Conceptions of emotional intelligence frequently involve sets of abilities related to one’s own and others’ emotions. Among the abilities proposed to comprise emotional intelligence, abilities related to perceiving emotions, understanding emotions, and using/regulating emotions are some of the most frequently cited (Salovey et al. 1995; Mayer et al. 2002; Joseph and Newman 2010). Emotional clarity is the ability to identify and describe one’s emotional experiences (Gohm and Clore 2000; Salovey et al. 1995) and is thought to encompass one’s meta-perceptions about their emotions (Boden and Thompson 2017). The researchers argue that emotional clarity should be considered an integral ability for emotional intelligence and that measures of state emotional clarity will give the greatest insights into one’s access to that ability in daily life.

Like emotional intelligence, emotional clarity has received attention across disciplines in psychology, including, but not limited to, clinical, cognitive, personality, social, and industrial/organizational psychology. Though emotional clarity can be understood as a standalone construct, it is also a dimension of several multidimensional constructs, including alexithymia (i.e., a condition characterized by difficulty identifying and describing feelings; Bagby et al. 1994), emotional awareness (Boden and Thompson 2015; Eckland and Berenbaum 2021), and sometimes emotional intelligence (or “perceived emotional intelligence”; Salovey et al. 2002). The broad interest in emotional clarity is unsurprising given its importance for processing emotional experiences (Gohm 2003) and links to several healthy outcomes (e.g., subjective well-being; Gohm and Clore 2002).

2. Emotional Clarity and Emotional Intelligence Ability

Several frameworks of emotional intelligence ability, including Mayer et al.’s (2002) four-branch ability model and Joseph and Newman’s (2010) cascading model, cite emotion perception and understanding as key emotional intelligence abilities. Emotion perception has been defined as the ability to recognize emotions in the self, others, and in other stimuli such as art and media (Mayer et al. 2002). Emotion understanding has been defined as the ability to understand and appreciate emotional information, such as how more complex emotions may be blends of more simple emotions and how emotions vary in intensity (Mayer et al. 2002). As a construct, emotional clarity is relevant to both perceiving and understanding emotions. Emotional clarity is thought to involve creating a clear mental representation of one’s emotional experience based on perceived stimuli from the body and external context, which can then be translated from a mental representation into a verbal representation (Hoemann et al. 2021). To be emotionally clear is to have perceived and understood one’s emotions. Despite conceptual overlap, measures of emotional clarity (most frequently measured with the Trait Meta-Mood Scale [TMMS]; Salovey et al. 1995) and ability-based emotional intelligence (often assessed by the Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test [MSCEIT]; Mayer et al. 2002) have tenuous links. Studies find that emotional clarity is either uncorrelated (Lopes et al. 2003) or positively correlated only to a small degree (Koven and Max 2014) with total MSCEIT scores, MSCEIT perceiving, and MSCEIT understanding scores. Emotional clarity, as it is typically measured through self-report, has sometimes been labeled as “perceived” emotional intelligence (Salovey et al. 2002). Perceived emotional intelligence has also been critiqued as being difficult to separate from personality, though some work demonstrates that personality variables account for large amounts of the variance in performance in emotional intelligence ability tests (Fiori and Antonakis 2011; Schulte et al. 2004). There are several possible explanations for this lack of coherence among self-report and performance-based measures. In the MSCEIT, emotion perception is tested with two tests: identifying emotions in pictures of faces (the Faces test) and identifying emotions conveyed through pictures of artwork and landscapes (the Pictures test). The understanding facet of emotional intelligence is also measured with two tests: identifying emotions that are intensifications of other emotions (the Changes test) and identifying emotions that are blends of other emotions (the Blends test). Though the emotion perception facet is defined as being the ability to recognize emotions in the self, others, and other stimuli, the MSCEIT only measures the ability to recognize emotions on static faces and in stimuli such as landscapes. Likewise, the emotion understanding tests do not test the ability to identify changes in intensity or blends of emotions in the self. However, this issue is not unique to the MSCEIT. Other tests of emotion perception (e.g., the Geneva Emotion Recognition Test; Schlegel et al. 2014) and emotion understanding (e.g., the Situational Test of Emotion Understanding; MacCann and Roberts 2008) similarly focus on recognizing the emotions of others or identifying how one “should” feel given a hypothetical situation, rather than testing one’s ability to perceive and understand their own emotions. Accurate emotion recognition and clearly perceiving one’s own emotions are modestly linked, but are by no means the same skill (Eckland et al. 2018). Thus, within the current literature on emotional intelligence abilities, a gap exists between what one may know about identifying emotions (i.e., what is measured) versus the experience of identifying emotions in oneself (i.e., what is not measured). These emotional intelligence ability tests likely reflect one’s declarative knowledge about emotion categories, but not necessarily one’s procedural knowledge of identifying their own emotions. This is further underscored by work showing that MSCEIT scores are more strongly related to crystallized, versus fluid, intelligence (Farrelly and Austin 2007), indicating that the MSCEIT may be drawing upon acquired knowledge rather than pure ability. Fiori et al. (2014) also found that the MSCEIT tests better discriminate persons with low emotional intelligence, but are likely not challenging enough to persons that are high in emotional intelligence. As evidenced by clinical interventions to increase emotional clarity (Linehan 2015), a conceptual understanding of emotions can be used as a building block for the more challenging skill of perceiving and understanding one’s own emotions as they unfold in day-to-day life. The MSCEIT and other tests of emotional intelligence ability are measures of maximal emotional intelligence performance (i.e., it is a performance measure given under “ideal” conditions) rather than typical performance, which relates to one’s ability/access to abilities in everyday life. Thus, the current emotional intelligence ability measures are likely testing crystalized emotion knowledge, but not how well a person can access, use, and apply that knowledge in the real world. This is also illustrated by Montgomery et al.’s (2010) study of autistic young adults, who did not score significantly different from neurotypical young adults on total MSCEIT emotional intelligence ability, but self-reported significantly lower emotional intelligence. In contrast, measures of emotional clarity focus on one’s perception of emotions in the self under typical conditions (i.e., trait measures) or under current contextual demands (i.e., state measures and states in daily life).

