Coregulation refers to the process by which relationship partners form a dyadic emotional system involving an oscillating pattern of affective arousal and dampening that dynamically maintains an optimal emotional state. Coregulation may represent an important form of interpersonal emotion regulation, but confusion exists in the literature due to a lack of precision in the usage of the term. We propose an operational definition for coregulation as a bidirectional linkage of oscillating emotional channels between partners, which contributes to emotional stability for (...) both partners. We propose several distinctions and raise unanswered questions that will need to be addressed in order to understand the relevance of coregulation for well-being in adulthood. (shrink)

Everything is constantly changing. Our emotions are one of the primary ways we track, evaluate, organize, and motivate responsive action to those changes. Furthermore, emotions are inherently interpersonal. We learn what to feel from others, especially when we are children. We “catch” other people’s emotions just by being around them. We get caught in escalating response–counterresponse emotional sequences. This all takes place in time, generating complex patterns of interpersonal emotional dynamics. This review summarizes theory, empirical findings, and key challenges for (...) future research regarding three processes that contribute to interpersonal affective dynamics: Convergence of social partners’ emotional responses to the external world, emotional reactivity of social partners to each other, and interpersonal emotion regulation. (shrink)

The present research examined whether Asian-American (AA) versus European-American (EA) women differed in experiential, expressive, or autonomic physiological responding to a laboratory anger provocation and assessed the mediating role of values about emotional control. Results indicate that AA participants reported and behaviourally displayed less anger than EA participants, while there were no group differences in physiological responses. Observed differences in emotional responses were partially mediated by emotion control values, suggesting a potential mechanism for effects of cultural background on anger responding.

Rimé makes the important observation that the literature on adult emotion and emotion regulation has largely focused on the individual level of analysis. He argues, we believe correctly, that emotion research would benefit by addressing the fact that emotional events provoke not only individual responses, but systematic social responses as well. We present examples of our own research that are in accord with Rimé's central claims, and that demonstrate the benefits of considering the goals that are provoked and satisfied by (...) emotions, as well as the social context of emotional responding. We conclude by advocating a dynamic systems approach that would allow an integration of individual and social levels of analysis in the study of adult emotion and emotion regulation. (shrink)

People in an emotional exchange form a temporal interpersonal emotion system (TIES), in which their emotions are interconnected over time (Butler, 2011). These systems can be in various states, defined by the pattern of emotional interconnections. We have defined coregulation as one such state involving coupled dampened oscillations between partners’ emotions that converge on a stable level. Coregulation could be distinguished from other states, such as stress buffering, by comparing statistical models that represent the theoretical distinctions between states. Optimal data (...) for such modeling includes assessments of both partners’ emotions over time and a contrast between securely attached partners, strangers, and being alone. Research of this sort is needed to uncover the mechanisms by which emotional interdependence promotes well-being. (shrink)

Coordinated group behaviour can result in conflict or social cohesion. Thus having a better understanding of coordination in social groups could help us tackle some of our most challenging social problems. Historically, the most common way to study group behaviour is to break it down into sub-processes, such as cognition and emotion, then ideally manipulate them in a social context in order to predict some behaviour such as liking versus distrusting a target person. This approach has gotten us partway to (...) understanding many important collective behaviours, but I argue that making major changes in the world will require a more integrated approach. In this review, I introduce dynamic systems theory, with a focus on interpersonal systems, where all the processes we typically study in individuals, such as cognition and emotion, become intertwined between social partners over time. I focus on the concept of coordination, defined as a temporal correlation between interacting components of a system (or systems) arising due to coupling between them. Finally, I show how this perspective could be used to guide investigations of social problems such as polarisation. (shrink)

We address what it means to “engage in a relationship” and suggest Social Breathing as a model of immersing ourselves in the metaphorical social air around us, which is necessary for shared intention and joint action. We emphasize how emergent properties of social systems arise, such as the shared culture of groups, which cannot be reduced to the individuals involved. We argue that the processes involved in Social Breathing are: automatic, implicit, temporal, in the form of mutual bi-directional interwoven exchanges (...) between social partners and embodied in the coordination of the brains and behaviors of social partners. We summarize cross-disciplinary evidence suggesting that these processes involve a multi-person whole-brain-body network which is critical for the development of both we-ness and relational skills. We propose that Social Breathing depends on each individual’s ability to sustain multimodal interwovenness, thus providing a theoretical link between social neuroscience and relational/multi-person psychology. We discuss how the model could guide research on autism, relationships, and psychotherapy. (shrink)

We explore physiological linkage among 34 same-sex male couples. Interbeat interval, an indicator of cardiovascular arousal, was collected across four conversational contexts in the lab: a baseline period that did not involve conversation, a conversation about body image, a conversation about health goals, and a recovery period that allowed for unstructured conversation. We used a newly developed R statistical package that simplifies the use of dynamic models for investigating interpersonal emotional processes. We identified two different PL patterns: a simple one (...) that was characterized by stable synchronization and low frequency of oscillation; and a complex one that was characterized by drifting synchronization, high frequency of oscillation, and eventual damping. Guided by social baseline theory and the reactive flexibility perspective, we explored the interactions between couple relationship functioning and conversational context as predictors of the PL patterns. The results suggest that partners in well-functioning relationships and emotionally challenging situations may be especially likely to show complex PL patterns that may reflect coregulatory processes. (shrink)