Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gxg78 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T10:23:01.712Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Chapter 2 - A general framework for capturing interpersonal emotion dynamics

Associations with psychological and relational adjustment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 September 2018

By
Laura Sels ,
Eva Ceulemans  and
Peter Kuppens
Edited by
Ashley K. Randall  and
Dominik Schoebi
Ashley K. Randall
Affiliation:
Arizona State University
Dominik Schoebi
Affiliation:
Université de Fribourg, Switzerland
Get access

Summary

How emotions are connected, shared and exchanged between people over time signals important relationship processes and also impacts people’s individual wellbeing. To promote a better understanding of the involved processes and mechanisms, we propose a framework that captures four key characteristics of interpersonal emotion dynamics. We distinguish between characteristics that capture only the interpersonal emotional aspects versus characteristics that capture the interpersonal system as a whole (taking into account both intrapersonal and interpersonal emotional aspects), and between characteristics that capture the time-dependent versus time-independent aspects of emotion dynamics. Combined, this results in the following four characteristics of interpersonal emotion dynamics: (1) emotional covariation, or how emotions of different individuals covary across time, (2) emotional influencing, or how a change in one individual’s emotions predicts other people’s subsequent emotional change, (3) emotional variability, indicating the extent of fluctuations in the interpersonal emotion system, and (4) emotional inertia, representing the carryover of the emotional state of the interpersonal system over time. For each, we synthesize existing research on these characteristics, their relation with (mal)adjustment indicators, underlying processes, and current gaps in research.
Type
Chapter
Information
Interpersonal Emotion Dynamics in Close Relationships , pp. 27 - 46
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2018

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Anderson, C., Keltner, D., & John, O. P. (2003). Emotional convergence between people over time. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84(5), 1054–68.Google Scholar
Anderson, C., Keltner, D., Tiedens, L. Z., & Leach, C. W. (2004). The emotional convergence hypothesis. In Tiedens, L. Z. & Leach, C. W. (Eds.), The Social Life of Emotions (pp. 144–63). New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Berscheid, E., & Ammazzalorso, H. (2001). Emotional experience in close relationships. In Fletcher, G. J. & Clark, M. S. (Eds.), Blackwell Handbook of Social Psychology: Interpersonal Processes (pp. 308–30). Oxford, England: Blackwell Publishers Ltd.Google Scholar
Butler, E. A. (2011). Temporal interpersonal emotion systems: the “TIES” that form relationships. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 15(4), 367–93.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Butler, E. A. (2015). Interpersonal affect dynamics: it takes two (and time) to tango. Emotion Review, 7(4), 336–41.Google Scholar
Butler, E. A., & Randall, A. K. (2013). Emotional coregulation in close relationships. Emotion Review, 5(2), 202–10.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Butner, J., Amazeen, P. G., & Mulvey, G. M. (2005). Multilevel modeling of two cyclical processes: extending differential structural equation modeling to nonlinear coupled systems. Psychological Methods, 10(2), 159–77.Google Scholar
Butner, J., Diamond, L. M., & Hicks, A. M. (2007). Attachment style and two forms of affect coregulation between romantic partners. Personal Relationships, 14(3), 431–55.Google Scholar
Chow, S.-M., Haltigan, J. D., & Messinger, D. S. (2010). Dynamic infant-parent affect coupling during the face-to-face/still-face. Emotion, 10(1), 101–14.Google Scholar
Cook, J., Tyson, R., White, J., Rushe, R., Gottman, J., & Murray, J. (1995). Mathematics of marital conflict: qualitative dynamic mathematical modeling of marital interaction. Journal of Family Psychology, 9(2), 110–30.Google Scholar
Eisenberg, N., & Fabes, R. A. (1995). The relation of young children's vicarious emotional responding to social competence, regulation, and emotionality. Cognition & Emotion, 9(2–3), 203–28.Google Scholar
Ebner-Priemer, U. W., & Trull, T. J. (2009). Ecological momentary assessment of mood disorders and mood dysregulation. Psychological Assessment, 21(4), 463–75.Google Scholar
Erber, R., Wegner, D. M., & Therriault, N. (1996). On being cool and collected: mood regulation in anticipation of social interaction. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 70(4), 757–66.Google Scholar
