In plain language
Which emotional skills actually protect people from stress, anxiety, and depression over time — and which just travel alongside distress? Many measures of “emotional competence” overlap, so counsellors risk wasting time on questionnaires that all predict the same thing. This study asked whether three key competencies — how people orient to problems, how well they can identify and describe their emotions, and how well they manage emotions (especially rumination) — each predict future well-being in their own right.
A total of 163 university students completed measures of emotional competence and emotional well-being (depression, anxiety, stress, and positive mood) twice, one year apart. Because baseline well-being was statistically controlled, the analyses tested whether emotional competence predicted changes in well-being — evidence consistent with these skills being causes rather than mere by-products of distress.
All three competencies mattered, and each predicted something unique. People who viewed problems as threats to avoid became more anxious and stressed and less joyful a year later. People who struggled to identify and describe their feelings became more anxious and experienced less positive mood. And people who ruminated — who couldn’t get upsetting thoughts out of their minds — showed the clearest drop in positive mood. For counsellors, the message is practical: these three brief measures are not redundant, and the skill worth targeting may depend on the client’s presenting problem — problem orientation for stress, emotion identification for anxiety, and rumination when joy has drained away.
Key findings
- Time 1 emotional competence predicted Time 2 well-being one year later even after controlling for Time 1 well-being, suggesting low emotional competence precedes declines in well-being rather than merely co-occurring with them.
- Ineffective problem orientation predicted increases in anxiety, stress, and depression, and decreases in positive affect over the year.
- Difficulty identifying and describing emotions (the core of alexithymia) predicted increases in anxiety and decreases in positive mood.
- Rumination predicted decreases in positive affect (b = −0.29) and was the only unique predictor of positive mood after controlling for other competencies.
- Despite being intercorrelated, the three competence measures were not redundant: problem orientation and emotion identification each uniquely predicted anxiety, while problem orientation was the sole unique predictor of stress.
- Different competencies mapped onto different emotional states, suggesting counsellors should match the skill they target (e.g., building an emotion vocabulary, confronting rather than avoiding problems, mindfulness for rumination) to the client's presenting distress.
How to cite
APA
Ciarrochi, J., & Scott, G. (2006). The link between emotional competence and well-being: A longitudinal study. British Journal of Guidance & Counselling, 34(2), 231–243. https://doi.org/10.1080/03069880600583287
BibTeX
@article{ciarrochi2006link,
title = {The link between emotional competence and well-being: A longitudinal study},
author = {Ciarrochi, Joseph and Scott, Greg},
journal = {British Journal of Guidance \& Counselling},
year = {2006},
volume = {34},
number = {2},
pages = {231--243},
doi = {10.1080/03069880600583287}
}
Related work
- All publications by Joseph Ciarrochi (searchable, with free PDFs)
- Process-Based Therapy & Idionomic Analysis
Author: Joseph Ciarrochi (ORCID 0000-0003-0471-8100). Free copy hosted with permission for scholarly use. Please cite the published version via the DOI above.