1

ATTACHMENT AND INTERPERSONAL REGULATION

Adult Attachment and Interpersonal Emotion Regulation Motives in Daily Life

Tabea Springstein, Kyra K. Hamerling-Potts, Isidro Landa, and Tammy English

Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences, Washington University in St. Louis

©American Psychological Association, 2022. This paper is not the copy of record
and may not exactly replicate the authoritative document published in the APA
journal.

Author Note

Tabea Springstein https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4712-6543

Kyra K. Hamerling-Potts https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0156-1817

Isidro Landa https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3139-6023

Tammy English https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6666-4780

Kyra K. Hamerling-Potts is now at the Mental Illness Research, Education and Clinical

Centers (MIRECC), James J. Peters VA Medical Center. Isidro Landa is now at the Department

of Psychology, University of Michigan.

Materials and data can be found at https://osf.io/2ms9w/. We have no known conflicts of

interest to disclose. Preliminary results were presented at The Society for Affective Science’s

2021 Annual Conference and Washington University in St. Louis’ Spring 2021 Undergraduate

Research Symposium. The study presented in this manuscript was designed for K. K. H.-P.’s

honor’s thesis. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Tammy English, 1

Brookings Drive, St. Louis, MO 63130, United States of America. Email: tenglish@wustl.edu
2
ATTACHMENT AND INTERPERSONAL REGULATION
Abstract

Interpersonal goals and adult attachment have implications for how people interact with others as

well as for emotion experience and regulation. Literature on intrapersonal emotional processes

has typically not examined motivations underlying people's engagement with others’ emotions

and its connections to individual differences related to close relationships such as attachment.

This study analyzed the relationships between interpersonal emotion regulation motives,

perceived social interaction outcomes, and attachment. Undergraduates (N = 211) reported their

trait attachment. Experience sampling was used to examine the reasons why they wanted to

regulate others’ emotions during daily interactions and perceived changes in their own well-

being and relationship quality with the target of regulation. Attachment anxiety was associated

with more self-focused prohedonic motives and impression management motives, while

attachment avoidance predicted less perceived increases in emotional and relational well-being

after interactions. People who tended to report more (self- and other-focused) prohedonic and

less impression management motives in daily life perceived more positive changes in their

emotional well-being and people who tended to report higher emotional similarity motives

perceived more positive changes in their relational well-being after interactions People also

perceived more positive emotional and relational interaction outcomes at times when they held

more (self- and other-focused) prohedonic, impression management, or relationship maintenance

motives and less self-focused performance and relationship distancing motives. Overall, these

findings suggest that attachment anxiety may guide why people engage with other people’s

emotions and these extrinsic interpersonal emotion regulation motives may play a role in

socioemotional outcomes of daily interactions.

Keywords: emotion regulation, emotion, attachment, relationships, experience sampling

3
ATTACHMENT AND INTERPERSONAL REGULATION
Adult Attachment and Interpersonal Emotion Regulation Motives in Daily Life

In our daily interactions, especially with those close to us, we often attempt to regulate

the emotions of others (Tamminen et al., 2019). Emotion regulation broadly refers to the process

of managing the expression and experience of emotion. Regulating another person’s emotions

could be as simple as cheering them up or attempting to minimize the intensity of their feelings.

These attempts are fueled by the motivation to set and achieve contextually relevant goals. We

might want to minimize the intensity of a person’s emotions because we would like to avoid

feeling stressed ourselves, or we might try to regulate their emotions in order to increase

closeness in the relationship. That is, interpersonal emotion regulation has underlying motives,

just like intrapersonal emotion regulation (Nozaki & Mikolajczak, 2020).

Interpersonal emotion regulation encompasses both attempts to regulate one’s own

emotions with the help of others (i.e., intrinsic interpersonal emotion regulation) and attempts to

regulate others’ emotions (i.e., extrinsic interpersonal emotion regulation; Zaki & Williams,

2013). We focus on motivations underlying extrinsic interpersonal emotion regulation to get a

better sense of why one regulates the emotions of another person. Theses motivations can vary

between and within individuals. Between individuals, one possible individual difference that

could explain motivations behind regulatory behaviors is attachment. Attachment first emerges

through interactions with close others during infancy (Ainsworth & Bowlby, 1991). Attachment

has bearing on our habits when interacting with others and on what we wish to achieve from our

social relationships, so attachment likely guides the motives that adults use to influence another

person’s emotions and subsequent interpersonal emotion regulation outcomes (e.g., relational,

emotional well-being). Although people may generally report relying more on certain motives,

their motives can also vary across contexts (i.e., certain situations may activate a given motive
4
ATTACHMENT AND INTERPERSONAL REGULATION
more than others, such as wanting to make a good impression when meeting someone new).

These intraindividual fluctuations in motives can also impact socioemotional outcomes.

The present study aims to examine the role of adult attachment in preferences for

interpersonal emotion regulation motives and in perceived social interaction outcomes with

romantic and non-romantic partners during daily life. Perceived changes in relationship closeness

and emotional well-being of the regulator were used as indicators of interpersonal emotion

regulation outcomes because they are often superordinate goals of interpersonal emotion

regulation and influence long-term well-being (Saphire-Bernstein & Taylor, 2013; Tamir, 2016).

Motivated Interpersonal Emotion Regulation

Emotion regulation is a motivated process, as regulatory behaviors occur in the context of

pursuing hedonic or instrumental motives (Gross, 2015; Tamir, 2009). Emotion regulation

motives are defined as the superordinate motives behind the emotions people would like to feel

when they regulate their emotions (e.g., more excited, less sad; Tamir, 2016). People regulate

their emotions to reach certain emotional states because of how these emotions make them feel

(i.e., hedonic motives), like wanting to feel happier, or because of what emotions can do for them

(i.e., instrumental motives), such as wanting to maintain anger to perform well in a competition

(Mauss & Tamir, 2014). While instrumental motives often reflect goals related to performance

(Kalokerinos et al., 2017), they are also commonly socially-oriented, such as trying to change a

relationship or someone’s opinion of you (English et al., 2017). Individuals differ in the extent to

which they want to influence their own emotions for social reasons, including for the sake of

others’ well-being or to be perceived favorably by others (Eldesouky & English, 2019).

While individuals generally prefer support that makes them feel validated over support

that helps them problem-solve (Liu, et al., 2021), the motives of interpersonal emotion regulation
5
ATTACHMENT AND INTERPERSONAL REGULATION
that are preferred by targets of regulation depends on the emotional and situational context

(Pauw et al., 2019). In addition, how and why people regulate the emotions of others (e.g., to

improve or worsen another person’s affect) varies across different relationships (Niven et al.,

2012). As with intrapersonal emotion regulation, there are several types of interpersonal emotion

regulation motives that underlie the strategies that might be used depending on the relationship

or context. We focus on hedonic motives (prohedonic, contrahedonic) and the most common

instrumental motives, social and performance. Given that social motives are theoretically most

relevant for interpersonal emotion regulation, we examined four subtypes in this area: impression

management, relationship maintenance, relationship distancing, and emotional similarity.

The hedonic motives underlying interpersonal emotion regulation could be about the

regulator’s own emotions (self-focused; i.e., making themselves feel better or worse) or someone

else’s emotions (other-focused; i.e., making someone else feel better or worse; Niven et al.,

2012). Individuals are often motivated to engage in supporting others based on a desire to

influence their own emotions. For example, people may try to alleviate their personal distress by

assisting a friend going through a difficult event (Eisenberg et al., 1989). Although less common,

people can also be motivated to increase negative (e.g., anger) or decrease positive emotion (e.g.,

happiness) in an interaction partner (contrahedonic; Netzer et al., 2015). Therefore, both self-

and other-related prohedonic and contrahedonic motives were included in the present study.

As individuals are broadly motivated to preserve close relationships with others (Walton

et al., 2012), the desire to maintain positive social bonds should also drive interpersonal emotion

regulation. Existing research on interpersonal support suggests that motives regarding the

relationship with the target of regulation could be particularly relevant as instrumental motives

for interpersonal emotion regulation. Couples that receive more help from their partners report
6
ATTACHMENT AND INTERPERSONAL REGULATION
higher relationship quality (Overall et al., 2010) and provision of daily interpersonal support has

been associated with increases in relationship closeness (Gleason et al., 2008). The social reasons

underlying intrapersonal emotion regulation have often been delineated into those focused on

making a good impression on others (impression management) or foster smooth interactions

(relationship maintenance; Eldesouky & English, 2019). Using certain types of interpersonal

emotion regulation strategies is associated with the formation of new social ties (Niven et al.,

2015), suggesting that interpersonal emotion regulation can increase desire to affiliate with the

regulator and that providing support can make positive impressions on others.

