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Realigning interpersonal regulation in everyday life : Find an Expert : The University of Melbourne
<p> Our societies are becoming more socially disconnected. To address this problem, we need to understand how social connection is created. One powerful method to build social connections is interpersonal emotion regulation, which involves the processes through which people seek and offer emotional support. However, people report providing more emotional support than they receive, suggesting that the provision of emotional support is often unnoticed or unsuccessful. This project aims to understand and reduce this misalignment between the perception and provision of emotional support in everyday life. To do this, we investigate these processes in romantic couples, using new dyadic experience-sampling tools to capture both partners’ perspectives in real time. The project consists of three work packages. Work Package 1 will determine whether perception-provision misalignment is most frequently driven by the receiver or the provider, and which type of misalignment is more consequential for emotional and relational outcomes. Work Package 2 will identify the antecedents of perception-provision misalignment, establishing contextual, individual, and couple-level factors to see who is more at risk when. Finally, Work Package 3 will test a brief intervention to reduce misalignment between perception and provision of support. In determining when and why there are gaps between perceived and provided interpersonal emotion regulation, the project will generate practical methods to strengthen everyday social connection. </p>
