Emotional Clarity In Daily Life Is Associated With Reduced Indecisiveness And Greater Goal Pursuit

Indecisiveness, a trait involving difficulty making decisions, is a common symptom of depression.

Depressive disorders are often characterized by diminished emotional clarity, which may contribute to indecisiveness.

Theoretical approaches suggest that understanding one’s emotions is important for effective decision making and goal pursuit.

Therefore, examining the role of emotional clarity in indecisiveness and goal pursuit in daily life may provide insights into the cognitive and motivational difficulties experienced by individuals with depression.

Eckland, N. S., Feldman, R. L., Hallenbeck, H. W., & Thompson, R. J. (2024). Emotional clarity in daily life is associated with reduced indecisiveness and greater goal pursuit. Emotion, 24(7), 1771–1775. https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0001384

Key Points

• Momentary emotional clarity, which fluctuates in daily life, is associated with reduced indecisiveness and greater goal pursuit.
• Trait indecisiveness was significantly negatively associated with momentary emotional clarity, even when controlling for average negative affect.
• During prompts where emotional clarity was higher, there was an increased likelihood of pursuing a goal before the next prompt.
• The associations between emotional clarity, indecisiveness, and goal pursuit were specific to clarity of emotion, not attention to emotion.

Rationale

Emotional clarity, the ability to identify and describe one’s feelings, has been linked to important well-being outcomes and mental health (Eckland & Berenbaum, 2023; Boden & Thompson, 2015).

However, less is known about the processes that may mediate links between emotional clarity and psychological health.

Several theoretical approaches, such as affect-as-information (Clore et al., 2013), suggest emotional clarity may be relevant to decision making and goal pursuit, which contribute to a fulfilling life (Sheldon & Elliot, 1999).

Indecisiveness, a trait involving difficulty making decisions, is a symptom of depression that has been characterized by diminished emotional clarity (Thompson et al., 2015).

Therefore, this study sought to test:

1. If indecisiveness would be associated with diminished momentary emotional clarity
2. If higher indecisiveness would be associated with reduced goal pursuit, while higher emotional clarity would be associated with greater goal pursuit
3. If emotional clarity would moderate the association between indecisiveness and goal pursuit

Leveraging experience sampling methodology allowed examination of these questions in the context of daily life fluctuations.

Understanding the role of emotional clarity in these motivational and cognitive processes that unfold in real-world settings can provide insights into how emotional clarity deficits may contribute to depression.

It can also highlight potential targets for intervention to promote goal pursuit and reduce indecisiveness.

Method

The study used experience sampling methodology in a large sample of adults recruited from the community with varying levels of depression.

Participants completed baseline measures of indecisiveness and then 2 weeks of experience sampling assessing momentary emotional clarity, goal pursuit, and negative affect.

Procedure

Participants first completed a phone screen and baseline measures online. At an in-person lab session, they were interviewed with the SCID-5 and trained on the experience sampling protocol.

For the next 14 days, they were prompted 5 times per day to complete brief surveys on their phone. Surveys occurred randomly within five 3-hour windows each day.

Sample

The sample included 215 adults aged 18-77 (M=44.3). 66% were women.

The racial/ethnic composition was 69.8% White, 19.5% Black, 2.8% Asian, 0.5% Native American, 7.0% multiracial.

Participants were recruited into three groups: current depression (n=48), remitted depression (n=80), and healthy controls (n=87).

Measures

• Indecisiveness Scale: This self-report scale assessed participants’ trait-level tendency toward indecisiveness. Participants rated their agreement with 15 items (e.g., “I find it easy to make decisions”) using a 5-point scale. Higher scores indicate greater indecisiveness.
• Momentary Emotional Clarity: This single item, rated on a 5-point scale (0 = not at all, 4 = a great deal), assessed participants’ clarity about their own feelings at each experience sampling prompt. Higher ratings reflect greater emotional clarity in that moment.
• Goal Pursuit: At each prompt, participants reported whether they had been focused on completing a task or working towards a goal since the last prompt. This binary item (0 = no, 1 = yes) provided a momentary measure of goal-directed behavior.
• Negative Affect: Participants rated their experience of negative emotions at each prompt. These items were used to test the robustness of the associations between emotional clarity, indecisiveness, and goal pursuit, ensuring that negative affect did not account for the observed relationships.

Statistical Analysis

Multilevel modeling was used due to the nested nature of the data (prompts within persons). Linear mixed models tested indecisiveness predicting momentary emotional clarity.

Generalized linear mixed models with a binomial distribution tested indecisiveness and momentary clarity predicting the likelihood of goal pursuit.

Results

Trait indecisiveness was significantly negatively associated with momentary emotional clarity, even when controlling for average negative affect during the experience sampling period.