However, other social motives may need to be considered to gain a deeper understanding

of interpersonal emotion regulation. At times, for example, individuals may be motivated to

manage others’ emotions in order to create distance from them (relationship distancing) or

facilitate closeness through shared experience (emotion similarity; e.g., wanting your friend to

feel happy when you are feeling happy). When individuals feel threatened, they may engage in

self-protective behaviors to actively reduce closeness to other people (Ainsworth & Bowlby,

1991). While relationship distancing may be harmful to social connections, promoting similarity

may be beneficial. Romantic partners and friends experience more cohesion and less conflict

when sharing similar emotional states and these dyads frequently engage in coregulation, or the

process of adapting to each other’s emotional state (Anderson et al., 2003).

To cover interpersonal emotion regulation motives more comprehensively, it may also be

necessary to consider performance motives. Previous work has shown that the most frequently

endorsed intrapersonal instrumental emotion regulation motives center around performance-

related concerns (Kalokerinos et al., 2017). Much like hedonic motives, performance motives

can be held regarding oneself (e.g., how emotions will impact one’s own ability to complete a
7
ATTACHMENT AND INTERPERSONAL REGULATION
task) or the target of regulation (e.g., how someone else’s emotions will impact their own

performance (Netzer et al., 2015; Niven, 2016). Thus, the present study assessed self- and other-

focused performance motives in addition to the previously noted hedonic and social motives.

Prior research shows that people endorse various motives when regulating the emotions

of others. However, it is unclear why people endorse these interpersonal emotion regulation

motives or how they might be associated with immediate outcomes for the regulator, such as

emotional and relational functioning. Attachment is one promising candidate for helping to

illuminate patterns of interpersonal emotion regulation motives and perceived changes in social

interaction outcomes related to one’s interpersonal emotion regulation motivation.

Attachment and Interpersonal Emotion Regulation Motives

Attachment is inherently an interpersonal process, as its formation depends on

interactions during infancy with a caregiver (Ainsworth & Bowlby, 1991; Bartholomew, 1990).

Attachment insecurity, in the form of high attachment avoidance and attachment anxiety,

develops in response to emotional or physical needs of an infant not being met. Attachment

avoidance forms when the caregiver is dismissing, leading to tendencies to suppress one’s needs

and being overly independent. Attachment anxiety, results from inconsistent, unpredictable

caretaking, leading to preoccupation and clinginess in relationships.

Attachment develops beyond infancy and remains relatively stable across adulthood

(Bowlby, 1978). In adulthood, attachment avoidance and attachment anxiety are associated with

the quality of romantic relationships, with attachment security prospectively predicting the

quality of romantic relationships even after controlling for baseline levels of interpersonal

functioning in the relationship (Holland & Roisman, 2010). In addition, adult attachment is

associated with the quality of friendships in young adults (Saferstein et al., 2005). Specific
8
ATTACHMENT AND INTERPERSONAL REGULATION
behaviors that individuals engage in in their close relationships, like how they resolve conflicts

with close others, are also associated with their attachment style (Domingue & Mollen, 2009).

Adult attachment is predictive of individuals’ own emotion regulation (Mikulincer &

Shaver, 2007). Attachment dimensions are linked to the motivations that drive intrapersonal

emotion regulation, namely the deactivation and hyperactivation of one’s emotional state.

Attachment avoidance has been associated with deactivation, which includes wanting to inhibit

closeness, negative affect, and vulnerable emotional states. Attachment anxiety, on the other

hand, is associated with hyperactivation, which includes desiring closeness, reassurance, and

emotions that may elicit care from their attachment figures (Girme et al., 2021; Özen et al.,

2011). This work on attachment and intrapersonal emotion regulation begins to suggest that

interpersonal motives could also depend on their attachment styles.

Attachment has been linked to interpersonal emotion regulation in ways that indirectly

suggest links with both hedonic and instrumental motives. Higher levels of attachment avoidance

or anxiety may motivate one to regulate others for one’s own sake. For example, one may

influence another person’s emotions with the primary aim of protecting themselves from threats

associated with other’s negative emotions (Mikulincer & Shaver, 2009). Additionally,

individuals higher in attachment anxiety have been shown to vary in the use of affect-worsening

strategies across relationships, while people higher in attachment avoidance showed higher

variability in affect-improving strategies across relationships (Niven et al., 2012). Affect-

worsening and affect-improving strategies have underlying other-focused hedonic motives, as

they involve behaviors or engagement with the target that are “intended to” worsen or improve

the target’s emotional state (Niven et al., 2012). interpersonal emotion regulation motives may be

self-focused and include desires to maintain one’s own positive emotional states and negative
9
ATTACHMENT AND INTERPERSONAL REGULATION
emotional states (i.e., prohedonic and contrahedonic motives). Avoidant individuals tend to

avoid experiences of negative emotion and seek to enhance positive affect (Fraley & Shaver,

1997; Atlan-Atalay, 2019). Individuals higher on attachment anxiety, on the other hand, are more

likely to have learned to exaggerate threats and negative emotions to receive attention from their

attachment figure, and therefore may endorse higher self-focused contrahedonic motives.

Attachment is also associated with broader social-oriented motives in terms of how much

closeness individuals desire and how much closeness versus distance individuals would like in

close relationships. In addition to wanting more intimacy in their relationships, individuals high

in attachment anxiety are also less likely to perceive intimacy, as compared with their less

anxious peers. Conversely, people high in attachment avoidance not only want less intimacy, but

they are also more likely to perceive a relationship as close, as compared with their less avoidant

peers (Hudson & Fraley, 2017). Based on these perceptual differences, more avoidant and more

anxious people also differ from securely attached people in the goals they pursue in close

relationships, including during interpersonal emotion regulation. Avoidant attachment is

associated with motives to avoid and not to approach closeness and submission. Anxious

attachment is associated with focusing more on avoiding distance in relationships (Locke, 2008).

Regarding emotional similarity, studies have investigated attachment and emotional

coregulation, defined as the emotional synchronicity between partners. The hypersensitivity of

attachment anxiety predicts greater covariance in emotion, inferred to be due to emotion

regulation between partners (Butner et al., 2007). Covariance in emotion may result from

emotional similarity motives, that is, wanting to make emotions be similar between two people.

Simply wanting to be on the same page as another person, regardless of whether those emotions

are positive or negative, is a novel interpersonal emotion regulation motive that has not been
10
ATTACHMENT AND INTERPERSONAL REGULATION
explored in prior literature. Emotional similarity motives may relate negatively to the

emotionally distant nature of attachment avoidance and relate positively to the bonding and

closeness seeking of attachment anxiety. Relationship type will be examined to test whether the

associations between attachment and interpersonal emotion regulation motives are stronger for

romantic than non-romantic targets. In adulthood, romantic partners tend to be the primary

attachment figures for individuals (Doherty & Feeney, 2004), so we expected that attachment

related processes should be particularly salient in interactions with romantic partners.

Interpersonal Emotion Regulation Motives and Well-being

Successful implementation of intrapersonal emotion regulation strategies is indicated by

individuals attaining their emotion goals (e.g., feeling less negative emotions; Gross, 2015).

When individuals hold instrumental emotion regulation motives, they do not regulate in order to

feel more pleasurable immediately but in order to achieve a goal that has long-term benefits

(Tamir, 2016). For example, regulating your emotions so you can focus on studying for a test

may not immediately result in feeling good, but it can lead to positive feelings later as you are

progressing towards your goal of studying. It has been suggested that affect serves as

information to the individual about progress towards meaningful goals. If progress toward a goal

is too slow then negative affect is output, whereas if progress toward the goal is fast then positive

affect is the output (Carver & Scheier, 1990). When applied to emotion regulation, this suggests

that feeling more positive and less negative emotions could indicate progress towards a motive.

In interpersonal regulation contexts, successful implementation of interpersonal emotion

regulation could be through observing changes in momentary emotional and relational well-

being. It is unclear however whether the specific underlying motivations guiding interpersonal

emotion regulation may be differentially associated with better perceived social interaction
11
ATTACHMENT AND INTERPERSONAL REGULATION
outcomes. On one hand, given that helping others can be intrinsically rewarding (Inagaki &

Orehek, 2017) and promote social bonding (Aknin et al., 2013), regulators may report

improvements in their own emotional well-being and their relationship with the target of their

regulatory efforts regardless of their interpersonal emotion regulation motives. It has also been

shown that positive relationship interactions can lead to more positive affect (Ramsey &

Gentzler, 2015) so it is possible that a person regulating someone’s emotions for instrumental

motives might ultimately reap hedonic benefits even if their emotion regulation in the moment

does not maximize hedonic benefits. However, on the other hand, holding certain interpersonal

emotion regulation motives may be associated with better outcomes. For example, regulators

may feel better after interactions in which they strive to help their partner feel more positively or

to promote a closer relationship with them, whereas they might feel worse after interactions

where they strive to make their partner feel worse or create distance from them. One study found

that individuals who assisted others in regulating their emotions generally showed increases in

their own well-being (Doré et al., 2017), but the role of interpersonal emotion regulation motives

has not yet been explored. Associations between interpersonal emotion regulation motives and

interaction outcomes could appear both on the level of differences between people (e.g., some

people might be more likely to hold prohedonic motives and to also experience more positive

changes in their interactions) and at the level of situations (e.g., regardless of how much people

generally hold prohedonic motives, at times when they hold more prohedonic motives than usual

they are more likely to experience positive changes in their interactions). Study designs that

incorporate multiple assessments per person enable us to distinguish between these two types of

effects while exploring the role of interpersonal emotion regulation in daily interactions.

