Previous experiments observe a chain of unkindness: unkindly treated people treat an innocent third party unkindly. As a remedy, it has been proposed that the unkindly treated person engages in emotional regulation by writing a letter to the unkind person. Indeed, subjects who received little money were willing to leave more to a third person when they were writing a letter rather than waiting.

Here, we examine whether emotional regulation is indeed behind this observation. In line with emotional regulation, we find that letter writing also leads to more giving if the person is treated unkindly by being assigned to a frustrating rather than a pleasant job. Being able to write, however, does not affect self-reported happiness differently from having to wait. Even more strikingly, subjects assigned to pleasant jobs also give more when writing rather than waiting. This is not consistent with emotional regulation.

先前的实验观察到一连串的不友好：不友好地对待的人不友好地对待无辜的第三方。作为一种补救措施，已经提出，不友好对待的人通过写信给不友好的人来进行情绪调节。的确，收不到钱的受试者愿意在写信而不是等待时将更多的钱留给第三人。

在这里，我们检查了情绪调节是否确实在此观察之后。与情绪调节相一致，我们发现，如果一个人被分配到一件令人沮丧的工作而不是一件令人愉快的事情上，而对他们不友善地对待，那么写信也会带来更多的付出。但是，能够写作并不会像等待一样对自己报告的幸福产生影响。更惊人的是，分配给愉快工作的科目在写作而不是等待时也能提供更多。这与情绪调节不一致。