Regulating Emotions for Social Action: Emotional Intelligence’s Role in TPC

ABSTRACT This article describes students’ emotional intelligence (EI) development when participating in the Trans-Atlantic and Pacific Project (TAPP) in two technical and professional communication (TPC) courses. The researchers used modified grounded theory to compile the emotions used for coding students’ weekly reflections, and content analyzed how the TAPP experience affected students’ EI development. Overall, the article emphasizes the importance of supporting TPC students’ EI development in low-stakes environments since EI directly impacted their actions when collaborating.


Introduction
I think I made an assumption about my partner when she didn't respond, because of the brevity of her first email. I assumed that since she didn't say much at all when sending her first communication, that she would proceed with this project doing the bare minimum to complete each step. This was also the vibe I got from her prelearning report, where she said something along the lines of being worried that her partner wouldn't be able to handle advanced vocabulary. I found that a little bit rude, but now I think that was a grammatical mistake. From that experience, I learned to be patient with people of other cultures, especially when they don't have full mastery of English. (quote from student reflection) Even as collaboration and interpersonal communication continue to be hallmarks of technical and professional communication (TPC) courses, the field tends to overlook a key component of those exchanges: namely, the emotions involved in collaboration and interpersonal communication. Perhaps this gap stems from the positivistic residue still apparent in scientific approaches, from a lingering sexism feminizing the emotions, or some other source altogether. Either way, this quite fundamental feature of the human experience tends to take a back seat to other human attributes, like reasoning or sociality. Our emotions, in conjunction with other human attributes, affect how our experiences will go and what actions we will take. Therefore, failing to attend to our emotions can result in an incomplete understanding of how we respond to a professional situation.
In a collaborative setting, such as classroom assignments or workplace projects, emotions can affect the direction a project takes. In the epigraph above, if the student responds with anger after feeling insulted by their partner's "rude" comment, then the project risks stagnation due to the partners not wanting to interact; if the student responds with patience, as this student eventually did, then the project has a chance of reaching completion in a more responsive and fulfilling way.
The study described in this article uncovered the emotions students experienced as they participated in the Trans-Atlantic and Pacific Project (TAPP) in the fall of 2019. TAPP partners students from universities in different parts of the world to collaborate on projects. Our research question consisted of the following: How did students' level of emotional intelligence (EI) affect the actions they

TPC's dynamic relationship with the emotions
While much of TPC avoids the topic of emotions entirely or mentions them quickly and nonsystematically, a few TPC researchers have addressed emotions directly. Weedon (2020), for one, explored "students' emotional responses to writing" (p. 189) when switching to composing professional genres; Kim, Young, Neimeyer, Baker, and Barfield (2008) described their "quest" (p. 337) to design a tactful consent form detailing a trial treatment, while keeping in mind the complex emotions of parents of children with cancer; and Campbell (2021) analyzed emotions through the medium of the physical body (the bodies of nursing students' simulated patients). Additionally, TPC research on emotions in visual design included Richards and David (2005) establishing principles to aid technical communicators in evoking particular emotions based on certain color choices and Zachry (2005) highlighting visual design in conjunction with the emotions through an interview with Donald N. Norman, author of Emotional Design: Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things. Clearly, emotions as a topic in TPC are not completely lacking, as these sources prove. Yet, notably, the focus remains on the emotions of an audience alone, rather than the role emotions play in the technical communicator's drive to communicate/act. This limited focus on audience emotion is problematic since it disregards the co-constructed nature of communication, implying that the technical communicator is emotionless and unaffected by the emotions that are potentially driving their communications and actions. Instead, a new situation always develops from a previous situation, and the emotions play a role in determining that development.
Acknowledging how the emotions impact individuals' choices and experiences takes on a new, more urgent role as we write this article in 2021. It is the second year of COVID-19, and many of us are trying harder than ever to demand that Black lives truly matter. Since Rude (2009) highlighted social change as a key feature of the field of TPC, this formative turn has led to pivotal social justice work in TPC, including Jones (2016), Petersen (2018), Petersen and Walton (2018), Poe and Inoue (2016), Rose (2016), Walton (2016), and Zachry and Spyridakis (2016). Considering that "social injustices require coalitional action, collective thinking, and a commitment to understanding difference" (Walton et al., 2019), recognizing and understanding how emotions play a role in the formation and delivery of that action is a crucial ingredient to making a more just world.
Achieving social justice requires, first, social action, and "emotions serve as motivations to accomplish social action" (Pickering, 2019, p. 238). By researching one intern's experience working in "an intercultural German workplace," Pickering discovered that "emotions can be powerful, motivating factors for negotiating acts of agency within an unfamiliar workplace setting" (2019, p. 250). Hariman and Lucaites (2001) described emotions in relation to a broader community, expressing that "emotional display [sic] are important for democratic life" (p. 5). They then analyzed a photograph of a woman protesting and came to the conclusion that "this representation of dissent provides resources for advocacy and change, but it also is vulnerable to narratives of fragmentation and control" (p. 5), a concern we touch upon at times throughout this article.
