Developmental Contributions to Emotional Awareness

ABSTRACT

The Levels of Emotional Awareness Scale (LEAS) has received considerable support as a reliable and valid measure of individual differences in emotional awareness (EA) since the original report involving 40 participants (Lane, Quinlan, Schwartz, Walker, & Zeitlin, 1990). However, the hypothesized developmental nature of EA (conceptualized as a cognitive skill) has thus far only been examined in that 1 early study. Here we report multiple regression analyses on the entire sample of 94 participants who completed the LEAS as part of that original study, as well as the same developmental and affective measures used in the original report. We first observed that different developmental measures, including the Object Relations Inventory and the Sentence Completion Test of Ego Development, accounted for unique portions of the variance in LEAS scores. We also observed that higher LEAS scores were associated with greater within-category variance in the self-reported positive and guilt- and shame-related emotions people reported experiencing on a typical day. Based on these findings, we introduce a 3-dimensional cognitive-developmental framework that LEAS scores plausibly track, including (a) the transition from focusing on external/physical to internal/psychological characteristics, (b) greater conceptual complexity, and (c) self–other differentiation. We then discuss the implications of this framework for understanding the nature of EA and for future research.

Notes

¹ One might be concerned that greater variance could also reflect careless or random responding. However, it should be highlighted that the possibility of careless or random responses is equally consistent with a person selecting items in a low-variance (e.g., selecting 3s on all items) or high-variance (e.g., alternating between selecting 1s and 5s) manner.

² It should be highlighted, however, that a person could, in principle, have higher or lower conceptual complexity even within Level 1 (e.g., making more or less specific conceptual distinctions about bodily feelings that are not explicitly affective), but this would not directly affect LEAS score. On the other hand, one might predict that greater complexity at one level would tend to correlate with greater complexity at another. In support of this possibility, an ecological momentary assessment study demonstrated that higher LEAS scores are in fact associated with greater differentiation in the ratings of somatic symptoms (i.e., lower somatization, r = –.38; Lane, Carmichael, & Reis, 2011).

Additional information

Funding

This study was funded by the National Institute of Mental Health (MH-14235, MH-30929) and the National Science Foundation (BNS-8318984).