TY  - JOUR
PY  - 2017//
TI  - Cruel to be kind: factors underlying altruistic efforts to worsen another person's mood
JO  - Psychological science
A1  - López-Pérez, Belén
A1  - Howells, Laura
A1  - Gummerum, Michaela
SP  - 862
EP  - 871
VL  - 28
IS  - 7
N2  - When aiming to improve another person's long-term well-being, people may choose to induce a negative emotion in that person in the short term. We labeled this form of agent-target interpersonal emotion regulation altruistic affect worsening and hypothesized that it may happen when three conditions are met: (a) The agent experiences empathic concern for the target of the affect-worsening process, (b) the negative emotion to be induced helps the target achieve a goal (e.g., anger for confrontation or fear for avoidance), and (c) there is no benefit for the agent. This hypothesis was tested by manipulating perspective-taking instructions and the goal to be achieved while participants ( N = 140) played a computer-based video game. Participants following other-oriented perspective-taking instructions, compared with those following objective perspective-taking instructions, decided to induce more anger in a supposed fellow participant who was working to achieve a confrontation goal and to induce more fear in a supposed fellow participant who was working to achieve an avoidance goal.<p />  <p>Language: en</p>
LA  - en
SN  - 0956-7976
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0956797617696312
ID  - ref1
ER  -