Motivation and emotion/Book/2026/Social connection and emotion regulation

Social connection and emotion regulation:
How do social relationships help regulate people's emotions?

Overview

Imagine this ...

You are on your way to hangout with your friends for the weekend (see Figure 1). When out of the blue you receive a call from your boss who says that you've been fired.

You might start to think about what that means for you, or how are you going to pay the bills and get groceries. Maybe you had a holiday planned for the end of month, but now you're thinking it is not going to happen. These thoughts and stressors then cause you to spiral and feel emotions including sadness, anger and frustration.

Eventually, you arrive to your friend's house and they notice that you're not feeling okay and they ask you, "What's going on?". As you start sharing what happened and how you are feeling, you begin to relax and feel comforted by you're friend.

Why is this? Why do we feel relaxed in the presence of our friends or other social connections that we trust?

Briefly explain the main concepts (emotion regulation and social connection)
- Emotion regulation is a way to manage, understand and alter the emotions we are experiencing to better suit our needs in the current moment. Similarly, Gross (1998) suggested that emotion regulation is a way to influence the what emotions are experienced and expressed.
- Social connection is our sense of connection to the variety of social relationships that we interact with in our everyday lives.
Briefly discuss the importance of the concepts
- [ER]
- [SC]
Discuss the importance of exploring the question and how we will answer it
- Implications for real world and research
- To answer the question we will discuss the theories of emotion regulation, the benefits of social connection, and what happens when we experience loneliness or perceive our social connections to be poor quality.

Focus questions

How is emotion regulation defined?
What are the benefits of social connection?
What if we have problems forming social connections?

What is emotion regulation?

Define emotion regulation and then expand the term into different variations across the literature
- Emotion regulation is the ability to manage our emotions and understand them. By understanding them we can also influence how, when and what emotions we are experiencing and expressing (Gross, 1998).
Discuss the importance of emotion regulation
Introduce strategies and theories in relation to emotion regulation
- Discuss Gross's Process Model of Emotion Regulation
  - In 1998, James Gross developed a model for emotion regulation that included five different ways we can utilise emotion regulation to such as (Gross, 1998):
    - Situation Selection
    - Situation Modification
    - Attention Deployment
    - Cognitive Change
    - Response Modulation
      - Make a figure for the model
  - Many years later, the extended process model of emotion regulation was proposed to consider emotion regulation as a type of "valuation" that is considered when experiencing an emotion (Gross, 2015). This model proposes three stages of emotion regulation, the identification stage, the selection stage and the implementation stage.
- Discuss the Trait theories of personality (OCEAN/Big 5)
  - Briefly define the Big 5
  - Higher emotion regulation has been implicated to predict low neuroticism and high conscientiousness, extroversion, openness to experience and agreeableness (Barańczuk, 2019).
- Discuss Self Determination Theory in relation to emotion regulation
Talk about different ways to assess emotion regulation
- e.g. ERQ, ERI, DERS, etc...
- If certain theories have their ways of measuring then address that when discussing the theory

Quiz

Emotion regulation in the context of social connection

Brief body introducing social connection and the different subheadings that will be addressed
Discuss the various levels/quality of connections and how they may affect emotion regulation differently (allude to poor connections)
- The quality of social connection can vary by how we define those relationships.
Discuss the modes/mediums of connection in relation to emotion regulation (i.e. social media, face-to-face/in-person)
- Due to the evolving medium of technology, we are able to connect to individuals through a variety of means including, in-person, texting, calling, or through social media.
- Discuss the benefits for social connection and possible application for emotion regulation in use of social media platforms (McAlister et al., 2024).

Social support and co-regulation

Discuss the role of social supports
Discuss and define co-regulation
- According to Butler and Randall (2013), co-regulation can be defined as an experience between two individuals where they provide stability for each other's emotions and physiology through a process of social bonding.
Discuss what is happening in our brain and body when we connect socially and regulate our emotions
- Discuss the findings of this article and implications for understanding the brain regions involved with emotion regulation on its own and with social connections (Xie et al., 2016)

Attachment styles

Discuss Attachment theory/styles in relation to emotional regulation and social connection - Start with social connection
- Briefly explain attachments and refer to Table 1 - expand Table 1 to have a bit more detail for the attachment styles
Discuss how certain attachments will benefit more from social supports whereas others will avoid
Discuss the brain activity of social connection when looking through the lens of attachments
- Vrticka & Vuilleumier (2012) explores each attachment style and the brain activity when experiencing social connection - thought to be involved with the reward system.