While TPC certainly has an indisputable history in prioritizing technical precision over humanistic concerns, social justice scholarship of the last decade has redirected the field to care about issues like human dignity, ethics, power, diversity, inclusion, equity, and privilege. The field is now engaging with these topics in more dynamic and introspective ways than we ever have; yet a key piece, the emotions, needs to be explored further. Probing these personal, human topics, especially in qualitatively sound ways, isn't possible without a better understanding of how the emotions are involved in all parts of the communication process. In response, this article addresses these issues, bringing emotions into the conversation more prominently through our TPC social justice and IC work.

Emotional intelligence: inspirational, yet problematic
While academic fields engage with the emotions in different ways and to varying extents, one of the most prominent approaches that tends to cross disciplines is EI. According to eminent psychologists Mayer, Salovey, and Caruso (2008), EI refers to "reasoning validly about emotions and then using emotions in the reasoning process" (p. 505). EI is "an instance of a standard intelligence that can enrich the discussion of human capacities" (p. 503). Those with a more developed EI "pay attention to, use, understand, and manage emotions, and these skills serve adaptive functions that potentially benefit themselves and others" (p. 503). In this same article, Mayer et al. (2008) provided a brief history of EI and explained Mayer and Salovey's (1997) Four-Branch Model. In general, while many scholars have expanded on EI in various ways, Mayer and Salovey's four-branch model has been compacted to a three-branch model (refer to Figure 1) by some psychology scholars. This revision eliminated the redundant "dimension" of "emotion facilitation" (p. 55) from the original, as explained in-depth by psychology scholars Joseph and Newman (2010). The current three-branch model is one version used today. It is, additionally, the framework we used for analyzing students' reflections in this research study (described in more depth in the Analytical Framework section).
What makes this framework especially appealing for TPC is its recognition of emotions as 1) adaptive, 2) part of both the self and others during a communication situation, and 3) regulatory for action. The first, emotions as adaptive, fits the complexities of various situations technical communicators face in their careers. Depending on the situation, communicators adjust their tone, the chosen genre, the genre's format, and many more elements. Likewise, depending on the situation, the communicator experiences emotions and learns to regulate them appropriately to convince an audience.
Second, this framework is relevant to TPC since it recognizes both the self's and others' emotional responses. Recognizing and understanding one's own emotional responses can be challenging enough, especially when those responses are rooted in, to use Walton et al.'s (2019) wording, "one's own longheld truths" (p. 52). Recognizing and understanding others' emotional responses is even more challenging since the felt sense accompanied by the response is missing. In the spirit of social justice principles, recognizing and understanding someone else's emotions can be a first step toward inclusivity since "inclusivity requires a willingness to decenter oneself" (Walton et al., 2019, p. 52). Additionally, social justice requires collaboration and " [k]ey to this definition [of social justice research] is a collaborative, respectful approach" (Jones, 2016, p. 347). Without an understanding of another's emotional responses, as opposed to an unwarranted assumption, the collaboration can stagnate, preventing necessary change.
Finally, a third appeal of this EI framework for TPC is EI's idea of regulating the emotions. This key part of EI supports the most crucial aspect of the social justice framework: that of effecting positive change through action. As Walton et al. (2019) assert, along with social justice being collective, it is also active. Because emotions lead to certain actions, confronting how emotions affect a situation is necessary if a social justice approach can proceed. Interestingly, Walton et al. (2019) even named specific emotions one may have when starting social justice work: "Technical communicators (and others) drawn to the work of social justice and eager to take collective action against oppression also may be scared of taking risks and intimidated by the limit of their own knowledge" (emphasis added, p. 56). This acknowledgment of technical communicators potentially holding back action because of an emotional response neatly demonstrates our point about the emotions' involvement in follow-up actions. Walton et al. follow up by paraphrasing Capeheart and Milovanovic (2007) as saying that "it is by engaging in activist work" that technical communicators develop "sophisticated, complex understandings of social structure and social justice" (emphasis original, 2019, p. 56). For our purposes here, that engagement starts with identifying the emotions involved in collaborations with others.
This study is not the first in TPC to notice EI's appeal. Poon Teng Fatt (2004), for one, addressed EI development by analyzing differences in EI between undergraduate students from two different universities in Singapore. Poon Teng Fatt ended by calling for more educational programs involving EI, beginning in early childhood and continuing throughout one's education and even into the workplace. Ilyasova (2015) named three assignments (team charters, progress reports, and personal  Mayer and Salovey's (1997) four-branch model as displayed in Mayer et al. (2008). Joseph and Newman (2010) have eliminated the third branch, emotion facilitation, because of "conceptual redundancy and because empirical research has shown a lack of construct validity" (p. 55).
logs) that could be incorporated into engineering curriculum to encourage students' development of EI. These assignments, Ilyasova claimed, would "normalize the inclusion of these skills," give students a vocabulary for having and developing these skills that "shape their work," and overall open a space within the classroom to discuss similar experiences (p. 4). Martin (2004), too, addressed EI and described the potential measurement of EI as "EQ" (comparable to "IQ") (p. 88). Martin ended by arguing that further understanding students' level of EI could help guide teaching practices in business communication courses. Finally, through surveys of 425 undergraduate students, Fall, Kelly, MacDonald, Primm, and Holmes (2013) discovered that students possessing more developed EI experienced less "intercultural communication apprehension" (p. 419) and explained what the findings mean for business educators: namely, that business courses could benefit from implementing EI into their curriculum. Beyond these few sources, TPC has not involved EI much in its scholarship, and, foundationally speaking, this omission seems warranted, as the next paragraphs explain.