Attachment and Changes in Emotional and Relational Well-being

12
ATTACHMENT AND INTERPERSONAL REGULATION
Attachment is expected to predict how individuals perceive social interactions to have

impacted their emotional and relational well-being. Attachment avoidance and attachment

anxiety are associated with lower emotional well-being and relationship satisfaction (Niven et

al., 2012; Özen et al., 2011). In addition, attachment anxiety and avoidance have been linked to

poorer emotion regulation skills (Mikulincer & Shaver, 2019) and therefore individuals higher

on these dimensions of attachment may also be worse at managing the emotions of others.

Accordingly, people higher in attachment avoidance or attachment anxiety might be less likely to

perceive positive outcomes from social interactions because these individuals are not as good at

implementing interpersonal emotion regulation in a way that will help satisfy their motives. We

also test if there is a stronger association between attachment and interaction outcomes when the

target of interpersonal emotion regulation is a romantic partner, who may more strongly

activating one’s attachment system (Doherty & Feeney, 2004).

Present Study

This project aims to understand the role of attachment in predicting why people manage

the emotions of others and the impact interpersonal emotion regulation has on well-being. We

examine hedonic (prohedonic, contrahedonic) and instrumental (performance, impression

management, relationship maintenance, relationship distancing, and emotional similarity)

motivations behind interpersonal emotion regulation, considering self- and other-focused

motives, as well as regulator-perceived outcomes of the social interactions (changes in emotional

well-being and relationship closeness). Exploratory aims of this study are to examine the

associations between interpersonal emotion regulation motives and regulator-perceived social

interaction outcomes as well as examine whether attachment impacts the relationship between

interpersonal emotion regulation motives and perceived social interaction outcomes.

13
ATTACHMENT AND INTERPERSONAL REGULATION
We preregistered hypotheses regarding links of attachment to interpersonal emotion

regulation motives and social interaction outcomes (osf.io/2nxv9)1. Attachment anxiety, predicts

rumination, fear of rejection, and seeking continuous reassurance and closeness in relationships

(Girme et al., 2021; Özen et al., 2011). Therefore, we predict that attachment anxiety will be

associated with greater self-focused contrahedonic, impression management, and relationship

maintenance motives, and conversely less relationship distancing motives (H1). Attachment

avoidance is associated with tendencies to avoid negative affect and minimize one’s emotional

and attachment needs (Girme et al., 2021; Özen et al., 2011). Avoidant individuals may further

place emphasis on non-attachment motives and avoid emotional distractions. We therefore

hypothesize that attachment avoidance will be associated with greater self-focused prohedonic,

self-focused performance, and relationship distancing motives, as well as less relationship

maintenance and emotional similarity motives (H2). We expect attachment anxiety (H3) and

avoidance (H4) to be associated with lower emotional and relational interaction outcomes. The

hypothesized relationships between attachment and interpersonal emotion regulation (motives

and social outcomes) are expected to be more pronounced in romantic relationships (H5).

We also explore two non-preregistered research questions. First, we assess the links

between interpersonal emotion regulation motives and social interaction outcomes to gather

initial evidence about whether how one is motivated to regulate others’ emotions relates to the

perceived outcomes (Exploratory RQ1). Second, we assess whether attachment moderates the

association between motives and interaction outcomes to get insight into potential attachment-

related differences in interpersonal emotion regulation motive adaptiveness (Exploratory RQ2).

1
In the preregistration the social interaction outcomes were labeled as efficacy indicators – we have changed this
framing based on helpful comments received during the peer review process.
14
ATTACHMENT AND INTERPERSONAL REGULATION
Experience sampling is used in the present study to assess interpersonal emotion

regulation in daily social interactions. This approach increases reliability of the participants’

ratings of interpersonal emotion regulation and momentary well-being, as reporting close to the

time of the event should limit memory biases (Riediger, 2010). It also allows for the assessment

of multiple contexts within-person, such as interactions with different partners. Previous work

has shown that individuals vary in how they regulate the emotions of different relationship

partners (Niven et al., 2012) and that interpersonal emotion regulation is situationally dependent

(Liu et al., 2021; Pauw et al., 2019). Therefore, assessing interpersonal emotion regulation

motives and perceived changes in social interaction outcomes repeatedly can provide more

ecologically valid insight into interpersonal emotion regulation processes in daily life.

Methods

Transparency and Openness

We report justification for our sample size, all data exclusions (none), all manipulations,

and all measures in the study. Data and analysis code for our multilevel models are available at

https://osf.io/2ms9w/. Data was analyzed using R (R Core Team, 2021). The study’s design and

parts of the analyses were pre-registered at osf.io/2nxv9.

Participants

Two hundred eleven participants at a mid-sized Midwestern university in the United

States (Mean age in years = 19.77, SD = 1.25) were recruited via SONA, from an online

Psychology subject pool of undergraduates. Students who did not have a smartphone or were

traveling through different time zones for the duration of the study were ineligible to participate

because a change in time zones would prevent participants from gaining access to their daily
15
ATTACHMENT AND INTERPERSONAL REGULATION
surveys. On average, participants completed 77% of surveys (SD = 0.22). No missing data was

imputed as estimation in multilevel models account for differing amounts of data per person.

Most participants were female (73%; male: 26%, non-binary: 0.5%, other: 0.5%). The

sample was diverse in terms of class year (23% first-years, 30% second-years, 27% third-years,

20% fourth-years. Most participants identified as White (54%), followed by Asian (33%),

African American (11%), Latinx (11%), Middle Eastern (3%), and Native American (1%).

Participants were compensated with 1 course credit for an hour of participation in the

study. The present study was approved by the Institutional Review Board at Washington

University in St. Louis.

Sensitivity analyses for our main hypotheses can be found in Table S1.

Procedure

Following over-the-phone informed consent, participants were asked to download the

application Expiwell onto their smartphone (Expiwell, 2021). Participants were then asked to

complete a 5-minute Background Survey while on the phone, which contained demographic

questions, an attachment measure, and a personality trait measure. Participants then received an

EMA tutorial. The following day, participants began receiving randomized 2-minute surveys

within 4-hour intervals, three times a day, for seven days (within a 12-hour daily window of their

choice). Each survey asked about the participant’s last interaction, their motives behind engaging

in interpersonal emotion regulation during the interaction (if any), and the perceived emotional

and relational outcomes of this interaction. Social interactions were defined as being able to

occur both in-person or virtually, if communication was reciprocated (e.g., texts were sent back

and forth), and there was no minimum length to be considered social interactions. There was a
16
ATTACHMENT AND INTERPERSONAL REGULATION
reminder sent five minutes after the initial notification, and the survey expired 15 minutes after

the reminder. Participants were asked to try to complete as many of the surveys as possible.

Materials

Background Measures

Attachment. Adult attachment was assessed with the Experiences in Close Relationships

– Revised questionnaire (ECR-R). The ECR-R consists of 36 attachment-relevant statements that

apply to general (platonic and/or romantic) relationship tendencies, with 18 anxiety-related items

(e.g., “I'm afraid that I will lose my partner's love”, α = 0.91) and 18 avoidance-related items

(e.g., “I prefer not to show a partner how I feel deep down”, α = 0.93). For each attachment item,

participants selected from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree).

Daily Measures

Interpersonal Emotion Regulation Motives. To capture the motivations behind

engaging in interpersonal emotion regulation, participants reported on various motives they had

for regulating their partners’ emotions during their most recent interaction (To what extent did

you have any of following goals to manage your partner’s emotions during your most recent

interaction, whether you acted on them or not?). We focused on assessing hedonic motives,

performance, and social motives because they are the most commonly studied and reported

reasons for managing emotion (English et al., 2017; Kalokerinos et al., 2017). Hedonic and

performance items2 were assess both in terms of the regulator’s outcomes (self-focused) and the

target’s outcomes (other-focused), whereas social motives were asked about in the context of the

relationship between regulator and target and therefore not separated into self and other related

components. Motives included: prohedonic (self-focused/other-focused), contrahedonic (self-

2
Other-focused performance motives were not initially examined due to our focus on socioemotional components in
this study, but they were added during the review process for a more comprehensive assessment of interpersonal
emotion regulation motives.
17
ATTACHMENT AND INTERPERSONAL REGULATION
focused/other-focused), performance (self-focused/other-focused), impression management,

relationship maintenance, relationship distancing, and emotional similarity. Participants rated

their agreement with each motive item on a Likert scale from 1 (not at all) to 7 (extremely).

