Interpersonal Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (IERQ): Scale Development and Psychometric Characteristics

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Web End = Cogn Ther Res (2016) 40:341356

DOI 10.1007/s10608-016-9756-2

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Web End = Interpersonal Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (IERQ): Scale Development and Psychometric Characteristics

Stefan G. Hofmann1 Joseph K. Carpenter1 Joshua Curtiss1

Published online: 30 January 2016 Springer Science+Business Media New York 2016

Abstract Despite the popularity of emotion regulation in the contemporary literature, research has almost exclusively focused on intrapersonal processes, whereas much less attention has been placed on interpersonal emotion regulation processes. In order to encourage research on interpersonal emotion regulation, we present a series of four studies to develop the Interpersonal Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (IERQ). The nal scale consists of 20 items with 4 factors containing ve items each. The four factors are: Enhancing Positive Affect; Perspective Taking; Soothing; and Social Modeling. The scale shows excellent psychometric characteristics. Implications for future research are discussed.

Keywords Emotion Emotion regulation Interpersonal

Anxiety Depression Mood Classication

Emotion regulation has become a popular research topic in contemporary psychology. Thompson (1994), who was one of the early pioneers, dened emotion regulation as extrinsic and intrinsic processes responsible for monitoring, evaluating, and modifying emotional reactions, especially their intensive and temporal features, to accomplish ones goals (p. 2728). This early denition recognizes that emotions can be modied not only intrapersonally (intrinsic) through self-regulation strategies, but also interpersonally (extrinsic) processes involving other people. However, throughout the years, emotion regulation has

primarily examined the intrapersonal aspects of emotion regulation (see Hofmann 2016, for a recent review).

Gross (2002) denes emotion regulation as the process by which people inuence which emotions they have, when they have them, and how they experience and express these emotions. Accordingly, this intrapersonal emotion regulation model assumes that emotions can be regulated at various stages in the process of emotion generation, which includes selection of the situation, modication of the situation, deployment of attention, modication of cognitive appraisal, and modulation of responses. The strategies are distinguished into response-focused and antecedent-focused strategies, depending on the timing during the process that generates an emotion. Antecedent-focused emotion regulation strategies occur before the emotional response has...