Emotional Regulation 1

Running Head: EMOTIONAL REGULATION AND INTIMATE RELATIONSHIPS

Emotional Regulation And Intimate Relationships

[Name of the Writer]
[Name of the Institution]
 Emotional Regulation 2

Emotional Regulation And Intimate Relationships

In the array of conceptualizations of emotion, Levenson's (2004) represents a

functionalist perspective:
Emotions are short-lived psychological–physiological phenomena that represent efficient
modes of adaptation to changing environmental demands. Psychologically, emotions alter
attention, shift certain behaviors upward in response hierarchies, and activate relevant associative
networks in memory.
Functionalist views of emotion are present in several areas of psychology, including
developmental concepts such as emotional competence (Saarni, 2005), personality constructs
such as emotional intelligence (Salovey, Bedell, Detweiler, & Mayer, 1999; Salovey & Mayer,
2005), and clinical approaches, including Mahoney's developmental constructivist approach
(1991) and process-experiential therapy (e.g., Greenberg & Safran, 1987). Friendships with
same-gender and opposite-gender partners, intimate sexual relationships, same-gender group
activities and mixed gender group functioning all must be coordinated, each to the enhancement
of every other. The degree of emotional vulnerability and self-identity relevance of relationships
is qualitatively beyond that of the middle childhood period. Recent work in the field of emotion
and personality has identified a number of dispositional precursors that affect the experience and
expression of emotion. For instance, Salovey and Mayer (2005) identified a set of skills that
enable an individual to understand and express emotion adaptively. They labeled this group of
skills emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence includes the ability to accurately appraise
and to regulate emotion in the self and others, and the ability to harness emotional information in
solving life tasks. Ambivalence over expressing emotion (King & Emmons, 2005), fear of
intimacy and repressive defensiveness (Weinberger, 2005) are related to three indicators of
attitude toward, and use of, social support (i.e., self-reports, observer reports, and diary entries).
Ambivalence, repression, and fear of intimacy each involve the ability to accurately recognize
emotion in the self and others.
Before building a case linking emotional conflict with social support, however, it is
necessary to provide some background on each of the three emotional conflict variables.

Ambivalence Over Expressing Emotion

Some individuals express emotion freely, seemingly without concern for its
consequences. King and Emmons identified two types of conflict over expressing emotion. The
inhibition of emotional expression can be understood as a result of an individual's competing
desires to express and not express emotion. The mechanisms linking ambivalence to lower well-
being are not yet well understood.
As ambivalence would tend to diminish the ability to accurately and effectively communicate
emotion to others, the subsequent attenuation in social support could provide one explanation by
which ambivalence leads to increased symptomatology.

Fear of Intimacy
This construct is positively related to loneliness and negatively related to self-disclosure
and social intimacy (Descutner & Thelen, 1991). Fear of intimacy can also be viewed as a form
of emotional conflict, to the extent that close relationships provide the context for emotional
expression (Berscheid, 2007). An individual high in fear of intimacy is likely to experience
conflict over disclosing emotionally charged personal information to a close other, which is
 Emotional Regulation 3

likely to impede the development of an intimate relationship. In comparison, an individual high

on emotional ambivalence experiences conflict over the expression of emotion in general, not
necessarily requiring the presence of an intimate relation.
Therefore, as opposed to ambivalence, fear of intimacy could be construed as a narrower form of
emotional conflict in that it is tied to a specific person or relationship.

Repressive Defensiveness
This results in a motivated failure to recognize, process, and express negative emotions.
Paradoxically, these individuals express little psychological distress, wishing instead to maintain
and present an image of the self as rational, well-adjusted, and unemotional. Repressive
defensiveness differs from ambivalence in that ambivalent individuals are open to the experience
of negative emotions (as well as positive) yet are conflicted over what to do with these feelings.
Repressive defensiveness can also be viewed as a form of emotional conflict, but one that is
unconscious and is evident in the discrepancy or dissociation between verbal and physiological
systems of emotion.