Prohedonic, contrahedonic, self-focused performance, and emotional similarity motives were

assessed with single items, while impression management, other-focused performance,

relationship maintenance, and relationship distancing motives were each assessed with two

items3. For example, the prohedonic interpersonal emotion regulation motives were assessed

with the items, “I wanted to feel better or maintain my own positive feelings” (self-focused) and

“I wanted to make them feel better or maintain their good feelings” (other-focused). These items

were adapted from the Emotion Regulation Goal Scale (ERGS; Eldesouky & English, 2019). As

preregistered, for motives that had more than one item, scores were averaged when the between

and within-person omega were 0.6 or higher. See Table S2 for all items.

Perceived changes in social interaction outcomes. To capture perceived changes in

social interaction outcomes, participants were asked about the perceived change in their

emotional well-being (positive emotion and negative emotion) and relationship well-being

(relationship closeness and relationship satisfaction) in their most recent interaction. Participants

indicated the extent to which there was change in well-being on a seven-point Likert scale for

each of these four items (e.g., from 1 “Much less positive emotion than before” to 7 “Much more

positive emotion than before”). As preregistered, because the between- and within-person

omegas for emotional well-being (0.85; 0.80) and relationship well-being (0.84; 0.73) suggested

strong correlations between the perceived changes in social interaction outcomes subscale items,

scores were combined into emotional well-being and relationship well-being composites.

3
Due to time constraints and participant burden, not all motives could be assessed with two items. The decision
about how many items to include per construct was made based on breadth of the construct (with more
straightforward, narrow motives, like the hedonic ones, being assessed with a single item).
18
ATTACHMENT AND INTERPERSONAL REGULATION
Relationship Type. When asked about their most recent interaction, participants labeled

the primary category of their relationship with the interaction partner, choosing either ‘romantic

partner,’ ‘college friend,’ ‘home friend,’ ‘family member,’ ‘acquaintance,’ ‘professor,’

‘stranger,’ or ‘other’. Participants were asked to label the primary person they interacted with.

Analysis Plan

Given the data are nested (i.e., multiple daily measures for each person), this study

utilized multi-level models using the lme4 package (Bates et al., 2015) in R. As preregistered,

the hypotheses (H1-H4) were tested by constructing a series of models where interpersonal

emotion regulation motives and perceived changes in social interaction outcomes (level 1

variables) were simultaneously predicted by attachment anxiety and attachment avoidance (level

2 variables), with participant gender included as a level 2 covariate (coded as 1 = female and 0 =

male). Given the presence of time trends in the data (see Table S3), we also included time

(centered on the first prompt for each participant) as a level 1 covariate.

To test H5, separate models were run in which relationship type (coded as 1 = romantic

partner and 0 = non-romantic interaction partner) and interaction terms between relationship type

and each dimension of attachment (i.e., type x anxiety and type x avoidance) were included as

addition predictors of each interpersonal emotion regulation motive and social interaction

outcome. The frequency of interacting with romantic partners was relatively low (11% of

prompts), so relationship type moderation analyses are reported in the Supplemental Materials.

For exploratory RQ1, which focuses on the link between interpersonal emotion

regulation motives and social interaction outcomes, we constructed separate multilevel models

with within-person and between-person scores of all motives simultaneously predicting the two

types of outcomes. Within- and between-person level variables were separated by person-mean
19
ATTACHMENT AND INTERPERSONAL REGULATION
centering motive variables as recommended by Bolger & Laurenceau (2013). Between person

variables were grand-mean centered. Random slopes for within-person effects were included

unless convergence issues occurred. For exploratory RQ2, which focuses on attachment as a

moderator of the motive-outcome links, we added attachment anxiety and avoidance as

additional predictors along with consecutively testing interactions between these dimensions of

attachment and the within- person components of motives (controlling for other motives).

As preregistered, we performed two types of analyses building on the initial models. The

first models added the interaction between attachment anxiety and attachment avoidance. The

second models tested robustness of the hypothesized effects by adding as covariates the Big Five

personality traits previously linked with attachment (i.e., extraversion, agreeableness,

neuroticism, and contentiousness; Noftle & Shaver, 2006). Results can be found in Tables S4-S6.

Results

Preanalyses

About 77% of the reported social interactions were within one hour of the prompt (42%

occurred at the time of the prompt), minimizing memory biases. The largest proportion of social

interactions occurred between friends (53% college friends and 6% home friends), followed by

family members (17%) and romantic partners (11%). On average, interactions were with others

whom participants considered close (Mcloseness = 5.26 on a seven-point Likert scale). Attachment

avoidance was associated with less interaction with college friends and more interaction with

family, romantic partners, and professors. Attachment anxiety was associated with less

interaction with college friends and romantic partners, and more interaction with family and

acquaintances (see Table S7 for correlations and descriptives).

20
ATTACHMENT AND INTERPERSONAL REGULATION
To assess how much variance in motives could be explained by individual differences

(e.g., attachment) we assessed between- and within-person variance in motives. Slightly more of

the variance was at the within-person level for all motives (intraclass correlations: .38 - .48),

except for impression management (.53) and other-focused performance (.51). However, there

was much more within-person variance than between-person variance for perceived changes in

social interaction outcomes (emotional well-being: 0.14; relationship well-being: 0.16). This

suggests that why people regulate someone’s emotions and how they perceive the interaction

depends more on effects of the situation than on ways in which individuals differ or what people

are like on average. In terms of frequency of endorsing interpersonal emotion regulation motives,

individuals most strongly endorsed regulating others’ emotions to maintain the relationship with

them (M=4.61), followed by prohedonic motives related to the target’s emotions (M=4.09) and to

one’s own emotions (M=3.82). See Table 1 for ICCs (intraclass correlations) and descriptives.

Preregistered Hypotheses: Does Attachment Predict Interpersonal Emotion Regulation

Motives and Perceived Social Interaction Outcomes?

See Table 1 for bivariate correlations between attachment and predicted interpersonal

emotion regulation outcomes. See Table 2 for unstandardized estimates of fixed effects of

attachment on interpersonal emotion regulation motives and perceived change in social

interaction outcomes. Attachment anxiety predicted more self-focused prohedonic motives (

2
γ=0.22, p=.020 , R❑=.02 ¿, and more impression management motives (
2
γ=0.32, p=.001 , R❑=.05 ¿as hypothesized (H1). None of the hypothesized associations between

attachment anxiety and contrahedonic goals, relationship maintenance goals, impression

management goals, or relationship distancing goals emerged. Attachment avoidance did not

significantly predict any of the hypothesized interpersonal emotion regulation motives (H2).
21
ATTACHMENT AND INTERPERSONAL REGULATION
Attachment anxiety did not predict perceived change in emotional well-being (
2 2
γ=−0.02, p=.519, R❑=.00) or relationship well-being ( γ=−0.00 , p=.914 , R❑=.00 ), contrary

to our predictions (H3). In contrast, attachment avoidance predicted both aspects of perceived

social interaction outcomes (H4). Attachment avoidance predicted worse social interaction

outcomes both in terms of perceived change in emotional well-being (

γ=−0.12, p<.000 , R2❑=.01) and in relationship well-being ( γ=−0.05 , p=.025 , R❑2 =.01¿ .

Analyses pertaining to preregistered Hypothesis 5 (effect of interacting with romantic

relationship partner on associations between attachment and motives) did not reveal any

significant associations. That is, there was no evidence that attachment was more predictive of

interpersonal emotion regulation motives or perceived outcomes in interactions with romantic

partners compared to other types of social interactions. Detailed results can be found in Table S8.

In follow-up models, there was only a significant Attachment Anxiety x Attachment

Avoidance interaction for emotional similarity (see Table S4), such that avoidance was only

related to lower emotion similarity motives when attachment anxiety was high. The hypothesized

results were largely robust to controlling for Big Five personality traits (see Table S6).

Exploratory Research Questions: Do Interpersonal Emotion Regulation Motives Predict

Perceived Social Interaction Outcomes?

We assessed both within-person and between-person effects of interpersonal emotion

regulation motives predicting perceived social interaction outcomes (Exploratory RQ1). Within-

person outcomes here show how holding more or less of a motive (compared to how much one

endorses the respective motive on average) relates to perceived social interaction outcomes.

Between-person effects here show how individuals differ in their perceived social interaction
22
ATTACHMENT AND INTERPERSONAL REGULATION
outcomes based on how much they endorse certain interpersonal emotion regulation motives on

average. Within-person and between-person effects are reported in Table 3.

