Buffering Against the Emotional Impact of Pain: Mood Clarity Reduces Depressive Symptoms in Older Adults

Although mood clarity has been found to negatively correlate with depressive symptoms (Salovey, Mayer, Goldman, Turvey, & Palfai, 1995), little is known about why this relationship exists. Using two waves of longitudinal data collected from an older community sample, we tested whether mood clarity decreases depressive symptoms by mitigating the negative emotional impact of two different types of stressors: the experience of pain and the experience of loss. First, we found that older adults with higher levels of mood clarity had fewer depressive symptoms two years later than older adults with low levels of mood clarity. Second, we found that mood clarity attenuated the effect of pain on depressive symptoms, but did not attenuate the effect of loss on depressive symptoms. These latter findings suggest that mood clarity protects against depressive symptoms caused by stressors, but this protection may not generalize to all stressors.