Table 1

A two-way table of the attachment styles

	Positive	Negative
Positive	Secure	Anxious
Negative	Avoidant	Disorganised

The effects of poor social connections

Briefly introduce the subheadings and the concept
- What if we do not have good quality or any social connections?
Discuss the more negative attachment styles and their effects where relevant
Now that we've discussed the benefits of the variety of mediums for connection (i.e. social media), discuss the negatives
- Despite being able to foster social connectedness, social media has been suggested to increase loneliness (Ryan et al., 2017).

Loneliness and mood disorders

Introduce loneliness and link back to social connection and emotion regulation (specifically theories of why this would occur)
- Preece et al. (2021), suggests that the level of loneliness a person experiences is determined by the type of emotion regulation strategy and the frequency that it is used.
Talk about how loneliness is often implicated in mood disorders like depression and anxiety
- refer to American Psychiatric Association (2013) standards/characteristics for mood disorders
Reiterate that loneliness can occur from just a low perceived quality of social connection
Cite Figure 2 in text

Social perception, anxiety and exclusion

Discuss meta-perception and a person's perception of the relationship itself and link back to emotion regulation
- Meta-perceptions are thoughts about how we believe other's view us (Albright & Malloy, 1999). If we perceived our connection to someone to be negative or lacking in quality, our thoughts towards this connection may influence our meta-perceptions to characterise ourselves in a negative perspective, which would cause us to hurt our self-esteem.
Discuss the characteristics of social anxiety and how that can affect an individual to connect socially
- refer to American Psychiatric Association (2013) for diagnostic characteristics of social anxiety
Discuss social exclusion and its effect on emotion regulation

Conclusion

Summarise the headings and their respective focus questions
Link everything back to the main question (the subtitle) to critically answer it
Reflect on why it is important to research this phenomena (significance and contributions from research)
Link back to the real world and conclude
Draft Take-home messages
- With emotion regulation we are able to overcome adversities and approach situations with reason and emotion
- Social connections make people comfortable to allow for co-regulation and reinforcement of emotion regulation practices
- Without social connections we are more likely to fall into patterns of negativity and are less likely or able to regulate our emotions

References

Albright, L., & Malloy, T. E. (1999). Self-observation of social behavior and metaperception. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77(4), 726. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10531669/

American Psychiatric Association. (2013). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders: DSM-5™, 5th ed. American Psychiatric Publishing, Inc. https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.books.9780890425596

Barańczuk, U. (2019). The five factor model of personality and emotion regulation: A meta-analysis. Personality and Individual Differences, 139, 217-227. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2018.11.025

Butler, E. A., & Randall, A. K. (2013). Emotional coregulation in close relationships. Emotion Review, 5(2), 202-210. https://doi.org/10.1177/1754073912451630

Gross, J. J. (1998). The emerging field of emotion regulation: An integrative review. Review of General Psychology, 2(3), 271-299. https://doi.org/10.1037/1089-2680.2.3.271

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

McAlister, K. L., Beatty, C. C., Smith-Caswell, J. E., Yourell, J. L., & Huberty, J. L. (2024). Social media use in adolescents: Bans, benefits, and emotion regulation behaviors. JMIR Ment Health, 11, e64626. https://doi.org/10.2196/64626

Preece, D. A., Goldenberg, A., Becerra, R., Boyes, M., Hasking, P., & Gross, J. J. (2021). Loneliness and emotion regulation. Personality and Individual Differences, 180, 110974. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2021.110974

Ryan, T., Allen, K. A., Gray, D. L., & McInerney, D. M. (2017). How social are social media? A review of online social behaviour and connectedness. Journal of Relationships Research, 8, e8, Article e8. https://doi.org/10.1017/jrr.2017.13

Vrticka, P., & Vuilleumier, P. (2012). Neuroscience of human social interactions and adult attachment style [Review]. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, Volume 6 - 2012. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2012.00212

Xie, X., Mulej Bratec, S., Schmid, G., Meng, C., Doll, A., Wohlschläger, A., Finke, K., Förstl, H., Zimmer, C., Pekrun, R., Schilbach, L., Riedl, V., & Sorg, C. (2016). How do you make me feel better? Social cognitive emotion regulation and the default mode network. NeuroImage, 134, 270-280. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2016.04.015

External links

DBT skills: Emotion regulation and calming your emotions (YouTube)
Emotion regulation (psychologytoday.com)
How to manage your emotions (TED-Ed)
Manage stress: Strengthen your support network (apa.org)

	The big five personality traits
	The process model of emotion regulation
	Self determination theory
	The extended process model of emotion regulation

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