In terms of within-person effects, self- and other-focused prohedonic motives were

positively associated with emotional and relationship well-being,indicating that on occasions

when people held prohedonic motives, they also reported more positive changes in well-being

due to the interaction. Similarly, when people held impression management and relationship

maintenance motives, they also reported more positive changes in their emotional and

relationship well-being. On the other hand, people reported lower emotional well-being when

they more strongly held contrahedonic and relationship distancing motives, as well as lower

relationship well-being when they held relationship distancing motives. As a reminder, these

effects were shown controlling for other relevant interpersonal emotion regulation motives and

time, and they were present above and beyond the between-person effects of motives, or the

tendency to set interpersonal emotion regulation motives more generally.

In terms of between-person effects, people that held more self- and other-focused

prohedonic motives on average perceived more positive changes in emotional well-being. People

that held more impression management motives on average perceived less positive changes in

emotional well-being, but no other between-person effects on relational well-being emerged.

We also explored whether the relationship between interpersonal emotion regulation

motives and perceived social interaction outcomes was dependent on attachment (Exploratory

RQ2). However, no significant interaction effects emerged (see Table S9).

Discussion

The present study aimed to examine whether attachment predicts why people regulate the

emotions of others and how effective they perceive this regulation to be for their relationship
23
ATTACHMENT AND INTERPERSONAL REGULATION
with the regulation target and for their own emotional well-being. A secondary, exploratory aim

of the study was to examine the associations between interpersonal emotion regulation motives

and perceived social interaction outcomes. Emotion regulation is closely tied to attachment, as

attachment can manifest through emotion regulation habits that develop as a result of a

relationship (or lack thereof) with a caregiver (Ainsworth & Bowlby, 1991; Bartholomew, 1990).

However, prior work on attachment primarily has focused on intrapersonal emotion regulation or

coregulation (Butler & Randall, 2013; Butner et al., 2007; Cassidy, 1994; Girme et al., 2021).

The current work extends these findings by examining the role of attachment in the context of

interpersonal, motivated processes of ER, where one aims to regulate another person’s emotions.

Attachment anxiety was predictive of differences in interpersonal emotion regulation

motives in the context of social interactions, with effect sizes generally indicating small

associations, but attachment avoidance was not. Consistent with our preregistered hypotheses,

attachment anxiety predicted more impression management motives. Although attachment

avoidance was not associated with differences in interpersonal emotion regulation motives in

general, there was an interaction between attachment avoidance and attachment anxiety in

predicting emotion similarity. For individuals high in attachment anxiety, attachment avoidance

was associated with less motivation to regulate their partners emotions in order to feel similar

emotional states. Further, attachment avoidance predicted worse social interaction outcomes, as

expected, both in terms of perceived change in emotional well-being and relationship well-being.

Attachment anxiety, however, was not predictive of social interaction outcomes.

There was some initial evidence that interpersonal emotion regulation motives are

differentially related to perceived social interaction outcomes. Evidence emerged both on the

level of individual differences (e.g., if someone reports prohedonic motives more frequently, are
24
ATTACHMENT AND INTERPERSONAL REGULATION
they also more likely to report more positive changes in their interaction outcomes?) and at the

situational level (e.g., regardless of the motives a person typically holds, do they report more

positive changes in their interactions when they endorse more prohedonic motives?). People who

tended to report more prohedonic, impression management, or relationship maintenance motives

and less contrahedonic and relationship distancing motives in daily life also perceived more

positive changes in their emotional and relational well-being after social interactions. People also

perceived more positive emotional and relational interaction outcomes at times when they held

more prohedonic, impression management or relationship maintenance motives and less self-

focused performance and relationship distancing motives.

Attachment and Interpersonal Emotion Regulation

Although we expected attachment avoidance to predict more prohedonic motives and

attachment anxiety to predict more contrahedonic motives, attachment anxiety was actually

associated with more prohedonic motives while attachment avoidance was unrelated to either

type of hedonic motive. That is, increased attachment anxiety was associated with the tendency

to want to maintain a positive emotional state in interpersonal emotion regulation interactions.

Rather than consciously engaging in ruminative tendencies, perhaps those high in attachment

anxiety focus on self-comfort and soothing through interactions with others. Because anxiously

attached individuals fear abandonment in relationships (Brennan et al., 1998), it is plausible that

they would try to regulate close others with the goal of relieving some of their own relationship-

focused apprehension. In addition, more anxiously attached individuals have been shown to react

to pain in others with greater personal distress (Britton & Fuendeling, 2005; Monin et al., 2010).

This suggests that when dealing with others’ emotions more anxiously attached individuals are

more emotionally reactive and experience a greater need to regulate their own emotions.
25
ATTACHMENT AND INTERPERSONAL REGULATION
In terms of instrumental motives, our finding that attachment anxiety is related to

impression management in the context of interpersonal emotion regulation is consistent with

prior literature showing anxiously attached individuals desire approval from others to reduce the

threat of abandonment (Brennan et al., 1998). Hypervigilance to threat means that anxious

individuals are self-focused in processing issues and will seek soothing and reassurance,

particularly about the relationship (Girme et al., 2021; Özen et al., 2011). Preoccupation, fear of

abandonment, and fear of rejection associated with hyperactivation of the attachment system are

characteristic of attachment anxiety and lead individuals to seek validation and avoid rejection.

Attachment was unrelated to relationship maintenance and relationship distancing

interpersonal emotion regulation motives. However, attachment avoidance and attachment

anxiety interacted to predict emotional similarity motives, a largely unexplored reason people

may engage in interpersonal emotion regulation. We expected attachment avoidance to predict

decreased emotional similarity motives, but avoidance was only linked to lower similarity

motives among those who were also high in attachment anxiety (also known as fearful

attachment). Avoidant attachment is characterized by the tendency to preclude states of

vulnerability. Avoidant tendencies, when coupled with the intense fear of rejection characteristic

of anxiety, produces a deep distrust of social relationships that may lead to avoiding emotional

linkage with another person (Bartholomew, 1990). Future research should examine whether

intrapersonal emotional similarity motives (i.e., wanting to regulate your own emotion so you

will feel the way your partner feels) also are linked to attachment.

Our findings were mixed regarding perceived social interaction outcomes. Both forms of

insecure attachment were expected to predict worse perceived social interaction outcomes, as

attachment avoidance and attachment anxiety have been previously linked to lower emotional
26
ATTACHMENT AND INTERPERSONAL REGULATION
well-being and relationship satisfaction (Niven et al., 2012; Özen et al., 2011) as well as worse

emotion regulation skills (Mikulincer & Shaver, 2019). However, only attachment avoidance

was significantly associated with perceived social interaction outcomes in this context. The fact

that attachment anxiety was linked to interpersonal emotion regulation motives but not perceived

interaction outcomes, whereas attachment avoidance was linked to perceived outcomes but not

motives, suggests that maladaptive motives may not be the cause of attachment-related

interpersonal emotion regulation difficulties. More broadly, these findings highlight the value of

examining multiples aspects of the emotion regulation process, such as when, why, and how

individuals try to manage partners’ emotions, as well as whether they monitor the regulation

process for indications of success or failure and switch strategies when needed (Gross, 2015).

Apart from the findings discussed above, attachment did not predict interpersonal

emotion regulation motives and outcomes to the extent that we predicted. Although null effects

should be interpreted cautiously, there are two potential reasons for the lack of support for our

hypotheses. Firstly, interpersonal emotion regulation motives showed more within- than

between-person variance, as has been found for intrapersonal emotion regulation motives

(Kalokerinos et al., 2017), suggesting motives may depend on contextual factors more so than on

dispositional traits, such as attachment. Secondly, we derived our hypotheses on interpersonal

emotion regulation and attachment based on the literature on intrapersonal emotion regulation

and intrinsic interpersonal emotion regulation due to the sparsity of research on attachment as it

relates to regulating the emotions of others. However, it is possible that attachment related

processes that concern one’s own emotions do not operate in a similar way with regard to others’

emotions. For example, individuals higher in attachment avoidance might deactivate their

attachment system with regard to their own emotions (e.g., be less motivated to reach out for
27
ATTACHMENT AND INTERPERSONAL REGULATION
intrinsic interpersonal emotion regulation in order to increase closeness with someone else) but

not apply this approach to how they engage with others’ emotions. They may be equally

motivated to regulate someone else’s emotions in order to increase closeness as they do not have

to be concerned about their own support needs not being met when they are the regulator.

Interpersonal Emotion Regulation Motives and Perceived Social Interaction Outcomes

Most interpersonal emotion regulation motives in the present study predicted perceived

social interaction outcomes. The pattern of findings in the present study might suggest that, on

average, people report achieving the goals of their interpersonal emotion regulation. Specifically,

people reported more improvements in emotional and relational well-being following social

interactions where they held more self- or other-focused prohedonic, relationship maintenance,

or impression management motives, (and less self-focused performance motives and relationship

distancing motives), above and beyond the general tendency to set these interpersonal emotion

regulation motives. Each of these motives were uniquely associated with well-being given that

their effects were simultaneously assessed. While previous work has shown that individuals that

support others (Inagaki & Orehek, 2017) and help others regulate their emotions (Doré et al.,

2017) generally showed increases in their own well-being, our findings show that these effects

depend on the motives that people hold for engaging in interpersonal emotion regulation.

