Emotional Coregulation Patterns of Romantic Partners
Open accessAbstract
This study aims to examine the coregulation patterns in the positive and negative affect of normative romantic partners and to replicate the previous findings in the emotion regulation field.For this aim, 37 romantic couples (74 individuals) completed daily records for 14 consecutive days.We hypothesized that one's daily positive/negative affect would be positively associated with the partner's daily positive/negative affect.We also expected that changes in one's daily positive/negative affect would be positively associated with changes in the partner's daily positive/negative affect.The hypothesis was partially supported, as results of multilevel analyses revealed that partners' daily positive and negative affect positively predict one's own positive and negative affect.Moreover, change in partners' positive affect positively predicted one's own change in positive affect.Change in partners' negative affect did not predict one's own change in negative affect.Overall, the findings demonstrated the coregulation pattern in positive affect but not for negative affect for romantic dyads.The findings made an important contribution to the field of emotion regulation by replicating previous findings and providing further evidence for the emotional coregulation of romantic couples.
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AI agents can engage in affective processes traditionally reserved for human relationships.
“This supports the idea that AI agents can engage in affective processes traditionally reserved for human relationships, extending prior work that highlights their potential to support users’ emotional well-being [2, 13, 22, 50].”
From Emotional Coregulation in Close Relationships with AI Agents: A Survey of ChatGPT and Replika Users (2025) · cites this paper as [2]
The Results for Coregulation and Discussion report positive-emotion coregulation between romantic partners, and the Abstract links interpersonal emotion regulation with well-being. These passages concern human relationships; the paper does not address whether AI agents can engage in those processes or support users’ emotional well-being. (LLM, conf=0.82)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredTheories of emotional coregulation describe how people help one another maintain emotional balance through emotional contagion and counter-regulation.
“Theories of emotional coregulation in psychology describe how people help one another maintain emotional balance through mutual processes such as emotional contagion (sharing emotions) and counter-regulation (responding in a calming way to intense emotions), unfolding through subtle synchrony in movement, speech and physiological signals [2, 13, 21, 22, 26, 50].”
From Emotional Coregulation in Close Relationships with AI Agents: A Survey of ChatGPT and Replika Users (2025) · cites this paper as [2]
The Coregulation section (page not provided) describes partners reciprocally maintaining psychophysiological balance and their emotions converging or diverging. It does not describe counter-regulation as a calming response to intense emotions or explain coregulation through synchrony in movement and speech; emotional contagion appears in a reference title, not as an explained mechanism in the cited passages. (LLM, conf=0.84)
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Emotional Coregulation in Close Relationships with AI Agents: A Survey of ChatGPT and Replika Users
Pruss, E., Alimardani, M., Struijs, S., & Koole, S. L. (2025) · Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Human-Agent Interaction · doi:10.1145/3765766.3765801 · Cited by 4 · see citing works
“Although previous findings suggest that users of agents such as Replika and ChatGPT may feel emotionally supported [38, 39, 56], it remains unclear whether these effects reflect the emotional coreg-ulation patterns seen in human relationships [2, 13].”
Influential
- Authors
- GÜNDOĞDU AKTÜRK, E., & AYKUTOĞLU, B.
- Affiliations
- Zonguldak Bülent Ecevit University (TR)
- ORCID
- AYKUTOĞLU, Bülent
- Venue
- Mediterranean Journal of Humanities
- Publisher
- Mediterranean Journal of Humanities
- Published
- 2020-06-29
- Volume
- 10
- Pages
- 39-48
- ISSN
- 2146-4812 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W3043263620
- Cited by
- 1
- References
- 7
- Citations by year
- 2025: 1
- FWCI
- 0.00
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- diamond
- doi.org
- Locations
- Mediterranean Journal of Humanities (publishedVersion)
- DergiPark (Istanbul University) (submittedVersion)
- OpenMETU (Middle East Technical University) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Attachment and Relationship Dynamics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Mental Health Research Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Child and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional Development
- Keywords
- romantic partners, positive affect, negative affect, emotion regulation, daily affect, replication
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