While the notion of EI is certainly an appealing one and inspired the direction our research took in this study, it comes with concerns that bring to the surface fundamental incompatibilities between the disciplines of TPC and psychology. The first concern relates to methods and the overall assertion that researchers can measure intelligence. Mayer et al. (2008) assert that only tests like their own Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT) "can best measure EI" (p. 507). This assertion stems from a viewpoint that EI is "a form of intelligence" and "cognitive processing" that "is implicated in emotions, [and] is related to general intelligence" (Fiori & Vesely-Maillefer, 2018, p. 25). From our TPC standpoint, the approach to measure such an abstract and personal experience as the emotions in a quantitative way is problematic. It reinforces the idea that positivist science's "truth" is "out there in the real world -we have only to learn how to see them [facts] accurately or derive them logically" (Miller, 1979, p. 612); this idea thus ignores the dynamic sociality of human interactions. Furthermore, viewing the emotions as methodical and predictable becomes especially dangerous in a capitalist society, where marketing and money not only manipulate consumers but also exploit producers of those goods. To address this first concern, we assert that the concept of EI works apart from the MSCEIT test because we in TPC value qualitative research that accounts for multiple experiences. EI as a concept, as well as its accompanying three levels (described later in the Analytical Framework section), serves as a useful way for students to develop emotion regulation as a necessary skill in their future professional interactions, including IC interactions, while going beyond a quantitative focus and characterization.
Most notably (and most pertinent to this article) is the criticism that EI has ignored cultural differences. Huynh, Oakes, and Grossman (2018), EI scholars themselves, complicate the oftmentioned notion that the emotions and their corresponding processes are simply universal and don't need to be addressed. In important detail, they cited several articles whose studies' findings challenged such an oversimplified view of culture and emotions. This research showed cultural variances between • "interpretations of emotions in facial expressions" • the "perceived" intensities of different emotions • "the attention [study participants] tend to pay to positive vs. negative stimuli and how quickly they recognize positive vs. negative words" • how much the emotions reflect "one's inner self" vs. being "intertwined with the feelings of the larger group" • whether certain emotions are "desirable vs. undesirable" (they offer the example of guilt) • frequency of emotions • strategies for regulating emotions (pp. 116-22).
These culture-specific treatments of emotions highlight the problems with measuring EI in solely quantitative ways. The authors summed up this compilation thus: "Upon reviewing cultural differences across the three-branch cascading model of ability EI (Joseph & Newman, 2010), we observed substantial variability in the meaning, frequency, intensity, and function of various affective processes involved in emotion perception, understanding, and regulation" (p. 124). To honor the cultural complexities that Huynh et al. (2018) pointed out, we relied not on a universal test, but on students' reflections (as we detail later in the methods section). This tactic gave us contextual cues so that we could more accurately assign emotions when a test wouldn't allow for that variance. In other words, our chosen method (qualitatively analyzing students' reflections) welcomed cultural differences. Confronting these concerns, then, by altering the typical method used when analyzing EI to account for cultural differences, provides TPC a way to analyze the use of emotions in professional situations.

Background: trans-Atlantic and Pacific project
The collaboration that took place for this study involved two TPC courses that participated in TAPP. As a program that pairs students located at different universities worldwide, TAPP presents students with many opportunities to practice skills they'll take into their professions, including collaboration, IC, time management, and more. These transnational partners complete a project together, thus "establish[ing] links between students in different countries so that each learns from the other" (The Trans-Atlantic & Pacific Project, 2020). The original project took place in 1999 with students in classes taught by Bruce Maylath and Sonia Vandepitte and consisted of one set of students creating a document and the other translating it. However, since TAPP's inception, it has grown to include about 50 instructors and hundreds of students each academic year. This growth has led to the project taking on many different versions of collaboration even beyond the original approach. The two collaborations described in this article worked in the following ways: Collaboration One: One group of students created a set of instructions, and their transnational partners tested and translated the instructions from English to Spanish.
Collaboration Two: One group created job materials (resume, cover letter, online site, and memo), and their transnational partners wrote argumentative essays addressing a topic of their choice; they then provided feedback on each other's documents.
Throughout the two collaborations, each student wrote four reflections (one per week) while participating in TAPP. The assignment prompt for the reflections (Supplementary File 1) asked students to reflect on three main areas: cultural self-awareness, exchanges with their TAPP partner, and skills used/gained. The reflection assignment also asked students to reflect on what they learned about IC and collaboration in general. The reflections were graded as part of course credit, and students gave the instructors/researchers permission to use their reflections for research purposes. Initially, through the reflections, we wanted to find out how students viewed and/or approached TAPP projects. Soon after reading students' reflections, we discovered that, even though our courses and tasks differed, the students' inclination to express how they felt throughout the TAPP experience did not. In other words, all of the four reflections each student submitted indicated how they felt at various moments throughout the four weeks. This surprising and consistent trend set in motion this research project and pointed to a focus on emotions and action as key contributors to each student's approach to the project and an outcome of each student's collaborative experience.