Momentary emotional clarity predicted an increased likelihood of pursuing a goal before the next prompt. However, trait indecisiveness did not significantly predict the likelihood of goal pursuit in daily life.

The interaction between trait indecisiveness and momentary emotional clarity did not significantly predict goal pursuit, suggesting emotional clarity did not moderate the association between indecisiveness and goal pursuit.

Insight

This study provides evidence that emotional clarity, as it fluctuates in daily life, is linked to both struggles with decision-making and greater engagement with goals.

People who reported more confusion and lack of understanding about their feelings from moment-to-moment were also more likely to report struggles with indecisiveness in general.

Furthermore, in moments when people had greater clarity about their emotions, they were more likely to be working on goals before the next prompt, suggesting emotional clarity may facilitate motivational processes.

Importantly, these findings were specific to emotional clarity (not overlapping constructs like attention to emotion) and robust when accounting for negative affect.

These results extend previous research by examining emotional clarity as a dynamic factor in real-world cognitive and motivational processes.

They highlight the importance of in-the-moment emotional awareness for adaptive functioning.

Future work could examine whether improving emotional clarity through targeted interventions reduces indecisiveness and promotes goal pursuit, especially for those struggling with depression.

Strengths

This study had several methodological strengths, including:

• Assessing key constructs in daily life for ecological validity
• Intensive longitudinal design allowing temporal precedence
• Geographically and clinically diverse community sample
• Testing specificity of emotional clarity over related constructs
• Accounting for negative affect in robustness checks

Limitations

This study also had several methodological limitations, including:

• Use of single item measures for momentary constructs
• No assessment of goal characteristics or situational decision making
• Causality cannot be determined from correlational experience sampling data
• Lack of diversity in gender and race/ethnicity of sample may limit generalizability

More work is needed using experimental designs and assessing boundary conditions (e.g. types of goals, decisions) to establish emotional clarity as a causal factor shaping motivation and decision making.

Samples with more representation of men and racial/ethnic diversity are also needed.

Clinical Implications

These findings suggest that deficits in emotional clarity may be one mechanism through which depression hinders decision-making and goal-directed behavior in daily life.

Interventions aimed at enhancing emotional clarity, either through psychotherapy (e.g. skills training) or self-reflection tools (e.g. journaling), may help people struggling with indecisiveness and goal pursuit, especially in the context of depressive symptoms.

Emotional clarity thus represents a promising target for promoting real-world adaptive functioning. However, more work is needed to establish causal links and develop effective, evidence-based approaches to intervention.

The study also underscores the importance of examining personality and affective factors as dynamic constructs using methods like experience sampling to capture their manifestation in daily life.

References

Primary reference

Eckland, N. S., Feldman, R. L., Hallenbeck, H. W., & Thompson, R. J. (2024). Emotional clarity in daily life is associated with reduced indecisiveness and greater goal pursuit. Emotion, 24(7), 1771–1775. https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0001384

Other references

Boden, M. T., & Thompson, R. J. (2015). Facets of emotional awareness and associations with emotion regulation and depression. Emotion, 15(3), 399–410. https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0000057

Clore, G. L., Wyer, R. S., Dienes, B., Gasper, K., Gohm, C., & Isbell, L. (2013). Affective feelings as feedback: Some cognitive consequences. In Theories of mood and cognition (pp. 27-62). Psychology Press.

Eckland, N. S., & Berenbaum, H. (2023). Clarity of emotions and goals: Exploring associations with subjective well-being across adulthood. Affective Science, 4(2), 401-412. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42761-022-00179-6

Sheldon, K. M., & Elliot, A. J. (1999). Goal striving, need satisfaction, and longitudinal well-being: the self-concordance model. Journal of personality and social psychology, 76(3), 482. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.76.3.482

Thompson, R. J., Kuppens, P., Mata, J., Jaeggi, S. M., Buschkuehl, M., Jonides, J., & Gotlib, I. H. (2015). Emotional clarity as a function of neuroticism and major depressive disorder. Emotion, 15(5), 615. https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0000067

Keep Learning

• How might emotional clarity be cultivated, both in terms of in-the-moment awareness and as a stable trait? What practices, tools, or interventions show promise?
• What boundary conditions might exist for the benefits of emotional clarity on decision making and motivation? When might lack of clarity be adaptive?
• The study examined emotional clarity but not the accuracy of emotion perceptions. How might clarity and accuracy interact in shaping functional outcomes? Can one be clear but inaccurate?
• Depression was examined as a grouping variable here but not directly modeled. What role might depression play in the link between emotional clarity and cognitive-motivational factors? Is lack of clarity a vulnerability factor, symptom, or both?
• How might other individual differences (e.g. personality, emotion regulation, mindfulness) interact with or explain the effects of emotional clarity on decision making and goal pursuit in daily life? What contextual factors matter?