INTERPERSONAL EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE REDUCES THE GAP IN ANGER REGULATION CONFIDENCE CAUSED BY SELF-OTHER DISSIMILARITY

Abstract

Compared to regulating their own emotions, people have to take into account self-other dissimilarities when regulating others’ emotions. We investigate whether self-other dissimilarity decreases confidence in extrinsic anger regulation and how trait emotional intelligence moderates this difference in anger regulation confidence, regardless of context (none, confrontational, and collaborative). Participants indicated how they would respond to provocation-related vignettes. They rated their confidence in successfully regulating their own anger, a similar other’s anger, and a dissimilar other’s anger. Results showed that individuals had lowest confidence in regulating anger for the dissimilar other, followed by the similar other and self. Moreover, individuals high in interpersonal emotional intelligence had higher confidence in regulating anger of a dissimilar other; confidence was nearly as high as for regulating their own anger. These results generalized to all contexts. They offer novel insights into extrinsic emotion regulation and social functions of trait emotional intelligence.