Methods
To uncover which emotions contributed to students' experiences and how those emotions led to social action when communicating with transnational partners, we content analyzed student reflections from fall of 2019. Prior to assigning the reflections, our university's institutional review board (IRB) deemed the project exempt from IRB review. We then proceeded to ask students to write four reflections over the course of four weeks as they participated in TAPP. To ensure that students avoided waiting until the last week to complete all four reflections, we gave them about ten minutes of class time to start each reflection, thereby ensuring that the reflections represented their progression each week. Once we received all of the reflections, we followed a three-phase process for coding and analyzing the students' work. As the steps below make apparent, we followed a modified grounded theory approach; rather than using an existing framework, we interpreted the data based on patterns we noticed from the reflections.

Phase 1: emotion coding
We first needed to identify specific emotions apparent in this particular situation so we knew for which emotions to code in the reflections. To do so, we relied on a modified grounded theory approach and used what Saldaña (2016) calls "Emotion Coding" (p. 124) as our first cycle of coding. This method "is appropriate for virtually all qualitative studies, but particularly for those that explore intrapersonal and interpersonal participant experiences and actions, especially in matters of social relationships, reasoning, decision-making, judgment, and risk-taking" (p. 125). As our research was, indeed, studying the emotional responses to social relationships, this method worked particularly well for our project. We randomly chose five of Instructor 1ʹs student reflections and five of Instructor 2ʹs (four reflections per student for a total of forty reflections). We then read through them individually and wrote down the emotions we observed sentence-by-sentence. At this stage, if some sentences conveyed more than one emotion, we noted that. Importantly, we noted emotions explicitly stated by the student (for instance, "I was excited for this project" would be coded as excitement) and emotions implied ("I couldn't wait to start this project" was also coded as excitement). We then met to compare our compiled list of emotions.
To compile the emotions we had individually coded from the first ten students' four reflections each, we color coded our respective additions (Instructor 1 in red; Instructor 2 in blue) into a table. For instance, if Instructor 1 had identified happiness as a code, we added the word "happiness" in red to the table. If Instructor 2 had also identified happiness as a code, we added it within the same cell as Instructor 1ʹs, but in blue.
At this stage, we decided that In Vivo coding (i.e., utilizing language/terms used by participants) would play a role in our coding process. If a student explicitly stated a certain emotion, then we honored that expression and coded it as such. Our main reason for doing so goes back to Saldaña's assertion that "In Vivo Coding is appropriate for virtually all qualitative studies, but particularly for [. . .] studies that prioritize and honor the participant's voice" (2016, p. 106). Considering the students in our study were detailing emotions felt throughout the project without us researchers asking for that information, we felt that their assertions represented genuine feelings about the project; we, thus, often coded statements based on the explicit emotions stated by the students themselves. However, because "[s]ometimes the participant says it best; sometimes the researcher does" (Saldaña, 2016, p. 109), we didn't rely solely on In Vivo Coding. As mentioned previously, sometimes an emotion was apparent, but expressed implicitly.

Phase 2: grouping related emotions
Once we had added all of our codes to the table, we realized that we needed to cut down our list to make the coding process more manageable. We began by grouping similar emotions together "into outlined clusters that suggest categories of belonging" (Saldaña, 2016, p. 108), like happiness and excitement. We then differentiated between emotions and characteristics, which eliminated more of the terms we had ascribed to the sentences. We viewed characteristics as something one chooses to imbue, as something an individual could choose to display (like stubbornness, effort, niceness, and dedication); we viewed emotions, on the other hand, as more of an immediate, uncontrolled response to the situation described (like happiness, surprise, frustration, and stress). The reflections format perhaps lessened the intensity of the students' responses since "we experience emotions before we formulate the words to articulate them. And even after the experience, the participant is challenged in emotional recall because some 'affective experiences are fleeting'" (Saldaña, 2016, paraphrasing Erik Fisher, p. 127). However, in the reflection assignment sheets, the researchers did not ask students specifically to describe their emotions; they voluntarily offered the information.
In the end, we determined our coding based on these first forty, pilot reflections. After grouping like emotions and eliminating many of the table's codes that ended up being characteristics rather than emotions, we arrived at these eleven codes: happiness (and excitement), pleasant surprise, understanding (including empathy, curiosity, and compassion), patience, hope (including optimism and anticipation of the future), confidence, support (including vulnerability and trust), worry (including anxiety, stress, hesitation, and feeling overwhelmed), disappointment, confusion, and frustration. Examples of each of the emotions coded are available in Table 1 as well as throughout the results section.
