Experience Therapy: How Service Experiences Regulate Everyday Negative Affect

ABSTRACT In today's fast‐paced and high‐pressure society, maintaining emotional well‐being requires effective strategies for managing everyday negative affect. This research examines the role of service experiences in reducing negative affect and introduces experience therapy as a novel strategy for affect regulation. Through a series of studies, we assess the effectiveness of experience therapy and investigate how different service experiences—varying in levels of personal effort involvement and social involvement—contribute to negative affect regulation. The findings demonstrate that experiences requiring high personal effort and social involvement are particularly effective in alleviating negative affect, especially among emotionally stressed individuals. These effects are mediated, respectively, by the underlying psychological mechanisms of increased self‐efficacy and social support. This research advances theoretical understanding of service experiences and negative affect regulation, and offers practical guidance for designing emotionally restorative service encounters and well‐being oriented programs.