State emotional clarity and attention to emotion: a naturalistic examination of their associations with each other, affect, and context

ABSTRACT

Despite emotional clarity and attention to emotion being dynamic in nature, research has largely focused on their trait forms. We examined the association between state and trait forms of these two constructs, and how they are related to affect intensity and two contextual variables: Social context and significant event occurrence. Seventy-nine adults recruited from the community reported eight times a day for a week on the extent to which they were clear about their emotions, attended to their emotions, levels of affect intensity, the number of people with whom they were interacting, and whether a significant event had occurred. State clarity and attention were positively associated, demonstrating a moderate relation similar to that of their trait forms. Trait and state attention, but not trait and state clarity, were significantly positively associated. Positive and negative affect were quadratically associated with clarity and attention, with the highest levels of affect intensity reported at high levels of clarity and attention. Clarity and attention were positively associated with increasing numbers of people with whom people were interacting. Attention and clarity were elevated when significant events occurred – especially during positive events. We discuss the findings in the context of functional adaptation theories of emotion.

KEYWORDS:

• Emotional awareness
• emotional clarity
• attention to emotion
• context
• social

Acknowledgements

Authors thank Jordan Davis for her help in managing the study and Hee Yeon Hwang for her help in manuscript preparation.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 The association between trait clarity and trait attention (r(79) = .11, p = .34), fell within the range found by Boden and Thompson (2015).