Social Support and Emotional Conflict

Emotional conflict, as described through the above individual difference variables, has
been identified as a risk factor for a variety of physical illnesses (Traue & Pennebaker, 2009) and
psychological distress (King, Emmons, & Woodley, 1992). Differences in the use of social
resources could provide one explanation by which these emotionally conflicted styles lead to
reduced physical and psychological well-being.
The expression of emotion holds an important place in interpersonal relations and
therefore probably serves as a mediator in the availability of social support and its effects in
stress–illness linkages. The social consequences of experiencing conflict over emotional
expression remain largely unexplored. In particular, what effect does emotional containment
have on an individual's social resources? In this study, we operationalized social resources in
terms of social support. In particular, we assessed perceived availability, observer reports, and
daily utilization of social support.
Social support generally refers to helpful functions performed for an individual by
significant others such as family members, friends, co-workers, and relatives. Social support can
take many forms: it can include socioemotional aid, such as sympathy and group belonging.
Emotional support conveys to a person that he or she is cared for and valued and is typically
more strongly associated with reduced psychological distress than is other forms of support
(Cohen & McKay, 2007).
The nature and availability of social support clearly depend on the personality
characteristics of the individual, and her or his ability to communicate needs and request
assistance from the social network. According to Cutrona (1986; Cutrona & Russell, 2005),
personality variables affect the mobilization, receipt, and evaluation of support. We believe that
emotional conflict should be linked with decrements in social support. With regard to repressive
defensiveness, Emmons (1992) outlined direct and indirect pathways by which repressive
individuals may be less likely to enjoy the comforts of social support. The expression of emotion
entails self-disclosure and implies vulnerability to social censure. According to developmental–
interactionist theory (Buck, 1984, 1989, 2009) emotional regulation involves the ability to
appropriately communicate one's affective states to others. Therefore, personal and social
characteristics that preclude emotional communication are likely to be associated with
 Emotional Regulation 4

pathogenic outcomes. Ambivalence over expressing emotion, repressive defensiveness, and fear
of intimacy all exemplify problems in emotional communication. This breakdown of
communication is likely to reduce the appropriateness of the helping effort of the conflicted
individual's social network. Thus, similar to the emotional intelligence framework,
developmental–interactionist theory also predicts that individual differences that result in
inappropriate emotional expressions influence an individual's social network.
This consensus is derived from convergence in empirical work pointing toward a five-
factor model. There is still some debate about the proper construct labels for the five dimensions;
here we call them Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Neuroticism, and Openness
to Experience, respectively.
Among these five dimensions, Agreeableness deserves special attention. First, an
Agreeableness-like dimension seems to be pervasive in social perception and cognition, probably
because it is linked to social evaluation. Some theorists have suggested that the label
Agreeableness is too anemic a term for such a large, ubiquitous factor. Digman (2005) suggested
friendly compliance versus hostile non-compliance or friendly versus hostile as more accurate
factor labels. In an effort to avoid social evaluation terms in personality description, previous
research has been biased against the “discovery” of an Agreeableness dimension, and the
dimension still emerges. When Digman and Takemoto-Chock (1981) reanalyzed data from six
major, large-scale studies, however, the first factor to emerge was Agreeableness. Second, an
Agreeableness-like dimension has special theoretical status in many different accounts of social
behavior and personality structure. Compared with the other four dimensions, the Agreeableness
dimension is probably the most concerned with interpersonal relationships. Digman and
Takemoto-Chock (1981) explicitly linked this dimension to theorizing about the tensions
between individual motives of selfishness and a societal concern for altruism. Ahadi and
Rothbart (2004) suggested that Agreeableness may emerge developmentally from processes
associated with “effortful control.” Presumably, agreeable people are better able to control anger
and negative affect in situations involving frustration. Whatever temperaments and
developmental processes are involved in emotional self-regulation, their influence on adult
individual differences almost certainly occurs through interaction with the care giving and peer
social environments (Calkins, 2004, pp. 62–70).
Agreeableness may allow individuals (and groups) to overcome the inevitable frustrations
associated with communal living. Going one step further, Wiggins (1991) suggested that two
major (and apparently orthogonal) motivational systems, agency and communion, underlie
interpersonal behavior. Communion —the striving for intimacy, union, and solidarity with others
—can be mapped onto the Big Five dimension of Agreeableness. If we add theorizing about the
dispositional origins of altruism then an Agreeableness-related dimension occupies an important
theoretical niche in the analysis of interpersonal behavior and personality.
Excepting extensive work on Extraversion and Neuroticism, empirical work on the five-
factor model by personality psychologists has focused horizontally on structure that links all five
factors, not vertically on processes underlying behavioral differences within individual
dimensions (cf. Goldberg's [2009] related distinction between horizontal vs. vertical comparisons
in personality). If individual differences within a specific dimension could be linked to cognitive
or interpersonal processes, then this information would enhance the nomological network
surrounding the structural model in general. In particular, if individual differences in
Agreeableness could be related to important social processes such as the perception and
resolution of interpersonal conflict, then this would suggest that self-reported Agreeableness
 Emotional Regulation 5