Feldman, R. (2003). Development across the Life Span. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.Google Scholar
Feldman, R. (2007). Parent-infant synchrony and the construction of shared timing; physiological precursors, developmental outcomes, and risk conditions. The Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 48(3–4), 329–54.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Feldman, R., & Greenbaum, C. W. (1997). Affect regulation and synchrony in mother-infant play as precursors to the development of symbolic competence. Infant Mental Health Journal, 18(1), 4–23.Google Scholar
Feldman, R., Greenbaum, C. W., & Yirmiya, N. (1999). Mother-infant affect synchrony as an antecedent of the emergence of self-control. Developmental Psychology, 35(5), 223–31.Google Scholar
Ferrer, E. (2016). Exploratory approaches for studying social interactions, dynamics, and multivariate processes in psychological science. Multivariate Behavioral Research, 51(2–3), 240–56.Google Scholar
Ferrer, E., & Nesselroade, J. R. (2003). Modeling affective processes in dyadic relations via dynamic factor analysis. Emotion, 3(4), 344–60.Google Scholar
Field, T. (1985). Attachment as psychobiological attunement: being on the same wavelength. In Reite, M. & Field, T. (Eds.), The psychobiology of attachment and separation (pp. 415–54). Orlando, FL: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Fischer, A. H., & Van Kleef, G. A. (2010). Where have all the people gone? A plea for including social interaction in emotion research. Emotion Review, 2(3), 208–11.Google Scholar
Fitzsimons, G. M., Finkel, E. J., & Vandellen, M. R. (2015). Transactive goal dynamics. Psychological Review, 122(4), 648–73.Google Scholar
Frijda, N. H., & Mesquita, B. (1994). The social roles and functions of emotions. In Kitayama, S. & Markus, H. R. (Eds.), Emotion and Culture: Empirical Studies of Mutual Influence (pp. 51–87). Washington, DC: Americal Psychological Association.Google Scholar
Gibbons, F. X. (1986). Social comparison and depression: company's effect on misery. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 51(1), 140–8.Google Scholar
Goldenberg, H., & Goldenberg, I. (2012). Family Therapy: An Overview. Canada: Cengage Learning.Google Scholar
Gonzaga, G. C., Campos, B., & Bradbury, T. (2007). Similarity, convergence, and relationship satisfaction in dating and married couples. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 93(1), 34–48.Google Scholar
Gottman, J. M. (1998). Psychology and the study of marital processes. Annual Review of Psychology, 49(1), 169–97.Google Scholar
Gottman, J., Swanson, C., & Murray, J. (1999). The mathematics of marital conflict: dynamic mathematical nonlinear modeling of newlywed marital interaction. Journal of Family Psychology, 13(1), 3–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gottman, J., Swanson, C., & Swanson, K. (2002). A general systems theory of marriage: nonlinear difference equation modeling of marital interaction. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 6(4), 326–40.Google Scholar
Granic, I., & Lamey, A. V. (2002). Combining dynamic systems and multivariate analyses to compare the mother-child interactions of externalizing subtypes. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 30(3), 265–83.Google ScholarPubMed
Hamaker, E. L., Zhang, Z., & Van der Maas, H. L. (2009). Using threshold autoregressive models to study dyadic interactions. Psychometrika, 74(4), 727–45.Google Scholar
Hatfield, E., Cacioppo, J. T., & Rapson, R. L. (1994). Emotional Contagion. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hollenstein, T. (2013). State Space Grids (pp. 11–33). New York, NY: Springer.Google Scholar
Hollenstein, T. (2015). This time, it's real: affective flexibility, time scales, feedback loops, and the regulation of emotion. Emotion Review, 7(4), 308–15.Google Scholar
Hollenstein, T., Granic, I., Stoolmiller, M., & Snyder, J. (2004). Rigidity in parent-child interactions and the development of externalizing and internalizing behavior in early childhood. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 32(6), 595–607.Google Scholar
Hollenstein, T., & Lewis, M. D. (2006). A state space analysis of emotion and flexibility in parent-child interactions. Emotion, 6(4), 656–62.Google Scholar
Hollenstein, T., Lichtwarck-Aschoff, A., & Potworowski, G. (2013). A model of socioemotional flexibility at three time scales. Emotion Review, 5(4), 397–405.Google Scholar
Houben, M., Van Den Noortgate, W., & Kuppens, P. (2015). The relation between short-term emotion dynamics and psychological well-being: a meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 141(4), 901–30.Google Scholar