As for the codes comprising grouped emotions (happiness, understanding, hope, support, and worry), we viewed them as closely relating to one another because of students' expressions of them contextually. For instance, the support grouping (with vulnerability and trust) tied to students accommodating their partner while simultaneously giving up something of or changing something For me, personally when she emailed us, I was just a little bit shocked at how great her grammar and style was. While I did know that she was studying English as her major, the biases in me, were kind of shocked. Once I realized that I was acting shocked, I had to check myself and question why I thought that way. It made me look at my outlook in life differently and help analyze the projections I made toward her and future projections that may occur like that because of unconscious bias. Understanding From this experience I learned that inclusive language is very important because sometimes people's comprehension level may not be on the same as you. There are some jokes and phrases that cannot be translated in the international business world and because of this experience, it made me aware of cultural and language differences of people around the world. This helped me gain an understanding when it is appropriate on when to use what tone and it reinforced that code switching can sometimes possibly help when communicating with outside sources. Patience However, the bad news is that we have yet to hear from [Partner]. I sent an initial e-mail after class last week providing an update, but there wasn't a response. Today, my group member told me to send another e-mail in case she forgot to reply, I kept the e-mail friendly and brief. I am still very excited to be in communication with [Partner], because intercultural communication is important and this is a great learning experience. My group and I discussed remaining patient as there is a difference in time zone and of course, she has to translate every e-mail. I am still hopeful we will have a good scholarly relationship. Trust We are still waiting for [Name] our TAPP partner to provide us with her translations however we are in communication with her and know it will come relatively soon. As of now we are in a good place with where we are regarding our project. I am very happy with how our communication regarding our contributions have continued throughout this assignment, we have all been doing a very good job at replying quickly to each other so that we are all able to get working on our tasks. I think that it has worked out well; we are all relatively relaxed and have trust in each other, in that we will complete the task on time. Anticipation In the future, regardless of the field, we will need to be able to communicate effectively between cultures. This will become a fundamental part of society and be a requirement for almost all fields.

Confidence
To reflect from this week, I feel like I am more confident and comfortable to interact and even make the first move to initiate communication with my TAPP partner, [Name]. Stress I'm pretty stressed about this upcoming week, along with the report we have to send out our surveys and all of my other classes have things due as well. I also have drill that weekend so my entire weekend is already booked. Disappointment I replied to [Partner's] e-mail about looking over her newly revised essay. I reread the essay, and approved her edits. Since then, she did not reply. She also never got back to me about the job package that I sent a couple weeks ago. I realize that I should have sent a follow up e-mail asking her if she got the job package (which I looked back and made sure I sent). I know that in the pre-learning report, she mentioned that she has computer problems so maybe that was the case.

Confusion
For the first few weeks of the TAPP Project, I heard nothing from back from my partner [Name] after I sent her my pre-learning report. I was confused about the circumstances of the project as a result of my mono absences, so we had no contact until I emailed her after talking to [Instructor] about how to proceed. Frustration This week, I learned that I have to be more understanding when working in a transcultural team. When our TAPP partner asked me to send her a translation brief, I was a little frustrated because I was already busy that day and did not think I would have time to complete another task. Instead of being upset, I looked at the translation brief instructions and realized that it was simple and would not take much time. I need to be more understanding and not get frustrated before looking into a task requested of me.
about themselves (meeting each other halfway, in other words). The understanding grouping, for another example, consisted of students negotiating how their partner was similar to or different from themselves; they wanted to know more about them for the purpose of feeling a connection with them. The term we chose for each grouping represents the term most often stated by students.

Phase 3: collaborative coding
Once we had identified emotions/codes specific to this TAPP situation, we randomly chose two students (not ones already coded in Phase 1) to test a) that the codes were encompassing the main emotions felt by students throughout the collaboration and b) for inter-rater reliability. We separately read through two students' reflections (four reflections per student for a total of eight reflections) and each used the established codes to choose two emotions (the most prominent) to represent each reflection. We decided to code for just two emotions for two reasons: to make the coding process more manageable and because some of the reflections were quite short, so coding for three emotions would have meant forcing an emotion that wasn't fully apparent and thus lessening the integrity of the coding process. We then compared the four codes (two from each researcher) using what Smagorinsky (2008) called "collaborative coding," where researchers "reach agreement on each code through collaborative discussion rather than independent corroboration" (p. 401). This arrangement led to "an insightful reading of the data because each decision is the result of a serious and thoughtful exchange about what to call each and every data segment" (p. 402). Likewise, collaborative coding necessitated clearly defining and differentiating each emotion used. While we had agreed on the majority of codes, we at times differed, but collaborative coding allowed us to talk through our rationale and make adjustments to reach agreement. We discussed disagreements by referring back to the original text (what specific emotions the student had stated), thinking about the context (what the student had described up to that point and what tone they had used), and considering the follow-up actions described by students (what next steps they identified because of an emotional response they had experienced). Ultimately, between the four codes for each reflection, we decided that each reflection needed to have at least one code shared by the researchers to account for inter-rater reliability since reaching a certain level of agreement "confirms the reliability of the codes in that two independent raters produce roughly the same results when putting the system into effect" (Smagorinsky, 2008, p. 401). On the other hand, we allowed for the second code for each reflection to differ to account for the complexity of the topic of emotions. This process means that each reflection had four codes attached to it, but at least one (and sometimes both) repeated, so each reflection had two or three codes/ emotions attached to it. Since our codes list worked well at encompassing the students' expressed emotions throughout the TAPP collaboration, we moved forward with our process of using each reflection as a whole for our unit of analysis and coding collaboratively. We proceeded to code and content analyze 20, randomly selected student reflections (10 from each researcher's class), making up 50% of students enrolled in the researchers' respective courses. This process resulted in an analysis of 80 reflections (20 students wrote four reflections each).

