Collective Emotion Regulation

Collective emotional responses represent responses of multiple people to an emotional situation. Such responses are ubiquitous in many contexts, such as conflicts, crises, and celebrations. Yet, a closer look at processes of collective emotions leads to an observation: collective emotion often co-occurs with attempts to influence the emotions of the group. We refer to these attempts as collective emotion regulation, where members of groups aim to change collective emotions. In this paper, we first define collective emotion and propose a model of collective emotion generation. We then define collective emotion regulation and distinguish it from related concepts. We propose a process model to describe the unfolding of collective emotion regulation that help organize a variety of behaviors previously discussed in other literatures. We show how the concept can help explain collective behavior and facilitate planning interventions designed to regulate collective emotions. Finally, we discuss open empirical questions and future directions.