Abstract

When individuals regulate another person’s emotions during a supportive conversation, they can help the person’s emotions improve and nurture social connection. However, little is known about what specifically regulators say when regulating a target’s emotions effectively. In the present research, we examined associations between regulators’ language and targets’ perceptions of emotion improvement, responsiveness, and trust in 114 naturalistic conversations between strangers. We used automated text analysis to assess five language categories in regulators’ transcripts: self-referential words, target-referential words, cognitive processing words, positive words, and negative words. We also manually coded seven tactics (e.g., self-disclosure, paraphrasing) to more closely examine how regulators used language during these conversations. Results showed that when regulators referred more to themselves, targets reported significantly greater emotional improvement and trust in the regulator. When regulators referred more to the target, targets reported significantly greater perceptions of regulator responsiveness and trust in the regulator. These two language categories reflected different sets of tactics: self-referential words significantly related to greater self-disclosure and less information provision, whereas target-referential words significantly related to greater paraphrasing and questioning, and less self-disclosure and emotional expression. Cognitive processing words and emotional words did not significantly predict target outcomes. These findings suggest that regulators’ use of self-referential or target-referential language may play a role in emotional and relational outcomes for targets. Future work may therefore benefit from integrating fine-grained features such as language and tactics into theoretical models of extrinsic emotion regulation strategies.