6 Strategies to Positively Influence Other People’s Emotions

How to improve someone’s mood with interpersonal affect regulation strategies.

Updated June 1, 2026 | Reviewed by Monica Vilhauer Ph.D.

Our everyday interactions often involve managing other people’s feelings. We do it to care for them, make them feel better, and improve our relationships with them. Beyond that, we manage their feelings to persuade them to help us with our feelings in return.

Therefore, the strategies we use to change the feelings of others (known as Controlled Interpersonal Affect Regulation Strategies ) often influence the success of our professional and personal interactions. Fortunately, in the last decade or two, research has begun to unravel the secrets of those emotional persuasion strategies. So, below, we’ll look at the ways you can improve social interactions by persuading others to feel better, too!

Classifying Affect Regulation Strategies

Niven, Totterdell, and Holman (2009) published a foundational article collecting and classifying interpersonal affect regulation strategies. Those strategies were gathered through research on everything from emotion management and care-giving to social support and interpersonal influence. The team also conducted three studies, asking participants about the strategies they used to impact the emotions of others.

Altogether, they obtained 955 examples of interpersonal affect regulation strategies, which were grouped together into categories. At the highest level, strategies were split between those that improved the emotions of others ( Affect-Improving ) and those that made someone’s mood worse ( Affect-Worsening ). From there, the affect-improving strategies were split into the following two categories and six sub-categories:

Acceptance (Diversion) Strategies that distract the individual from their emotions and situation, as a way of indirectly changing their mood. Such strategies can take three different forms:

Positive Engagement Strategies that help the individual pay attention to their emotions and situation as a way of sorting out their feelings and thoughts directly. Such strategies can take three general forms:

Taking Steps to Improve Emotions

As described above, each of the six strategies has its own unique way of improving someone’s emotions. Generally, you can pick one by first deciding whether to divert or engage their emotions. From there, you can select the sub-strategy you are comfortable using, or the one most suitable for the situation.

In my experience, however, it is also possible to blend the strategies into three specific steps. At each step, diversion and engagement strategies can be paired together and used to balance an individual’s emotions. That way, when they get too distracted, you can re-engage them positively—and when engagement becomes too emotionally intense, you can distract them for a break. More specifically, the steps can be balanced as follows:

Niven, K., Totterdell, P., & Holman, D. (2009). A classification of controlled interpersonal affect regulation strategies. Emotion, 9 (4), 498–509. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0015962

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Jeremy Nicholson, M.S.W., Ph.D. , is a doctor of social and personality psychology, with a focus on influence, persuasion, and dating.

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This article is part of the Bringwise Psychology Journal — daily insights on human behavior, mental health, and personal growth.