partner interaction). The results suggest that although one's own ER, and their romantic partner's ER, may be tied to well-being, similarity between romantic partners' ER habits may not matter as much.