Interpersonal instrumental emotion regulation

• People regulate the emotions of others to achieve personal instrumental benefits. • People can make both friends and foes feel bad, if they expect to benefit from it. • Interpersonal regulation may depend on the perceived utility of others' emotions. a b s t r a c t a r t i c l e i n f o What motivates people to regulate the emotions of others? Prior research has shown that people are motivated to regulate the emotions of others to make others feel better. This investigation, however, was designed to test whether people are also motivated to regulate the emotions of others to promote personal instrumental benefits. We tested whether participants would be motivated to increase unpleasant (Studies 1–3) or pleasant (Study 3) emotions in others, when they expected to benefit from doing so. We found that participants tried to increase an emotion in others when it was expected to lead to desirable outcomes, but decrease an emotion in others when it was expected to lead to undesirable outcomes. These instrumental motives were found even when they led participants to make their partners feel worse and their rivals feel better. Furthermore, the more participants expected others' emotions to result in behaviors that would personally benefit (or harm) participants themselves, the more they were motivated to increase (or decrease) the corresponding emotion in others. These findings demonstrate the operation of instrumental motives in regulating the emotions of others, whether friends of foes. Introduction We sometimes need the help of others to achieve our goals. We rely on our friends to confront those who try to take advantage of us, and we rely on our co-workers to help us meet important deadlines at work. In such cases, the attainment of our goals depends on the performance of others, which may be influenced by their emotional state. Our friends might be more effective in standing up to others when they are angry, and our colleagues might work harder when they are worried. From an instrumental perspective, we should be motivated to optimize the performance of others, if we stand to gain from it, even when that entails influencing their emotional experience (e.g., get them worked up or worried). Such cases in which we try to influence the emotions of others to attain personal benefits are the focus of the current investigation. Interpersonal emotion regulation Humans are inherently motivated to …