Analytical framework
To analyze students' reflections, we relied on the three "cascading" levels of EI, as displayed in Figure 1: emotion perception, emotion understanding, and emotion regulation, all of which consist of intrapersonal awareness, as well as interpersonal awareness. The first, emotion perception, refers to "the ability to identify emotions in oneself and others, as well as in other stimuli, including voices, stories, music, and works of art" (Huynh et al., 2018, quoting Brackett et al., 2006. The second, emotion understanding, involves, at a micro level, understanding "how we experience, understand, and represent our emotions" and, at a macro level, being aware of "how emotions change over time, which emotions are appropriate in certain situations, and how emotions differ from one another" (p. 118). Finally, the third level, emotion regulation, consists of "the processes by which individuals influence which emotions they have, when they have them, and how they experience and express these emotions" (Huynh et al., 2018, quoting Gross, 1998. Notably, this third stage, the most advanced, involves the dynamic element of acting upon ("influenc[ing]") the emotions felt. As the next section reveals, the reflections exhibited evidence of a range of those levels and how students' EI affected the actions they took in an IC situation.
The most prominent emotion described throughout the TAPP collaboration was understanding. It was the leading emotion in the first three weeks and came in second the last week (refer to Figure 3). Students who expressed understanding made statements like the following: I realized that I should be aware that English is not her native language. As a result, I will keep in mind that I need to use concise but simple language when I communicate with her. I tend to use long sentences that would be readable to native English speakers, but these sentences may be more difficult to navigate for people from other countries.
I initially ran into some delays with receiving my partners' documents but was able to clear that up fairly quickly. Nevertheless, I do believe that it took some general understanding on my part and not simply assuming that they were procrastinating or simply didn't want to do the peer-review.
As these examples display, students reacted with a sense of understanding by recognizing the situation (or potential situation) of their partner. They considered writing style, time zone differences, and personality traits, respectively. For the former writer, the emotion of understanding led to actions of changing one's own writing patterns, thereby "influenc[ing]" their partner's emotions (presumably) -from one of frustration and confusion to one of understanding. For the latter writer, understanding led to the action of giving their partner the benefit of the doubt, which led to an emotional shift, or emotion regulation -from potential anger in "assuming that they were procrastinating" to the sense of understanding. The emotional productivity captured in the student's statement shows how the trajectory of the project shifted -from a potentially failed one that could halt the project to one of completion and, perhaps, fulfillment. Both examples, then, display emotion regulation in the EI sense and result in further experience and, presumably, comfort with collaborative interactions. The next most prominent emotion, happiness (which included excitement), remained relatively high for the first three weeks and then shot up in the last week to take the lead as the most prominent emotion. One student said, "Overall, I thought having Tapp [sic] partners was a cool experience as it's always interesting to know how people live in other parts of the world." Another student said, "This project taught me a lot about collaborative work and overall, I feel more comfortable with intercultural communication and collaboration." A final student even sent her partner a thank you e-mail to provide what she described as "important closure" necessary when communicating interculturally. As these examples demonstrate, the appreciation these students felt, both for their transnational partners' feedback and for having the opportunity to participate in this novel project, led to their sense of happiness. Ending the project on such a high note may encourage the students to action in the ways of volunteering on future projects involving IC, rather than shying away from an otherwise unfamiliar and potentially intimidating situation, especially in higher-stakes situations within a career.
Despite all students sharing examples of happiness, these students displayed varying levels of EI. The first student implied happiness ("cool experience"), but either had an under-developed EI or didn't make their level of EI development apparent: They did not name the specific emotions they felt throughout the process (perception), did not explain how their emotions impacted the process (understanding), and did not describe how they altered their actions because of what they were feeling (regulation). The second example, however, displays the student's emotion perception since she explicitly named the emotion she felt ("more comfortable"). The latter student reached emotion regulation by being compelled to act immediately -by sending a thoughtful note to thank her partner for the exchanges. The satisfaction felt, then, prompted additional action -beyond that of the assignment -that could potentially expand the students' personal and/or professional network. Support, too, stood out as a prominent emotion expressed throughout all four weeks and, similar to the previous emotions, at times gave insight as to students' EI. Again, this category relates to acknowledgment of needing to give something of one's self to make the partnership work. For instance, one student described, quite in-depth, how they provide support to a quieter partner: Week 1 Week 2 Week 3 Week 4  In my culture, we're a high context culture, thus, it means that we rely heavily on context when communicating with others. Being too direct can cause someone to be embarrassed. With that in mind, I think it influences the word choice I use when I communicate with my teammates. For example, when I sense that someone in my group was confused, I took a passive rout [sic] and said 'Are we all on the same page' to direct the situation to everyone. Asking them directly would have caused them to feel embarrassed.
