Effectively managing others' emotions is a core skill in the workplace. Yet, scientific research on this is surprisingly limited, leaving people to guess at what works best. We found that—during distressing conversations between participants—reframing the conversation partner’s experiences into positive ones was a successful strategy for improving how the partner felt. This is a counterintuitive finding because the common advice is to listen and avoid altering the other person’s perceptions of their experience. Instead, we found that engaging in this social reappraisal behavior was both effective and perceived by the conversation partner as responsive and caring. This paper has been cited 15 times in just over a year, including by management scholars, highlighting its relevance and impact.

People at work encounter others’ negative emotions daily. How can they protect themselves from catching those negative emotions while still helping the person in need? I conduct a within-subject analysis of supportive conversations, revealing that individuals who made more observed efforts to improve others' emotions also experienced a reduction in their own physiological stress. Additionally, using repeated measures over a week, I found that regulating others' emotions led to an increase in positive affect over the course of a week.

Our experimental work revealed that when participants were instructed to suppress their emotional expressions, it disrupted the co-regulation process during stressful collaborations, suggesting that emotion suppression prevents individuals from effectively managing stress together.

During challenging conversations, people often believe that concealing their emotions or hiding emotional expressions is ideal for fostering better collaboration and effective social interactions. However, my research suggests the opposite. In one study, I found that, in 5-second intervals, when individuals suppressed their emotions during distressing conversations, their conversation partners perceived them as less compassionate during those same intervals. This suggests that how a person manages their emotion expressions during a conversation can dynamically influence how others perceive them, which in turn affects the overall quality of the relationship.