3. Emotional Clarity as an Indicator of Fluid Emotional Intelligence Ability

Fiori and Vesely-Maillefer (2018), Fiori et al. (2021), drawing on the Cattell-Horn-Carol model of crystallized and fluid intelligence (Schneider and McGrew 2012), proposes a distinction between crystallized emotional intelligence ability and fluid emotional intelligence ability. Crystallized emotional intelligence ability is what is captured in tests, such as the MSCEIT, that draw upon declarative knowledge about emotions, whereas fluid emotional intelligence ability involves the processing of emotional information. Ortony et al. (2007) proposed that a fluid component of emotional intelligence is necessary and should include experiential measures rather than measures that more exclusively reflect declarative knowledge about emotions. Emotional clarity, reflecting one’s ability to a create a clear mental (and verbal) representation of their emotional experiences, should be considered an indicator of fluid emotional intelligence ability. Empirical evidence suggests that emotional clarity facilitates the healthy processing of emotional experience. Higher emotional clarity has been linked to faster processing of negative emotional information (Fisher et al. 2010). Lower emotional clarity has been linked to indicators of poorer emotional information processing such as less prosocial moral decision making (Koven 2011), reduced meaning in life in the face of existential threat (Abeyta et al. 2015), and difficulty using affective information to inform judgment (Gohm 2003). Research has also unambiguously linked trait emotional clarity to a host of psychological processes and outcomes that one would expect a facet of emotional intelligence to be linked to. Low trait emotional clarity has been linked to several indicators of psychopathology, including depression (Boden and Thompson 2015; Eckland et al. 2021; Vine and Aldao 2014), worry (Eckland and Berenbaum 2021; McLaughlin et al. 2007), panic (Park and Naragon-Gainey 2019; Salters-Pedneault et al. 2006; Tull and Roemer 2007), and problematic alcohol use (Vine and Aldao 2014). Higher emotional clarity has been linked to several indicators of well-being, including problem-solving (Gohm and Clore 2002), life satisfaction (Eckland and Berenbaum 2023; Lischetzke et al. 2012), meaning in life (Abeyta et al. 2015), successful down regulation of negative affect (Wilkowski and Robinson 2008), and use of putatively adaptive emotion regulation strategies (e.g., reappraisal and acceptance; Boden and Thompson 2015). Despite primarily being studied as a trait, emotional clarity is a dynamic process (Eckland and Berenbaum 2021; Lischetzke et al. 2011; Park and Naragon-Gainey 2019; Thompson and Boden 2019). That is, emotional clarity can fluctuate in daily life, varying over time and across situations for an individual. Trait emotional clarity refers to the extent to which one typically understands their emotions, whereas state emotional clarity refers to the extent to which one clearly understands their emotions at shorter time scales (e.g., emotional clarity over the course of a day, hour, or in the moment). Though abilities are thought to be largely static, and are thus measured through maximal performance, in daily life, persons interact with psychological and environmental contexts that may limit or facilitate their access to these abilities (van Vianen 2018). Zeidner et al. (2008) argued that this also describes emotional intelligence. Though the correlates of trait emotional clarity converge with emotional intelligence ability, the traits measured through self-report involve retrospecting over large swaths of time and can be influenced by other sources, such as one’s self-perceptions (Paulhus and Vazire 2007). In contrast, leveraging methods, such as experience sampling, has allowed researchers to begin to understand how emotional clarity states fluctuate across time and situations, giving insights into how emotions are perceived and understood in daily life. Fluctuations in emotional clarity may be especially important to study because they could also reflect differential access to one’s fluid emotional intelligence abilities across various contexts. Reports of state or momentary emotional clarity rely on the abilities to incorporate information from various sources at a given time (e.g., the dynamic contexts that emotions unfold in) and indicate one’s online ability to clearly represent their emotional experiences.