In this case, the student perceived an emotion in a partner (confusion), understood what that emotion would mean for their partner (embarrassment), and thus regulated their own actions (reworded how they said something) to avoid putting their partner in an unwanted spotlight. This student, then, displayed a developed EI in a rather socially aware way. Another student described support by explaining the need to be "less authoritarian" and to even "ask for help" when needed in IC situations. This portrayal of giving in to vulnerability for the sake of the partnership displays clear emotion regulation. Rather than expressing how his transnational partner needed to change and adjust to him, this student introspectively analyzed how he could meet his partner halfway and thus displayed a quite mature EI.
The next emotion, frustration, steadily increased from week one to week four. Early in the project, some of the frustrations stemmed from the time zone difference, non-overlapping semester dates, and problems making initial contact with TAPP partners, the latter of which is displayed here: Unfortunately, we have struggled to make contact with our TAPP partner, but hopefully trying a different email address will lead to success. Although it's frustrating, this experience so far has shown that it's important to be flexible and adaptable especially when you're interacting with people from different cultures and in different parts of the world.
By explicitly describing the situation as "frustrating," this student is displaying emotion perception; by trying a different e-mail to account for the physical distance presented by IC, this student shows how he came to understand the emotion and what he must do in response to it; and by describing his takeaway of what that feeling means for general IC situations ("it's important to be flexible and adaptable"), he shows emotion regulation. Overall, this student took productive action because of feeling frustrated, thus advancing the project despite setbacks, and he showed EI at all three stages.
The feeling of disappointment, unfortunately, often (not always) indicated the student was at an earlier stage of EI. Some of the reflections displaying disappointment described the student passing responsibility to a classmate/inaction ("In the end [Classmate] was the one who connected with [Partner] over Skype"), making assumptions about their partner ("My theory is that it's somewhat intimidating to communicate with a native speaker in a language that you yourself are not fluent in"), and giving up, including not wanting to even write about it ("I don't have too much to say here"). In these cases, students' feelings of disappointment led to a lost opportunity that prevented them from fully experiencing the facets of communicating interculturally as practice for upcoming professional situations. They seemed to not perceive, understand, or regulate their own emotional response to the IC situation, noticeable through a lack of a stated emotion and the lack of follow-up social action. Neither could they perceive, understand, nor regulate their TAPP partner's emotions. Since IC has the added challenges of physical and conceptual distance, developing one's EI through awareness of another person's emotions proves even more difficult in this situation; however, these added challenges make practicing these scenarios prior to experiencing them professionally even more crucial.
Another emotion, worry, showed up in week one and then dropped significantly for the remainder of the weeks. Timing, upcoming life events, the novelty of TAPP, and language differences aided in producing these uncertain feelings. This example demonstrates the latter concern: Currently, my biggest worry is that something will get mixed up in translation and a group member or I will end up offending [Partner]. It is in my best effort to come across as friendly as possible so [Partner] can distinguish a mistake if one is made.
This student showed emotion perception by naming the emotion felt ("worry"); however, whether she reaches emotion understanding and then regulation is debatable (we would need more information to definitively choose one or the other). On the one hand, she is concerned about "offending" her partner (she doesn't want to upset them), which shows emotion perception; she understands what that would mean (presumably, future problems with the collaboration); and she takes action to avoid this complication ("come across as friendly as possible"). On the other hand, she assumes that she herself will be the one guilty of offending and that her partner will not only be the one offended, but, presumably, be the one to get upset by it. Displacing emotions -in this case, the writer ignoring and not accepting her own emotion of discomfort and shifting the focus to her partner's (potentially nonexistent) emotion of anger -proves to be a concerning tactic when considering EI for IC. Rather than understanding her own feelings, the student shifted the emotions to her partner and thus relied on assumptions that groups dissimilar from herself are easily offended and prone to contestation. By not understanding her own emotions, the student then seems to be projecting inaccurate emotions to her partner.
Overall, our results indicate that, through the IC situation of TAPP, students experienced certain emotions that often revealed their level of EI and that played a role in the actions they took when responding to an unfamiliar IC situation that they will most likely face in the future. Many students expressed emotions that led to project-altering actions, including adjusting their writing style to consider their audience, improving their professional documents, avoiding jumping to conclusions, and self-reflecting, to name a few. While students didn't always express having a positive experience with their transnational partner, many still conveyed EI development for themselves, if not having the full opportunity to develop their interpersonal EI. Other students revealed emotions (implicitly or explicitly) that halted the project due to an under-developed EI that displayed discomfort and/or inexperience with grappling with their own emotions, especially during unfamiliar IC situations. These strong feelings can lead to making inaccurate assumptions about one's partner and cause harm not just to projects in higher stakes situations like their professions, but to their overall perception of people who are different from themselves. Making this conversation on emotions more explicit in the TPC classroom, then, proves necessary, as the next section will expand upon.