differences are something more than an artifact of biased social cognition or social desirability
responding. If Agreeableness could be related to theoretically meaningful social processes, then
we could have a better chance of identifying mechanisms that link structure to process within the
five-factor model. In the case of Agreeableness, we may be able to uncover links between a
general structural representation in personality and a set of cognitive or behavioral adaptations to
the social environment.
One problem in the current research literature on Agreeableness is its focus on individual
behavior, rather than on the Person × Interpersonal Context interactions within which agreeable
behavior emerges. An interpersonal context well suited to the analysis of individual differences
in Agreeableness is interpersonal conflict. First, if the developmental theorizing about the origins
of individual differences in Agreeableness is correct (Ahadi & Rothbart, 2004), then
Agreeableness differences should be especially conspicuous in conflict situations, which elicit
anger and frustration in many people. Second, interpersonal conflict is an aspect of everyday life
in all cultures. By sheer frequency and consequence alone, interpersonal conflict is a topic
worthy of extensive Personality × Interpersonal Context research.
Third, attempts to identify major individual-difference moderators of conflict processes
have not been especially successful. The problem is not that empirical research cannot detect
individual differences in conflict behaviors; the problem is more a matter of identifying the
construct underlying the individual differences. If the developmental theorizing is valid, then
Agreeableness may be one construct underlying individual differences in processes of
interpersonal conflict.
Given how little is known about the Agreeableness construct, it is difficult to offer a
definitive model of its operation during interpersonal conflict. For Lewin (1935, 1948), the
proximal cause of social behavior was in the phenomenology of the perceiver, who actively
constructed a psychological environment under the influence of salient goals and motives.
Concretely, agreeable people may be more highly motivated to maintain positive relations with
other people, and this motive system may induce agreeable persons to generate positive
perceptions and attributions to otherwise-provocative behavior. These attributions may induce
the agreeable person to respond to the conflict with less negative affect, to select more
constructive conflict tactics, and to generate a more constructive pattern of oppositions during
conflict than would a low-agreeable person. It is probable that individual differences in
Agreeableness reflect underlying differences not only in social perception but also in affect and
social learning experiences.
Consequently, conflict outcomes may be influenced by Agreeableness through routes that
bypass social perception, or at least easily accessible social perception.
Agreeableness is one of the least explored or conceptually developed factors among the
components in the five-factor model of personality. Agreeableness is probably the largest factor
in the model. When Digman and Takemoto-Chock (1981) reanalyzed data from six major, large-
scale studies, the first factor to emerge was Agreeableness. Furthermore, the dimension is related
to important aspects of social relations. Compared with the other four dimensions, the
Agreeableness dimension is probably the most concerned with interpersonal relationships. In the
present research, we built on theory by Ahadi and Rothbart (2004), who suggested that
Agreeableness may emerge developmentally from processes associated with “effortful control.”
That is, adult differences in Agreeableness may reflect internalized tendencies in the regulation
of anger and frustration. Presumably, agreeable people are better able to control anger and
negative affect in situations involving frustration. We focused on interpersonal conflict as an
 Emotional Regulation 6

