Recalling Good vs. Poor Family Interactions: Experimental Tests of the Association Between Family Functioning and Emotion Regulation

Families help shape how individuals manage emotions, but can family functioning actually cause differences in emotion regulation? Answering this question is challenging because family interactions cannot easily be manipulated for experimental purposes. In this talk, I present an experimental paradigm testing whether family functioning influences how people regulate their own (intrapersonal) and others’ (interpersonal) emotions. Across four studies, participants recalled events reflecting varying qualities of family functioning before completing emotion regulation tasks. Results indicate that family communication directly influences how people help others regulate emotions. This work provides initial causal evidence linking family communication to emotion regulation, highlighting possibilities for further experimental work on family functioning.