We often influence the emotions of others to care for them, connect with them, and get them to help us too.

We can use several strategies that impact emotions through different processes.

Some strategies divert people’s attention away from negative emotions with praise, distractions, or humor.

Other strategies positively engage and refocus emotions through venting, empowerment, or reasoning.

Our everyday interactions often involve managing other people’s feelings. We do it to care for them, make them feel better, and improve our relationships with them. Beyond that, we manage their feelings to persuade them to help us with our feelings in return.

Therefore, the strategies we use to change the feelings of others (known as Controlled Interpersonal Affect Regulation Strategies) often influence the success of our professional and personal interactions. Fortunately, in the last decade or two, research has begun to unravel the secrets of those emotional persuasion strategies. So, below, we’ll look at the ways you can improve social interactions by persuading others to feel better, too!

Classifying Affect Regulation Strategies

Niven, Totterdell, and Holman (2009) published a foundational article collecting and classifying interpersonal affect regulation strategies. Those strategies were gathered through research on everything from emotion management and care-giving to social support and interpersonal influence. The team also conducted three studies, asking participants about the strategies they used to impact the emotions of others.

Altogether, they obtained 955 examples of interpersonal affect regulation strategies, which were grouped together into categories. At the highest level, strategies were split between those that improved the emotions of others (Affect-Improving) and those that made someone’s mood worse........

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