Do the effects of interpersonal emotion regulation depend on people's underlying motives?

Abstract

Attempts to improve others' feelings have positive consequences, while attempts to worsen others' feelings have negative consequences. But do such effects depend on the motives underlying these attempts? In an experimental study, we tested whether leaders' apparent motives influence the effects of their interpersonal emotion regulation on followers. We found that the positive effects of using affect‐improving (vs. affect‐worsening) strategies on relational outcomes and discretional performance outcomes were largely enhanced when the leader exhibited prosocial motives but diminished when the leader exhibited egoistic motives. Our findings add nuance to our understanding of the effects of interpersonal emotion regulation at work. Practitioner points When leaders try to influence their followers' emotions, the consequences not only depend on the type of strategy used (improving vs. worsening), but also the leaders' apparent motives. If egoistic (vs. prosocial) motives underpin leaders' interpersonal emotional regulation, the positive effects of affect‐improving (vs. affect‐worsening) on leader–follower relationship quality and follower discretional performance are significantly reduced. Leaders should be aware of the behaviours they use during interactions with their followers as well as how their motives might be perceived.

Developing Employee Resilience: The Role of Leader-Facilitated Emotion Management

“…For decades, emotion researchers have studied the process of emotion regulation from an internal, or within-person standpoint (e.g., Gross, 1998;Gross & John, 2003), and that within-person focus carried over to research on workplace emotion regulation (Diefendorff et al, 2005(Diefendorff et al, , 2008Grandey, 2000). More recently, researchers have begun to expand our knowledge of emotion regulation by examining it as an external, or interpersonal phenomenon (Little et al, 2012(Little et al, , 2015(Little et al, , 2016Niven, 2016;Niven et al, 2019;Nozaki & Mikolajczak, 2020;Reeck et al, 2016;Thiel et al, 2015;Troth et al, 2018;Zaki & Williams, 2013). The intentional act of influencing another person's emotional state has been given many names, including interpersonal emotion regulation (Niven, 2016;Zaki & Williams, 2013), extrinsic emotion regulation (Nozaki & Mikolajczak, 2020), social regulation of emotion (Reeck et al, 2016), and interpersonal emotion management (Toegel et al, 2012).…”

Validation of an Attributional and Distributive Justice Mediational Model on the Effects of Surface Acting on Emotional Exhaustion: An Experimental Study

“…Finally, other attributional dimensions need to be considered. Recent studies on surface acting [ 15 ] and interpersonal regulation of emotions [ 14 ] have shown that the attributions that people make about motives to influence the feelings of others positively or negatively are related to the quality of the leader–member relationship. Employees’ attributions regarding the stability of client behavior (e.g., the employee’s perception of the client’s current behavior reflects the way he usually behaves) or the presence of egoistic motives (e.g., the employee believes the passenger had no intention to take the flight and is pretending he missed the flight to claim compensation) can also contribute to increasing the employee’s perception of distributive injustice.…”

“…Recent studies have shown that the negative impact of surface acting partially depends on employees´ attributions for the emotional demands. Niven et al (2019) [ 14 ] showed that the attributions employees make about the motives people hold to influence the feelings of others either positively or negatively are related to the quality of their relationship with leaders. Yagil (2020) [ 15 ] found that employees’ attributions related to the stability of client behavior (e.g., the employee’s perception that the client’s current behavior reflects the way he usually behaves) or the presence of egoistic motives can also contribute to increasing the employee’s perception of distributive injustice.…”

“…Attributions of the demanding event are among those secondary appraisals used to understand the origin and consequences of the event, that modulate the individual’s experience. In organizational contexts, causality and control attributions contribute to explaining reactions to customer behaviors [ 14 , 25 , 26 , 27 ]. In the case of surface acting, the employee’s attribution of responsibility to the client for their behaviors demanding surface acting may intensify the employee’s experience of stress, and the subsequent emotional exhaustion.…”

Leader interpersonal emotion regulation motives, group leader–member exchange, and leader effectiveness in work groups

“…As Niven (2016) explains, “regulatory processes like interpersonal emotion regulation can only be truly understood with reference to the motives that underlie them” (p. 306). A particularly fundamental aspect of motivation for interpersonal emotion regulation concerns whether it is driven by egocentric or prosocial goals (Niven, 2016; Niven, Troth, et al, 2019). In the first case, individuals regulate the emotions of others to achieve their own goals, while in the latter, individuals are motivated to help others to reach their goals.…”