In contrast, fewer effects of motives emerged on the between-person level, indicating

that how much people held motives in the moment was more relevant to their well-being than

why they typically regulate the emotions of others. The effects that did emerge suggest people

who are more motivated to regulate the emotions of others for prohedonic reasons (related to

oneself or other person) and less motivated motived by the desire to make a good impression

showed higher perceived changes in their emotional well-being. In addition, people who were
28
ATTACHMENT AND INTERPERSONAL REGULATION
generally more motivated to regulate others’ emotions to feel more similar showed more positive

changes in relational well-being after interactions, aligning with research documenting the

benefits of shared emotional states for relationship satisfaction (Anderson et al., 2003).

Attachment did not influence associations between motives and social interaction

outcomes, suggesting the adaptiveness of interpersonal emotion regulation motives might hold

regardless of one’s attachment. Together, the findings regarding motive-outcome links illustrate

the importance of utilizing methods that measure interpersonal emotion regulation motives in the

moment (i.e., ESM, experiments) and disentangling within- versus between-person effects.

Limitations and Future Directions

One limitation of the present study is that it relied on self-reports from the regulator.

While emotion regulation strategies can involve observable behaviors, motivations behind

emotion regulation involve internal mental processes that may be more difficult to articulate.

Moreover, perceived social interaction outcomes were assessed from only one party and it is

possible that although one may perceive their relationship to be improved, their partner could

have a different experience. For example, although individuals higher in attachment anxiety who

engaged in interpersonal emotion regulation did not report lower relationship well-being, their

interaction partner might have reported more displeasure in the relationship. Future research

should collect data from dyads to test if well-being consequences converge between both parties.

This type of design could provide insight into how one’s interpersonal emotion regulation efforts

may influence the well-being of another person and allow an examination of both the target’s

perception of their own well-being and of the regulator’s well-being.

Second, the measures of interpersonal emotion regulation motives and social interaction

outcomes used in this study are somewhat limited. To reduce participant burden and fatigue,
29
ATTACHMENT AND INTERPERSONAL REGULATION
some motives were assessed using only one item which might have increased measurement error.

Future research is needed with multiple, validated items for each interpersonal emotion

regulation motive. Further, although we captured a wide range of motives that theoretically

should be most relevant to interpersonal emotion regulation, there may be other motives worth

exploring (Tamir, 2016). In addition, individuals were able to endorse multiple motives and

while hedonic and instrumental motives are theoretically distinct (i.e., individuals are thought to

at times regulate emotions based purely on their hedonic pleasure or purely based on their

instrumental function), our hedonic and instrumental items covaried in a way that indicates these

motives often co-occurred. Future work should try to assess regulation in a way that can clearly

capture instances of purely hedonic motivation.

Further, our outcome measures were relatively broad in focus and did not differentiate

between specific aspects of emotional and relational well-being. We did not include items that

could capture proximal interpersonal emotion regulation outcomes for certain motives, such as

performance (e.g., perceived ability to focus on a task). In addition, our measures showed that

participants often did not perceive large amounts of changes in well-being related to the

interactions they reported on, which might have limited our ability to find effects. Event

contingent or lab-based assessment could be used to assess moment by moment changes in

perceived social and emotional functioning in order to not require individuals to possess meta-

knowledge or insight into how their emotional and relational well-being changed over time.

As the attachment system is activated in emotionally intense situations (Shaver &

Mikulincer, 2019), future research focusing on emotionally evocative events might be able to

paint a clearer picture of the role of attachment in interpersonal emotion regulation motivation.

While the attachment system is most likely activated in close, romantic relationships, our sample
30
ATTACHMENT AND INTERPERSONAL REGULATION
included only a minority of participants (N = 67) that were currently in a relationship and

frequency of interacting with a romantic partner was generally low, which may have interfered

with our ability to detect effects pertaining to romantic relationships. Future studies focusing on

specific close relationships or employing dyadic designs could overcome this limitation.

Also, as in previous research (e.g., English et al., 2017) contrahedonic regulation was

reported infrequently. Conflict interactions with a close other (e.g., in laboratory settings or

assessed through event-contingent experience sampling) that pose a threat to the relationship

might provide a promising context for examining contrahedonic regulation of one’s own and

someone else’s emotions, particularly with regard to more anxiously attached individuals who

are more likely to perceive the upregulation of negative emotions as congruent with their goals to

maintain closeness with their partner in a threatening situation (Shaver & Mikulincer, 2019).

As posited in the emotion regulation process model (Gross, 2015), the activation of an

emotion regulation motive or goal (e.g., wanting to regulate someone’s emotions so the

relationship becomes closer) does not mean that individuals necessarily select a regulation

strategy or successfully implement this strategy. Our research focused on the question to which

extent people held certain motives and participants were explicitly instructed to report on their

motives whether they acted on them or not. Thus far there has not been much research attention

directed towards whether people act on their motives, which is an important aspect of intra- and

interpersonal emotion regulation or dysregulation. Future research will be necessary to assess

why and how failure to act on one’s motives occurs and whether this is due to characteristics of

the regulator (e.g., lack of knowledge about strategies or inhibition) or the regulation context

(e.g., the conversation lacking opportunity to actively engage in regulation).

Conclusion
31
ATTACHMENT AND INTERPERSONAL REGULATION
This study demonstrated that attachment predicts individual differences in certain

interpersonal emotion regulation motives as well as the perceived emotional and relational

impact of interpersonal emotion regulation. It also provided preliminary evidence of links

between interpersonal emotion regulation motives and perceived social interaction outcomes in

daily social interactions. Individuals higher in attachment anxiety may be more motived to

regulate others’ emotions in order minimize their own negative affect. Consistent with prior

literature on the thought patterns of anxious attachment, those higher in attachment anxiety also

engaged in interpersonal emotion regulation with the goal of improving others’ opinions of them

(Brennan et al., 1998). Attachment avoidance, on the other hand, was linked to social interaction

outcomes with individuals higher in attachment avoidance reported lower perceived emotional

and relationship well-being after interpersonal interactions. Future work can build on these initial

findings about implications of attachment for interpersonal emotion regulation and the role of

motive setting in interpersonal regulation. Doing so can shed light on the nature of psychological

well-being in relational contexts and offer ways to improve interpersonal functioning.

32
ATTACHMENT AND INTERPERSONAL REGULATION
References

Ainsworth, M. S., & Bowlby, J. (1991). An ethological approach to personality development.

American Psychologist, 46(4), 333-341. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.46.4.333

Aknin, L. B., Dunn, E. W., Sandstrom, G. M., & Norton, M. I. (2013). Does social connection

turn good deeds into good feelings?: On the value of putting the ‘social’ in prosocial

spending. International Journal of Happiness and Development, 1(2), 155-171.

Anderson, C., Keltner, D., & John, O. P. (2003). Emotional convergence between people over

time. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84(5), 1054–1068.

https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.84.5.1054

Bartholomew, K. (1990). Avoidance of intimacy: An attachment perspective. Journal of Social

and Personal Relationships, 7(2), 147–178. https://doi.org/10.1177/0265407590072001

Bates, D., Maechler, M., Bolker, B. M., & Walker, S. (2015). Fitting linear mixed-effects models

using lme4. Journal of Statistical Software, 67. 1–48.

Bolger, N., & Laurenceau, J. P. (2013). Intensive longitudinal methods: An introduction to diary

and experience sampling research. Guilford press.

Bowlby, J. (1978). Attachment theory and its therapeutic implications. Adolescent Psychiatry, 6,

5–33.

Brennan, K. A., Clark, C. L., & Shaver, P. R. (1998). Self-report measurement of adult

attachment: An integrative overview. In J. A. Simpson & W. S. Rholes (Eds.),

Attachment Theory and Close Relationships (pp. 46-76). The Guilford Press.

Britton, P. C., & Fuendeling, J. M. (2005). The relations among varieties of adult attachment and

the components of empathy. The Journal of Social Psychology, 145(5), 519-530.

