To Turn Inward or Outward? Examining the Reciprocal Relationships Between Mindfulness, Interpersonal Emotion Regulation, and Aggression Over Time.

People often rely on others to help manage their emotions, a process called interpersonal emotion regulation (IER), while mindfulness involves turning inward to regulate emotions. A longitudinal study of 469 undergraduates across three waves, each about 20 days apart, examined how these strategies relate to each other and to aggression. Contrary to predictions, individuals who were generally more mindful engaged in less IER over time. However, when participants were more mindful than their own average, they subsequently used more IER. Neither mindfulness nor IER consistently predicted aggressive behavior. The inverse relationship between these effective regulatory approaches raises questions about trade-offs between their costs and benefits.

Study at a glance

Abstract

People frequently turn to others to help regulate their emotions in what is referred to as inter personal emotion regulation (IER). Mindfulness entails an intra personal strategy of turning inward to facilitate emotion regulation. Yet little research has examined the relationships between these distinct regulation strategies and their consequences for aggression. The current study aims to elucidate how dispositional tendencies towards mindfulness and IER interact to predict each other and aggression over time. To do so, a diverse sample of undergraduates ( N = 469) at a Minority Serving Institution completed a three-wave, longitudinal study with approximately 20 days between each wave. Against our predictions, between-participants estimates suggested that more mindful individuals engaged in less IER across time points. Paradoxically, within-participant analyses revealed that when participants were more mindful than usual, they subsequently engaged in more IER. IER and mindfulness did not consistently explain our measures of aggressive behavior. As both IER and mindfulness are effective regulatory approaches with salutary effects, the inverse relationship between the two raises important questions about the trade-offs between the costs and benefits associated with these approaches.