Huntsinger, J. R., Lun, J., Sinclair, S., & Clore, G. L. (2009). Contagion without contact: anticipatory mood matching in response to affiliative motivation. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 35(7), 909–22.Google Scholar
Kelley, H. H. (1979). Personal Relationships: Their Structures and Processes. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Kelley, H., Berscheid, E., Christensen, A., et al. (1983). Close Relationships. New York, NY: Freeman.Google Scholar
Kim, K. J., Conger, R. D., Lorenz, F. O., & Elder, H. G. Jr. (2001). Parent-adolescent reciprocity in negative affect and its relation to early adult social development. Developmental Psychology, 37(6), 775–90.Google Scholar
Koval, P., Pe, M. L., Meers, K., & Kuppens, P. (2013). Affective dynamics in relation to depressive symptoms: variable, unstable, or inert? Emotion, 13(6), 1132–41.Google Scholar
Kuppens, P. (2015). It's about time: a special section on affect dynamics. Emotion Review, 7(4), 297–300.Google Scholar
Kuppens, P., Sheeber, L. B., Yap, M. B., et al. (2012). Emotional inertia prospectively predicts the onset of depressive disorder in adolescence. Emotion, 12(2), 283–9.Google Scholar
Kuppens, P., & Verduyn, P. (2015). Looking at emotion regulation through the window of emotion dynamics. Psychological Inquiry, 26, 72–9.Google Scholar
Larson, R. W., & Almeida, D. M. (1999). Emotional transmission in the daily lives of families: a new paradigm for studying family process. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 61(1), 5–20.Google Scholar
Ledermann, T., & Kenny, D. A. (2012). The common fate model for dyadic data: variations of a theoretically important but underutilized model. Journal of Family Psychology, 26(1), 140–8.Google Scholar
Ledermann, T., & Macho, S. (2014). Analyzing change at the dyadic level: the common fate growth model. Journal of Family Psychology, 28(2), 204–13.Google Scholar
Levenson, W. R., & Gottman, J. M. (1983). Marital interaction: physiological linkage and affective exchange. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 45(3), 587–97.Google Scholar
Lewis, M. (2000). The promise of dynamic systems approach for an integrated account of human development. Child Development, 71(1), 36–43.Google Scholar
Lewis, M. L., Lamey, A. V., & Douglas, L. (1999). A new dynamic systems method for the analysis of early socioemotional development. Developmental Science, 2(4), 457–75.Google Scholar
Lichtwarck-Aschoff, A., Kunnen, S. E., & van Geert, P. L. (2009). Here we go again: a dynamic systems perspective on emotional rigidity across parent-adolescent conflicts. Developmental Psychology, 45(5), 1364–75.Google Scholar
Locke, K. D., & Horowitz, L. M. (1990). Satisfaction in interpersonal interactions as a function of similarity in level of dysphoria. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 58(5), 823–31.Google Scholar
Mancini, K. J., & Luebbe, A. M. (2016). Dyadic affective flexibility and emotional inertia in relation to youth psychopathology: an integrated model at two timescales. Clinical child and family psychology Review, 19(2) 117–33.Google Scholar
Minuchin, S. (1974). Families and Family Therapy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Minuchin, P. (1985). Families and individual development: provocations from the field of family therapy. Child Development, 56(2), 289–302.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Moskowitz, D. S., & Zuroff, D. C. (2004). Flux, pulse, and spin: dynamic additions to the personality lexicon. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 86(6), 880–93.Google Scholar
Papp, L. M., Pendry, P., Simon, C. D., & Adam, E. K. (2013). Spouses’ cortisol associations and moderators: testing physiological synchrony and connectedness in everyday life. Family Process, 52(2), 284–98.Google Scholar
Parkinson, B. (2011), Interpersonal emotion transfer: contagion and social appraisal. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 5, 428–39. doi:10.1111/j.1751-9004.2011.00365.x.Google Scholar
Parkinson, B., & Manstead, A. S. (2015). Current emotion research in social psychology: thinking about emotions and other people. Emotion Review, 7(4), 371–80.Google Scholar
Parkinson, B., & Simons, G. (2009). Affecting others: social appraisal and emotion contagion in everyday decision making. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 35(8), 1071–84.Google Scholar
Pe, M. L., Kircanski, K., Thompson, R. J., Bringmann, L. F., Tuerlinckx, F., Mestdagh, M., … Kuppens, P., (2015). Emotion-network density in major depressive disorder. Clinical Psychological Science, 3(2), 292–300.Google Scholar
