Examining the latent structure of emotional awareness and associations with executive functioning and depression

ABSTRACT

Emotional awareness is comprised of dispositions towards and knowledge about one’s emotions. Executive functions (EF) are cognitive processes that organise and guide behaviour towards one’s goals. Both emotional awareness and EF play a role in processes such as emotion regulation and are risk factors for the development and maintenance of depression. Although previous research suggests that aspects of emotional awareness are related to EF, methodological and measurement limitations within the available literature make it difficult to clearly understand how they are associated. In this registered report, we examined the extent to which task-based measures of a specific EF process, shifting, are differentially related to unique facets of emotional awareness (i.e. emotional clarity of type, emotional clarity of source, voluntary attention to emotions, and involuntary attention to emotions), and to what extent EF and emotional awareness are related to depression. Using structural equation modelling, we found evidence that emotional clarity of type was associated with greater shifting cost. Shifting was not associated with any other facet of emotional awareness. Depression was linked to lower emotional clarity of type, higher involuntary attention to emotions, but not poorer EF performance. We discuss how emotional awareness and EF may be uniquely related to depression.

KEYWORDS:

• Emotional awareness
• Emotional clarity
• Executive functioning
• Shifting
• Depression

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Daniel Hlebasko for his assistance in preparing tasks and John DeArvil for his assistance preparing data for analysis.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Shifting ability is theoretically important for flexible emotion regulation because it would allow one to move attention away from emotion-eliciting stimuli or move attention away from interpretations of emotion-eliciting stimuli that are negative towards more neutral or positive reinterpretations. For example, if your boss exhibits a negative facial expression while you are presenting during a meeting, shifting your attention to other environmental stimuli could help you continue with your presentation.

2 Although widely used, some argue against the use of item parcels. In our supplemental materials, we present the main analyses for a second time without the item parcels.