Do People Choose the Same Strategies to Regulate Other People's Emotions as They Choose to Regulate Their Own?

How do people choose how to regulate others' emotional responses? We extended previous work on how the intensity of an emotional situation influences which strategies people choose to regulate their emotions (i.e., intrapersonal emotion regulation choice) to also consider the effect of intensity on which strategies people choose to regulate other people's emotions (i.e., interpersonal emotion regulation choice). Studies 1a and 1b found that the intensity of the emotional situation influenced whether participants chose distraction or reappraisal in both intrapersonal and interpersonal regulation contexts, but also that the effect of intensity differed between the contexts (participants choose reappraisal more frequently for others in intense situations than for themselves). However, this difference was stronger (or only found) when participants helped the other person to control their emotions first. Two further studies examined whether differences in perceived intensity (Study 2) and/or the anticipated effort or effectiveness of the strategies (Study 3) could explain the difference between intrapersonal and interpersonal contexts. Together, the findings suggest that the regulation strategies that people choose depend on the intensity of the emotional situation, the target of regulation, and whether people choose how to regulate their own emotions before choosing how to regulate another person's emotions, with preliminary evidence that differences between intrapersonal and interpersonal emotion regulation choice may be associated with differences in the anticipated effort and effectiveness of regulation between these contexts.