interpersonal context for our analysis because Agreeableness differences should be especially
conspicuous in conflict situations, which elicit anger and frustration in many people. For Lewin
(1935), the proximal cause of social behavior was in the phenomenology of the perceiver, who
actively constructed a psychological environment under the influence of salient goals and
motives. In this framework, the motive systems associated with Agreeableness may predispose
the individual to perceive persons in the social environment in ways consistent with the salient
motives. Agreeable people may be more highly motivated to maintain positive relations with
other people, and this motive system may induce agreeable persons to generate positive
perceptions and attributions to otherwise-provocative behavior. The attributions may then induce
the agreeable person to respond to the conflict with less negative affect, to select more
constructive conflict tactics, and to generate a more constructive pattern of oppositions during
conflict than would a low-agreeable person.
The central hypothesis was that individual differences in Agreeableness were
systematically related to patterns of conflict and conflict resolution, both in perception and overt
behavior, within relationships. In Study 1 we explored the link between Agreeableness and
evaluation of interpersonal conflict tactics. Individual differences in intelligence seemed an
implausible candidate.
Our data suggest that Agreeableness may be the construct underlying cross-relationship
consistency in the evaluation of power assertion conflict tactics. Low-agreeable participants
differ from high-agreeable participants, however, in that they evaluate power assertion tactics as
more effective. These data suggest that differences between high- and low-agreeable persons
may be more pronounced in the evaluation of destructive tactics.
This program of research focused on Agreeableness as a dimension of personality. An
Agreeableness-like dimension is pervasive in social cognition and is part of the dispositional
explanation for interpersonal relations. It is probable that the pervasiveness of Agreeableness is
due to its connection to social evaluation. It might be argued that the dimension is a professional
embarrassment, reflecting our inability to separate “real” personality characteristics from
prescientific social evaluation. It might also be argued that Agreeableness differences are the
result of social desirability biases, in persons responding to self-report inventories, to persons
who rate others, or to both. The available empirical literature on Agreeableness does not allow us
to rule out this line of reasoning. Even if this social-artifact explanation were true, however, we
would still need to understand why virtually every major account of social cognition, person
perception, or social relationships includes a valuative dimension. It would be difficult to
imagine how we could explain other people or complex social behavior without social evaluation
language. More systematic theorizing is needed to explain the origins and correlates of individual
differences in Agreeableness, as well as its link to socially important processes such as
interpersonal conflict and interpersonal attraction.
The differing effects of perceived and received social support on health are still under
investigation. Of all the social support indexes sampled in this study, perceived support was the
most important contributor to self-reported subjective well-being. The results of this study
provide another illustration of the differing effects of support perceived and support available on
well-being. Moreover, they exemplify the need to assess social support with a multitude of
methods to completely capture the complexity of this construct.
The experience of conflict has biological, psychological, and interpersonal consequences
that are linked to each other in complex and multifaceted ways. Buck (1989) presented a social–
developmental perspective that offers a comprehensive theoretical explanation for linking the
 Emotional Regulation 7

biopsychosocial components of emotional inhibition. He argued that individuals learn to label

and understand their emotional states by means of a social feedback process. This process occurs
in the context of intimate relationships. The problematic nature of these relationships in
emotionally conflicted individuals would be expected to reduce the individuals' ability to detect
and report their emotional state. Intimate relationships function as bioregulatory mechanisms as
well, as it is through the expressive feedback of others that biological mechanisms within the
individual are regulated. Clearly, a complete understanding of the mechanisms by which conflict
affects well-being must address all three levels of analysis: biological, psychological and social,
as well as interrelations among these levels. Buck's proposed social-feedback-mismatch model
may account for why emotionally conflicted individuals report both lower well-being and
availability of social support.
 Emotional Regulation 8

References
Ahadi, S. A., & Rothbart, M. K. (2004). Temperament, development, and the Big Five. In
C. F. Halverson, G. A. Kohnstamm R. P. Martin (Eds.), The developing structure of
temperament and personality from infancy to adulthood (pp. 189–208). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Berscheid, E. (2007). Emotion. In H. H. Kelly, E. Berscheid, A. Christensen, J. H.
Harvey, T. L. Huston, G. Levinger, E. McClintock, L. A. Peplau, & D. R. Peterson (Eds.), Close
relationships (pp. 110–168). New York: Freeman.
Buck, R. (1984). The communication of emotion. New York: Guilford Press.
Buck, R. (1989). Emotional communication in personal relationships: A developmental–
interactionist view. In C. Hendrick (Ed.), Review of personality and social psychology (Vol. 10,
(pp. 144–163). Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
Buck, R. (2009). Emotional communication, emotional competence, and physical illness:
A developmental–interactionist view. In H. Traue & J. W. Pennebaker (Eds.), Emotional
inhibition and illness (pp. 32–56). Seattle, WA: Hogrefe & Huber.
Buss, D. M. (1995). Evolutionary psychology: A new paradigm for psychological
science. Psychological Inquiry, 6, 1–30.
Calkins, S. D. (2004). Origins and outcomes of individual differences in emotional
regulation. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 59(2–3, Serial No.
240), pp. 53–72
Cohen, S., & McKay, G. (2007). Social support, stress and the buffering hypothesis: A
theoretical analysis. In A. Baum, J. E. Singer, & S. E. Taylor (Eds.), Handbook of psychology
and health (Vol. 4, (pp. 253–267). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Cutrona, C. E. (1986). Objective determinants of perceived social support. Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology, 50, 349–355.
Cutrona, C. E., & Russell, D. W. (2005). Type of social support and specific stress:
Toward a theory of optimal matching. In B. R. Sarason, I. G. Sarason, & G. R. Pierce (Eds.),
Social support: An interactional view (pp. 319–366). New York: Wiley.
Descutner, C. J. & Thelen, M. H. (1991). Development and validation of a Fear-of-
Intimacy scale. Psychological Assessment: A Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 3,
218–225.
Digman, J. M. (2005). Personality structure: The emergence of the five-factor model.
Annual Review of Psychology, 41, 417–440.
Digman, J. M., & Takemoto-Chock, N. K. (1981). Factors in the natural language of
personality: Re-analysis, comparison, and interpretation of six major studies. Multivariate
Behavioral Research, 16, 149–170.
Dunkel-Schetter, C., & Bennett, T. L. (2005). Differentiating the cognitive and
behavioral aspects of social support. In B. R. Sarason, I. G. Sarason, & G. R. Pierce (Eds.),
Social support: An interactional view (pp. 267–296). New York: Wiley.
Emmons, R. A. (1992). The repressive personality and social support. In H. S. Friedman
(Ed.), Hostility, coping, and health (pp. 141–150). Washington, DC: American Psychological
Association.
Goldberg, L. R. (2009). The structure of personality traits: Vertical and horizontal
aspects. In D. C. Funder, R. D. Parke, C. Tomlinson-Keasey K. Widaman (Eds.), Studying lives
through time: Personality and development (pp. 169–188). Washington, DC: American
Psychological Association.
Greenberg, L. S., & Safran, J. D. (1987). Emotion in psychotherapy: Affect, cognition,
 Emotional Regulation 9