33
ATTACHMENT AND INTERPERSONAL REGULATION
Butler, E. A., & Randall, A. K. (2013). Emotional coregulation in close relationships. Emotion

Review, 5(2), 202–210. https://doi.org/10.1177/1754073912451630

Butner, J., Diamond, L. M., & Hicks, A. M. (2007). Attachment style and two forms of affect

coregulation between romantic partners. Personal Relationships, 14(3), 431–455.

https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-6811.2007.00164.x

Carver, C. S., & Scheier, M. F. (1990). Origins and functions of positive and negative affect: A

control-process view. Psychological Review, 97(1), 19–35. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-

295X.97.1.19

Cassidy, J. (1994). Emotion regulation: Influences of attachment relationships. Monographs of

the Society for Research in Child Development, 59(2-3), 228-249. doi:10.2307/1166148

Doherty, N. A., & Feeney, J. A. (2004). The composition of attachment networks throughout the

adult years. Personal Relationships, 11(4), 469-488. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-

6811.2004.00093.x

Domingue, R., & Mollen, D. (2009). Attachment and conflict communication in adult romantic

relationships. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 26(5), 678–

696. https://doi.org/10.1177/0265407509347932

Doré, B. P., Morris, R. R., Burr, D. A., Picard, R. W., & Ochsner, K. N. (2017). Helping others

regulate emotion predicts increased regulation of one’s own emotions and decreased

symptoms of depression. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 43(5), 729-739.

Eisenberg, N., Fabes, R. A., Miller, P. A., Fultz, J., Shell, R., Mathy, R. M., & Reno, R. R.

(1989). Relation of sympathy and personal distress to prosocial behavior: A multimethod

study. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 57(1), 55–66.

https://doi.org/10.1037//0022-3514.57.1.55
34
ATTACHMENT AND INTERPERSONAL REGULATION
Eldesouky, L., & English, T. (2019). Individual differences in emotion regulation goals: Does

personality predict the reasons why people regulate their emotions?. Journal of

Personality, 87(4), 750–766. https://doi.org/10.1111/jopy.12430

English, T., Lee, I. A., John, O. P., & Gross, J. J. (2017). Emotion regulation strategy selection in

daily life: The role of social context and goals. Motivation and Emotion, 41(2), 230–242.

https://doi.org/10.1007/s11031-016-9597-z

Expiwell. (2021). Expiwell (Version 2.0.6) [Mobile app]. App Store.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/expiwell/id1070733440 

Fraley, R. C., & Shaver, P. R. (1997). Adult attachment and the suppression of unwanted

thoughts. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 73(5), 1080–

1091. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.73.5.1080

Girme, Y. U., Jones, R. E., Fleck, C., Simpson, J. A., & Overall, N. C. (2021). Infants’

attachment insecurity predicts attachment-relevant emotion regulation strategies in

adulthood. Emotion, 21(2), 260–272. https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0000721

Gleason, M. E., Iida, M., Shrout, P. E., & Bolger, N. (2008). Receiving support as a mixed

blessing: Evidence for dual effects of support on psychological outcomes. Journal of

Personality and Social Psychology, 94(5), 824-838. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-

3514.94.5.824

Green, P., & MacLeod, C. J. (2016). SIMR: an R package for power analysis of generalized

linear mixed models by simulation. Methods in Ecology and Evolution, 7(4), 493-498.

Gross, J. J. (2015). Emotion regulation: Current status and future prospects. Psychological

Inquiry, 26(1), 1–26. https://doi.org/10.1080/1047840X.2014.940781

35
ATTACHMENT AND INTERPERSONAL REGULATION
Hamerling-Potts, K., Springstein, T., Landa, I., & English, T. (2022, April 11). Attachment and

Interpersonal Emotion Regulation. Retrieved from osf.io/2ms9w

Holland, A. S., & Roisman, G. I. (2010). Adult attachment security and young adults’ dating

relationships over time: Self-reported, observational, and physiological evidence.

Developmental Psychology, 46(2), 552–557. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0018542

Hudson, N. W., & Fraley, R. C. (2017). Adult attachment and perceptions of closeness. Personal

Relationships, 24, 17-26. https://doi.org/10.1111/pere.12166

Inagaki, T. K., & Orehek, E. (2017). On the benefits of giving social support: When, why, and

how support providers gain by caring for others. Current Directions in Psychological

Science, 26(2), 109-113.

Kalokerinos, E. K., Tamir, M., & Kuppens, P. (2017). Instrumental motives in negative emotion

regulation in daily life: Frequency, consistency, and predictors. Emotion, 17(4), 648–657.

https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0000269

Liu, D. Y., Strube, M. J., & Thompson, R. J. (2021). Interpersonal emotion regulation: An

experience sampling study. Affective Science, 1-16. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42761-021-

00044-y

Locke, K. D. (2008). Attachment styles and interpersonal approach and avoidance goals in

everyday couple interactions. Personal Relationships, 15(3), 359-374.

https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-6811.2008.00203.x

Mauss, I. B., & Tamir, M. (2014). Emotion goals: How their content, structure, and operation

shape emotion regulation. In J. J. Gross (Ed.), Handbook of Emotion Regulation (pp.

361–375). The Guilford Press.

36
ATTACHMENT AND INTERPERSONAL REGULATION
Mikulincer, M., & Shaver, P. R. (2007). Adult attachment strategies and the regulation of

emotion. In J. J. Gross (Ed.), Handbook of Emotion Regulation (pp. 446-465). The

Guilford Press.

Mikulincer, M., & Shaver, P. R. (2009). An attachment and behavioral systems perspective on

social support. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 26(1), 7-19.

https://doi.org/10.1177/0265407509105518

Mikulincer, M., & Shaver, P. R. (2019). Attachment orientations and emotion

regulation. Current Opinion in Psychology, 25, 6-10.

Monin, J. K., Schulz, R., Feeney, B. C., & Cook, T. B. (2010). Attachment insecurity and

perceived partner suffering as predictors of personal distress. Journal of Experimental

Social Psychology, 46(6), 1143-1147.

Netzer, L., Van Kleef, G. A., & Tamir, M. (2015). Interpersonal instrumental emotion

regulation. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 58, 124-135.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2015.01.006

Niven, K. (2016). Why do people engage in interpersonal emotion regulation at

work?. Organizational Psychology Review, 6(4), 305-323.

Niven, K., Garcia, D., Van der Löwe, I., Holman, D., & Mansell, W. (2015). Becoming popular:

Interpersonal emotion regulation predicts relationship formation in real life social

networks. Frontiers in Psychology, 6, 1452.

Niven, K., Macdonald, I., & Holman, D. (2012). You spin me right round: Cross-relationship

variability in interpersonal emotion regulation. Frontiers in Psychology, 3, Article 394.

https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00394
37
ATTACHMENT AND INTERPERSONAL REGULATION
Noftle, E. E., & Shaver, P. R. (2006). Attachment dimensions and the big five personality traits:

Associations and comparative ability to predict relationship quality. Journal of Research

in Personality, 40(2), 179–208. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2004.11.003

Nozaki, Y., & Mikolajczak, M. (2020). Extrinsic emotion regulation. Emotion, 20(1), 10–15.

https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0000636

Overall, N. C., Fletcher, G. J., & Simpson, J. A. (2010). Helping each other grow: Romantic

partner support, self-improvement, and relationship quality. Personality and Social

Psychology Bulletin, 36(11), 1496-1513.

Özen, A., Sümer, N., & Demir, M. (2011). Predicting friendship quality with rejection sensitivity

and attachment security. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 28(2), 163–181.

https://doi.org/10.1177/0265407510380607

Pauw, L. S., Sauter, D. A., Van Kleef, G. A., & Fischer, A. H. (2019). Stop crying! The impact

of situational demands on interpersonal emotion regulation. Cognition and

Emotion, 33(8), 1587-1598. https://doi.org/10.1080/02699931.2019.1585330

Ramsey, M. A., & Gentzler, A. L. (2015). An upward spiral: Bidirectional associations between

positive affect and positive aspects of close relationships across the life

span. Developmental Review, 36, 58-104.

R Core Team (2021). R: A language and environment for statistical computing. R Foundation for

Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria. URL https://www.R-project.org/.

Riediger, M. (2010). Experience sampling. In German Data Forum (RatSWD) (Ed.), Building on

progress: Expanding the research infrastructure for the social, economic, and behavioral

sciences (Vol. 1, pp. 581-594). Budrich UniPress.

38
ATTACHMENT AND INTERPERSONAL REGULATION
Saferstein, J. A., Neimeyer, G. J., & Hagans, C. L. (2005). Attachment as a predictor of

friendship qualities in college youth. Social Behavior and Personality: An International

Journal, 33(8), 767-776. https://doi.org/10.2224/sbp.2005.33.8.767

Saphire-Bernstein, S., & Taylor, S. E. (2013). Close relationships and happiness. In I. Boniwell

& S. David (Eds.), Oxford Handbook of Happiness (pp. 821-833). Oxford University

Press. 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199557257.013.0060

Soto, C. J., & John, O. P. (2017). Short and extra-short forms of the Big Five Inventory–2: The

BFI-2-S and BFI-2-XS. Journal of Research in Personality, 68, 69-81.

