Call for Abstracts – Contextual Factors in Expressing and Regulating Emotions in Close Relationship Interactions

Special issue in Personal Relationships – Contextual Factors in Expressing and Regulating Emotions in Close Relationship Interactions

Abstract submission deadline: Sunday, 1 December 2024.

For full details, please visit https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/page/journal/14756811/homepage/call-for-papers/si-2024-000880.

Guest Editors: Dr. Laura Sels, Ghent University, Belgium and Dr. Rachel Low, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand.


We invite empirical articles in short- and long-format that cover qualitative and quantitative empirical studies, and methodological or statistical contributions. Review papers are allowed as well, but theoretical papers will not be considered.

We encourage submission of studies with diverse methods (e.g., observations, daily diaries, experience sampling methods, experiments) and diverse populations (e.g., racial-ethnic diversity, non-U.S.-based samples, sexual minority and gender diverse samples, non-traditional parent-child relationships). In line with Personal Relationships, which is an international, interdisciplinary journal that promotes scholarship in the field of personal relationships using a wide variety of methodologies and throughout a broad range of disciplines, we welcome submissions including but not limited to communication studies, family studies, human development, psychology, social work, and sociology.

Although other submissions are also welcome, we explicitly welcome submissions on:

  • Research explicitly exploring the role of contextual factors (e.g., demographics, type of close relationship) that shape emotion expression and regulation in close relationships;
  • Research exploring the temporal sequence of emotion expression and regulation in dyadic interactions, and changes across situational contexts;
  • Research examining how individual and relationship partner’s emotion expression or regulation combine to shape outcomes;
  • Research examining how context moderates if and how emotion expression and regulation shape personal and relationship outcomes;
  • Research examining combinations of emotion regulation strategies (e.g., emotion suppression, social sharing). For instance, prior research has typically focused on assessing emotion suppression or social sharing independently, rather than assessing how these strategies uniquely predict outcomes within interpersonal interactions;
  • Methodological issues on, and advancements in, the field of emotion expression and regulation in dyadic relationships, and examining its contexts.