Implications and future research
The findings of this study show that students' EI affected whether and how they took action in a collaborative situation. Specific emotions didn't necessarily lead to a predictable action every time; instead, the subsequent actions depended on students' EI level. These findings lead to an important implication for TPC: Explicitly discussing emotions in the classroom is necessary to help students gain better self-awareness, which is particularly useful in collaborative academic or workplace environments. A human's initial response to stimuli, including a new experience, is through the emotions. Experiencing emotions felt during unfamiliar, collaborative experiences could help students recognize those powerful feelings and come to understand from where they stem, perhaps from deep-seated and inaccurate assumptions about other people. Recognizing and confronting these emotions could lead to students better tackling difficult situations that could otherwise halt a project. Their careers will most likely involve collaboration in some way, so being able to practice perceiving, understanding, and regulating their emotions prior to high-stakes situations like those encountered in the workplace is ideal.
For a practical application, when assigning a reflection, the instructor could simply add a line that asks, "How did you feel about the collaboration?" A follow-up application could be setting aside class time for students to discuss their responses to that question and asking why they think they had those feelings. These classroom exercises would help strengthen both awareness of the student's own emotions and social awareness of other people's emotions. This strengthened self-awareness could increase students' confidence, adaptability, and sense of trustworthiness. Socially, they might develop more empathy and patience, better communicate with collaborators, and manage conflict in a way that keeps projects moving forward. Ultimately, a more developed EI could make more complex projects and processes possible in both academia and industry.
The findings from this study call for important future research directions, including how EI affects professional relationships between technical communicators and other professionals in industry, how TPC students' EI develops over the course of their education and career, and how EI varies between cultures and how that variance affects technical documents. Considering that all people are impacted by various forms of TPC, knowing the answers to these questions about EI would be incredibly informative for our field and affect the decisions we make in the documents we produce.
Perhaps even more pressing is a future research project connecting EI to social justice more directly. Considering TPC's investment in effecting social action for justice, studying how the emotions affect a rhetor's communication process and actions is crucial. Understanding why one is experiencing certain emotions and how they affect subsequent actions is an important step toward communicating interculturally for social justice purposes. Self-awareness can lead to important selfreflection that pinpoints assumptions made of groups deemed different from oneself. Classroom activities, like reflections, class discussions, readings and even rhetorical analyses using a social justice framework, could support this process and provide the materials necessary for researching this EI and social justice connection. Guided by the instructor, students could work through the emotions that arise when faced with uncomfortable, collaborative situations. Students might discover intercultural similarities with one another, whether those are shared interests, shared goals, or even shared emotions felt during collaborative situations. They might also discover intercultural differences; discussing emotions in the classroom and how emotions affect one's actions might lead to the recognition that the emotions and emotional processes, as well as so many other human experiences, aren't universal. Making the emotions/actions relationship a conscious one, then, encourages students to consider from where (e.g., family upbringing, media, education materials, etc.) they've attained their views on those whose backgrounds differ from their own. Without these guided classroom practices, any negative activity associated with someone different than oneself can be perceived as confirmation bias or reinforcement of a stereotype. Pointing out these differences would perhaps open the door to further conversations about difference and lead to students accepting other people for their intercultural differences -both physical and conceptual -rather than forcibly, adamantly attempting to transform them as copies of themselves.

Conclusion
This article uncovered the EI TPC students conveyed in their reflections while participating in TAPP. Over the course of four weeks and revealed through reflections, students expressed feeling happy, pleasantly surprised, understanding, patient, support, hopeful, confident, worried, disappointed, confused, and frustrated. The reflections displayed how some students emotionally worked through the TAPP collaboration and revealed how their emotions led to concrete actions that advanced the project. For other students, their emotions held them back, often due to an under-developed EI in collaborative situations, which led to no action and inaccurate assumptions about their partner. These varying degrees of EI displayed in the reflections calls for an explicit conversation in the classroom about how emotions affect action. Without these conversations, students' EI risks stagnation, particularly when communicating interculturally. From a social justice standpoint, we want students to leave our TPC classes eager to communicate -in general, but also specifically with those who differ culturally from themselves -in the interests of reaching shared goals.
While a limitation of this study is that students' emotional states were self-reported, they did present those emotions unsolicited; the instructors had not explicitly asked for that information. Another limitation might be that some of the implicit statements could have been coded as a different emotion. For instance, having patience with a partner may also mean trusting them. However, we coded for the most prominent emotions by respecting our students' wording in their reflections and by collaboratively coding to ensure that one researcher wasn't alone in viewing a statement as indicative of a specific code.
The TPC classroom in conjunction with TAPP serves as a low-stakes space for students to familiarize themselves with emotions felt during collaborative experiences and thus develop their EI. Bringing EI more strongly to the classroom would allow students to recognize that part of themselves and be able to represent their company with emotional maturity and professional sophistication. Additionally, bringing EI into the classroom would allow students to practice recognizing the emotions in other people, and they could present that growth in the job market when collaborating with colleagues and clients, including situations involving IC. Understanding which emotions are present in IC situations and why one is experiencing them could lead to an awareness of one's held assumptions and an analysis of where those assumptions stem from. Recognizing those roots could allow us to think more complexly about IC dynamics by valuing differences and the complex nature of one another.