Managing emotions, intimacy, and relationships in a volunteer search and rescue group

In this article, the author examines interpersonal emotion management durin g crisis situations. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork with a volunteer sea rch and rescue group, she shows how rescuers managed victims' and families' intense emotions during searches and rescues, which led them to form unusu ally rapid and intimate bonds with these strangers. After the rescues, some victims and families sustained the newly intimate relationship with rescue rs, repaying them with monetary donations and emotions like gratitude, whil e others terminated the relationship altogether The author concludes by dis cussing the effects of interpersonal emotion management on victims' and fam ilies' selves and on their relationship with rescuers. She also extends the theoretical model of the socioemotional economy by incorporating the conce pt of interpersonal emotion management.