Tamir, M. (2009). What do people want to feel and why? Pleasure and utility in emotion

regulation. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 18(2), 101–

105. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8721.2009.01617.x

Tamir, M. (2016). Why do people regulate their emotions? A taxonomy of motives in emotion

regulation. Personality and Social Psychology Review 20(3), 199–222.

https://doi.org/10.1177/1088868315586325

Tamminen, K. A., Page-Gould, E., Schellenberg, B., Palmateer, T., Thai, S., Sabiston, C. M., &

Crocker, P. R. (2019). A daily diary study of interpersonal emotion regulation, the social

environment, and team performance among university athletes. Psychology of Sport and

Exercise, 45, 101566.

Walton, G. M., Cohen, G. L., Cwir, D., & Spencer, S. J. (2012). Mere belonging: The power of

social connections. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 102(3), 513–532.

https://doi.org/10.1037/a0025731

Zaki, J., & Williams, W. C. (2013). Interpersonal emotion regulation. Emotion, 13(5), 803–

810. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0033839
 39
ATTACHMENT AND INTERPERSONAL REGULATION
Table 1.

Between and Within-Person Correlations for Attachment, Interaction Outcomes, and Interpersonal Emotion Regulation Motives

Variable Mea SD ICC 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

n
1. Attachment 3.58 1.01
Anxiety
2. Attachment 3.33 1.08 .26**
Avoidance
3. Emotional WB 4.56 1.02 .14 -.12 -.24** .59** .23** -.14** -.20** .21** .32** -.32** .10** .33** -.15** -.06**
4. Relationship WB 4.38 0.62 .16 -.04 -.16* .60** .19** -.06** -.14** .25** .28** -.26** .11** .29** -.06** -.01
5. Prohedonic-Self 3.82 1.32 .43 .13 .03 .32** .40** -.01 .07** .29** .32** -.01 .22** .30** .00 .10**
6. Contrahedonic- 1.76 0.82 .39 .07 -.02 -.21** .14* .28** .14** .02 -.06** .21** .11** -.07** .39** .16**
Self
7. Performance-Self 2.74 1.32 .39 .08 .04 -.06 .27** .56** .54** .07** -.05** .36** -.02 -.04* .16** .29**
8. Impression 3.71 1.19 .53 .21** .03 .24** .40** .77** .29** .50** .38** -.05** .21** .39** -.01
Management
9. Relationship 4.61 1.12 .48 .07 -.05 .37** .41** .73** .12 .37** .76** -.15** .18** .49** -.09** .10**
Maintenance
10. Relationship 2.04 0.89 .44 .13 .05 -.22** .13 .42** .77** .74** .38** .20** .03 -.14** .34** .25**
Distancing
11. Emotional 2.75 1.18 .47 .10 -.12 .06 .37** .61** .55** .61** .51** .44** .61** .20** .10** .14**
Similarity
12. Prohedonic– 4.09 1.43 .38 .06 -.07 .39** .44** .84** .23** .47** .83** .81** .31** .57** -.07** .17**
Other
13. Contrahedonic– 1.68 0.69 .46 .03 -.02 -.26** .09 .24** .93** .50** .29** .08 .79** .51** .19** . .25**
Other
14. Performance– 2.33 0.87 .51 .08 -.02 -.07 .25** .53** .73** .82** .55** .35** .80** .67** .47** .73**
Other
Note. Means and SDs were calculated averaging within-person mean scores and SDs across participants. Intraclass correlations (ICCs)
were calculated for each predicted outcome variable using residual and subject variance. ICCs represent between-person variability for
each variable. Between-person correlations are below the diagonal. Within-person associations for interpersonal emotion regulation
measures are above the diagonal. WB = well-being Items 3 and 4 refer to the indicators of perceived change in interaction outcomes
while items 5 through 14 refer to interpersonal emotion regulation motives. *p < .05. **p < .01.
40
ATTACHMENT AND INTERPERSONAL REGULATION
Table 2.

Unstandardized Estimates and Semi-Partial Effect Sizes for Attachment Predicting Interpersonal Emotion Regulation Motives and

Interaction Outcomes

Attachment Anxiety Attachment Avoidance

Dependent Variables Intercept γ(SE) R❑
2 95% CI γ(SE) R❑
2 95% CI

Motives
Prohedonic - Self 3.84 .22(.09)* .02 [.04, .40] -.17(.09) .01 [-.34, .00]
Contrahedonic - Self 1.89 .04(.06) .00 [-.08, .16] -.03(.06) .00 [-.14, .08]
Performance - Self 2.91 .08(.09) .00 [-.09, .05] .06(.08) .00 [-.10, .22]
Impression Management 3.62 .32(.10)** .05 [.13, .52] -.04(.09) .00 [-.23, .14]
Relationship Distancing 2.11 .08(.07) .01 [-.05, .22] .05(.06) .00 [-.08, .17]
Relationship Maintenance 4.80 .12(.09) .01 [-.05, .29] -.07(.08) .00 [-.24, .08]
Emotional Similarity 3.03 .17(.09) .01 [-.01, .35] -.14(.09) .01 [-.31, .03]
Prohedonic - Other 4.13 11(.09) .01 [-.06, .29] -.11(.09) .01 [-.28, .06]
Contrahedonic - Other 1.85 .03(.06) .00 [-.10, .15] .00(.06) .00 [-.12 .11]
Performance – Other 2.43 .10(.07) .00 [-.04 .24] -.01(.07) .00 [-.14 .12]
Interaction Outcomes
Change in Emotional Well-being 4.68 -.02(.03) .00 [-.09, .05] -.12(.03)** .01 [-.18, -.05]
Change in Relationship Well-being 4.44 -.00(.02) .00 [-.05, .04] -.05(.02)* .01 [-.10, -.01]

Note. Values in square brackets indicate the 95% confidence interval for each estimate. Gender and time were included as covariates

in each model. Both attachment dimensions were grand-mean centered and included together as predictors of each motive and

perceived change in interaction outcome. Random intercepts were included. *p < .05. **p < .01.
41
ATTACHMENT AND INTERPERSONAL REGULATION
Table 3.

Unstandardized Within- and Between-person Effects of Interpersonal Emotion Regulation Motives on Perceived Change in
Interaction Outcomes
Emotional Well-being Relationship Well-being
Predictor Variables γ(SE) R
2 95% CI RE (SD) γ(SE) R
2 95% CI RE (SD)
❑ ❑
Intercept 4.69(.06) 4.43(.04)
Within-Person
Prohedonic - Self .10(.01)** .01 [.07, .12] .01(09) .04(.01)** .01 [.03, .07] .00(.07)
Contrahedonic - Self -.06(.02)** .00 [-.11, -.02] .02(.14) -.00(.01) .00 [-.03, .01] /
Performance - Self -.07(.01)** .01 [-.10, -.05] .00(.06) -.03(.01)** .01 /
Impression Management .04(.01)** .01 [.01, .07] / .07(.01)** .01 [.06, .09] /
Relationship Distancing -.22(.02)** .04 [-.26, -.18] / -.12(.02)** .03 [-.18, -.13] .03 (.17)
Relationship Maintenance .09(.02)** .01 [.07, .13] / .06(.01)** .01 [.07, .11] /
Emotional Similarity .01(.01) .00 [-.01, .04] / .01(.01)* .00 [.00, .04] /
Prohedonic - Other .11(.01)** .02 [-.01, .04] / .05(.01)* .01 [.03, .07] /
Contrahedonic - Other -.02(.02) .00 [-.01, .04] / .02(.02) .00 [-.01, .06] .01(.11)
Performance - Other -.02(.02) .00 [-.01, .04] / -.01(.01) .00 [-.03, .02] /
Between-Person
Prohedonic - Self .10(.04)* .01 [.02, .19] .02(.03) .00 [-.03, .09]
Contrahedonic - Self -.01(.10) .00 [-.20, .19] .02(.07) .00 [-.10, .15]
Performance - Self -.09(.05) .00 [-.18, .01] .02(.03) .00 [-.10, .15]
Impression Management -.08(.04)* .00 [-.16, .00] .00(.03) .00 [-.01, .09]
Relationship Distancing -.10(.07) .00 [-.23, .03] -.08(.05) .00 [-.16, -.01]
Relationship Maintenance .05(.04) .00 [-.03, .14] .01(.03) .00 [-.01, .10]
Emotional Similarity -.02(.03) .00 [-.09, .04] .06(.02)* .01 [.01, .11]
Prohedonic - Other .15(.06)** .01 [.05, .26] .07(.04) .00 [-.00, .13]
Contrahedonic - Other -.13(.11) .00 [-.34, .08] -.01(.07) .00 [-.15, .13]
Performance - Other 13(.07) .00 [-.01, .26] .01(.05) .00 [-.08, .10]

Note. Values in brackets indicate the 95% confidence interval for each estimate. Random slopes were included unless models showed

convergence issues. RE= Random effect. Gender and time were added as covariates in each model. Between-person effects were

grand-mean centered. *p < .05. **p < .01.