Pe, M. L., & Kuppens, P. (2012). The dynamic interplay between emotions in daily life: augmentation, blunting, and the role of appraisal overlap. Emotion, 12(6), 1320–328.Google Scholar
Randall, A. K., Post, J. H., Reed, R. G., & Butler, E. A. (2013). Cooperating with your romantic partner: associations with interpersonal emotion coordination. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 30(8), 1072–95.Google Scholar
Randall, A. K., & Schoebi, D. (2015). Lean on me: susceptibility to partner affect attenuates psychological distress over a 12-month period. Emotion, 15(2), 201–10.Google Scholar
Reed, R. G., Barnard, K., & Butler, E. A. (2015). Distinguishing emotional coregulation from codysregulation: an investigation of emotional dynamics and body weight in romantic couples. Emotion, 15(1), 45–60.Google Scholar
Reis, H. T., Collins, W. A., & Berscheid, E. (2000). The relationship context of human behavior and development. Psychological Bulletin, 126(6), 844–72.Google Scholar
Rimé, B. (2009). Emotion elicits the social sharing of emotion: theory and empirical review. Emotion Review, 1(1), 60–85.Google Scholar
Saxbe, D., & Repetti, R. L. (2010). For better or worse? Coregulation of couples’ cortisol levels and mood states. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 98(1), 92–103.Google Scholar
Sbarra, D. A., & Hazan, C. (2008). Coregulation, dysregulation, self-regulation: an integrative analysis and empirical agenda for understanding adult attachment, separation, loss, and recovery. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 12(141), 141–67.Google Scholar
Scherer, K. R. (2009). The dynamic architecture of emotion: evidence for the component process model. Cognition and Emotion, 23(7), 1307–51.Google Scholar
Schoebi, D. (2008). The coregulation of daily affect in marital relationships. Journal of Family Psychology, 22(3), 595–604.Google Scholar
Schoebi, D., & Randall, A. K. (2015). Emotional dynamics in intimate relationships. Emotion Review, 7(4), 342–48.Google Scholar
Sels, L., Ceulemans, E., Bulteel, K., & Kuppens, P. (2016). Emotional interdependence and well-being in close relationships. Frontiers in Psychology, 7(283).Google Scholar
Steenbeek, H., & van Geert, P. (2005). A dynamic systems model of dyadic interaction during play of two children. European Journal of Developmental Psychology, 2(2), 105–45.Google Scholar
Tiedens, L., & Leach, C. (2004). The Social Life of Emotions (Volume 2). New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Timmons, A. C., Margolin, G., & Saxbe, D. E. (2015). Physiological linkage in couples and its implications for individual and interpersonal functioning: a literature review. Journal of Family Psychology. doi:10.1037/fam0000115Google Scholar
Townsend, S. S., Kim, H. S., & Mesquita, B. (2014). Are you feeling what I'm feeling? Emotional similarity buffers stress. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 5(5), 526–33.Google Scholar
Tronick, E. Z. (1989). Emotions and emotional communication in infants. American Psychologist, 44(2), 112–19. doi:10.1037/0003-066X.44.2.112.Google Scholar
Vallacher, R. R., Nowak, A., & Zochowski, M. (2005). Dynamics of social coordination: the synchronization of internal states in close relationships. Interaction Studies, 6(1), 35–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Van der Giessen, D., Branje, S. J., Frijns, T., & Meeus, W. H. (2013). Dyadic variability in mother-adolescent interactions: developmental trajectories and associations with psychosocial functioning. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 42(1), 96–108.Google Scholar
Van der Giessen, D., Hollenstein, T., Hale, W. W. III, et al. (2014). Emotional variability in mother-adolescent conflict interactions and internalizing problems of mothers and adolescents: dyadic and individual processes. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 43(2), 339–53.Google Scholar
Von Bertalanffy, L. (1968). General System Theory. New York: Braziller.Google Scholar
Wegner, D. M., Giuliano, T., & Hertel, P. T. (1985). Cognitive interdependence in close relationships. In Ickes, W. J. (Ed.), Compatible and Incompatible Relationships (pp. 253–76). New York: Springer-Verlag.Google Scholar
Westman, M. (2001). Stress and strain crossover. Human Relations, 54(6), 717–51.Google Scholar
Wichers, M., Wigman, J. T., & Myin-Germeys, I. (2015). Micro-level affect dynamics in psychopathology viewed from complex dynamical system theory. Emotion Review, 7(4), 362–7.Google Scholar
Wilks, S. S. (1932). Certain generalizations in the analysis of variance. Biometrika, 24(3/4), 471–94.Google Scholar
Zaki, J., & Williams, W. C. (2013). Interpersonal emotion regulation. Emotion, 13(5), 803–10.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×