and the process of change. New York: Guilford.

Hogan, R. T. (2007). A socio-analytic theory of personality. In M. Page (Ed.), Nebraska
Symposium on Motivation: Personality—current theory and research (Vol. 30, (pp. 58–89).
Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
Katz, I. M., & Campbell, J. D. (2004). Ambivalence over emotional expression and well-
being: Nomothetic and idiographic tests of the stress-buffering hypothesis. Journal of Personality
and Social Psychology, 67, 513–524.
King, L. A., & Emmons, R. A. (2005). Conflict over emotional expression: Psychological
and physical correlates. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 58, 864–877.
King, L. A., & Emmons, R. A. (1991). Psychological, physical, and interpersonal
correlates of emotional expressiveness, conflict and control. European Journal of Personality, 5,
131–150.
King, L. A., Emmons, R. A., & Woodley, S. (1992). The structure of inhibition. Journal
of Research in Personality, 26, 85–102.
Levenson, R. W. (2004). Human emotion: A functional view. In P. Ekman & R. J.
Davidson (Eds.), The nature of emotion: Fundamental questions (pp. 123–126). New York:
Oxford University Press.
Lewin, K. (1935). A dynamic theory of personality. New York: McGraw Hill.
Lewin, K. (1948). Resolving social conflicts. New York: Harper & Row.
Mahoney, M. J. (1991). Human change processes: The scientific foundations of
psychotherapy. New York: Basic Books.
Ozer, D. J., & Reise, S. P. (2004). Personality assessment. Annual Review of
Psychology, 45, 357–388.
Saarni, C. (2005). Emotional competence: How emotions and relationships become
integrated. In R. Thompson (Ed.), Nebraska symposium on motivation: Vol. 36. Socioemotional
development (pp. 115–182). Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press.
Salovey, P., & Mayer, J. D. (2005). Emotional intelligence. Imagination, Cognition, and
Personality, 9, 185–211.
Salovey, P., Bedell, B. T., Detweiler, J. B., & Mayer, J. D. (1999). Coping intelligently:
Emotional intelligence and the coping process. In C. R. Snyder (Ed.), Coping: The psychology of
what works (pp. 141–164). New York: Oxford University Press.
Sternberg, R. J., & Soriano, L. J. (1984). Styles of conflict resolution. Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology, 47, 115–126.
Traue, H., & Pennebaker, J. W. (Eds.). (2009). Emotional inhibition and illness. Seattle,
WA: Hogrefe & Huber.
Weinberger, D. A. (2005). The construct validity of the repressive coping style. In J.
Singer (Ed.), Repression and dissociation: Implications for personality theory, psychopathology,
and health (pp. 337–386). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Wiggins, J. S. (1991). Agency and communion as conceptual coordinates for the
understanding and measurement of interpersonal behavior. In W. Grove & D. Cicchetti (Eds.),
Thinking clearly about psychology: Essays in honour of Paul E. Meehl (pp. 89–113).
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.