Can I tell you how I feel? Perceived partner responsiveness encourages emotional expression.

When do people express their emotions to other people and when do they choose not to do so? Emotional experience-positive or negative-often leads people to reveal their feelings to others, especially to close relationship partners. Although emotional expression has been incorporated into recent dyadic models of emotion regulation, little research has examined the specific interpersonal processes responsible for facilitating or inhibiting emotional expression. This article reports results from a pair of methodologically distinct studies examining the impact of perceived partner responsiveness (PPR) on emotional expression.

Multiple Paths to Belonging That We Should Study Together.

We propose a broadened conceptualization of what it means to belong by reviewing evidence that there is more than one way to achieve a sense of belonging. We suggest four paths-a communal-relationship path, a general-approbation path, a group-membership path, and a minor-sociability path-and review some evidence for the existence of each. We call for researchers to recognize that multiple paths to belonging exist and to study whether and how the paths combine and interact to influence people's sense of belonging.

Communal relational context (or lack thereof) shapes emotional lives.

A case is made that a communal relationship context (or lack thereof) shapes people's emotional lives for three reasons. First, a person's communal partners assume some degree of non-contingent responsibility for the person's welfare. This allows the person, when with or, at times, when thinking about such partners, to drop some self-protective vigilance, appraise situations as less threatening, focus attention outward on to situations and to see those situations through the partner's eyes often enhancing the emotional impact of those situations, express emotions which convey individual vulnerabilities and, in turn, receive and accept emotion regulation from partners.

Willingness to express emotion depends upon perceiving partner care.

Two studies document that people are more willing to express emotions that reveal vulnerabilities to partners when they perceive those partners to be more communally responsive to them. In Study 1, participants rated the communal strength they thought various partners felt toward them and their own willingness to express happiness, sadness and anxiety to each partner. Individuals who generally perceive high communal strength from their partners were also generally most willing to express emotion to partners.