Emotional sharing between friends is a central part of daily life, yet surprisingly, psychologists still know little about the many factors that shape these interactions. During interpersonal interactions, individuals process ongoing emotional stimuli while simultaneously monitoring changes in their own emotional and physiological state, and attend to the affective state of others (Pauw et al., 2019, 2025; Rimé et al., 2020). These complex environments require fine-tuning multiple biological and psychological systems. Accordingly, research into emotional interpersonal interactions is naturally interdisciplinary and translational work. Findings hold the potential to inform how people share and grow from emotional bonding in their daily life.
For instance, imagine a friend describing a stressful family conflict or recounting a serious accident. Although both conversations are emotionally charged, they may elicit different reactions. Listening to the story about family conflict may elicit empathy while also activating one’s own psychological and physiological distress to similar personal experiences. In some cases, hyperactivity in the nervous system (e.g., excessive heart rate) may result in a misalignment between intrapersonal emotional experience and interpersonal support (Buchanan et al. 2012), which can have real-life consequences for the quality of the friendship.
In interpersonal emotion research, the influence of the emotional content is not always directly measured. Previous studies have focused primarily on changes in subjective or physiological responses (Berkowitz & Harmon-Jones, 2004; Hamann & Canli, 2004; Saarimäki, 2021). A study by Nakia S. Gordon, Joia L. Wesley, Keara J. Kangas, and Sara M. Swaneck, published in Translational Issues in Psychological Science, used a multimethod approach to examine the emotional content friends shared and changes in affective and physiological states. As interest in interpersonal dynamics grows (e.g., interpersonal emotion regulation, interpersonal synchrony), exploring how individuals experience emotionally complex social environments is increasingly important.
To that end, 44 friend pairs shared novel neutral and negative stories while researchers collected narrative, self-report, and physiological data. This approach allowed researchers to examine the kinds of emotional experiences friends share and how the emotional content influences subjective and physiological responses.
Narrative analyses showed that friends shared four types of emotionally meaningful stories: loss, interpersonal conflict, external stressors, and mental health concerns. Participants used the greatest number of emotional words when sharing mental health concerns but reported the greatest emotional intensity to stories about interpersonal conflict. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the person telling a negative story reported higher levels of basic emotions (e.g., anger, sadness) compared to the listener, and listeners reported more social emotions (e.g., empathy, sympathy), especially after they had already shared their negative story.
The narrative and self-report data are somewhat consistent with the physiological data. Electrodermal activity, serving as a proxy for physiological arousal, steadily increased over the four stories, suggesting sustained emotional engagement. This increase likely reflects the increases in reported social emotions. Participants were not, however, emotionally overwhelmed by the emotional sharing. Speakers, but not listeners, reported only a minimal increase in basic emotions, and no changes occurred in heart rate variability for either participant. Changes in heart rate variability, a proxy for physiological regulation (Appelhans & Luecken, 2006), may have been unnecessary because participants were not emotionally overextended. Another possibility is perhaps directly tied to the dynamic aspect of this study design, whereby participants were tasked with sharing versus regulating their own experiences.
Together these data illustrate that friends share a range of emotionally salient experiences, and relatable ones like interpersonal conflict elicit the greatest emotional response. At the same time, individuals appear capable of remaining emotionally engaged without becoming dysregulated. The physiological fine-tuning that supports these prosocial interactions should be further explored to learn more about healthy ways to foster emotional bonding.