Emotionships: Examining people’s emotion-regulation relationships and their consequences for well-being. Unpublished manuscript

Is it better to have a few relationships that can fulfill all our emotion-regulation needs or to have a more diverse relationship portfolio, in which different individuals serve distinct emotion-regulation needs? The present research examined how people dis-tribute their emotion-regulation needs across different emotion-specific regulation relationships (emotionships) and their conse-quences for well-being. Study 1 demonstrated the existence of emotionships by showing that individuals can name discrete relationships that they consider effective at regulating specific emotions (e.g., I turn to my sister to cheer me up when I’m sad) and that the accessibility and value of these relationships change as a function of manipulated emotional states. Studies 2a and 2b revealed that individuals who diversified their emotion-regulation needs across multiple specialized relationships (e.g., having dis-tinct relationships for cheering up sadness vs. soothing anxiety) showed higher well-being than those with similar numbers of close relationships, but who concentrated their emotion-regulation needs in fewer, less specialized relationships. Keywords emotion regulation, well-being, relationships, emotions, social networks The ability to effectively regulate one’s emotions is critical for well-being (Gross, 2007). Although most emotion-regulation research examines the individual cognitive and motivationa