Emotion-specific verbal fluency relates to the intensity and variety of emotional experiences but not their specificity.

Individual differences in the intensity (e.g., emotional reactivity and mean affect), variety (e.g., emodiversity and range of emotions), and specificity (e.g., emotional granularity and alexithymia) of self-reported emotion experiences throughout daily life are important indicators of mental health and well-being. As commonly measured, these constructs reflect differences in how individuals employ emotion concept words to report their feelings. Here, we examined how emotion fluency (the number of emotion concept words one can readily access) relates to the intensity, variety, and specificity of individuals' reported emotion experiences using both retrospective self-report questionnaires and measures derived from emotion experience ratings over a 6-week experience sampling protocol. Those higher in emotion fluency reported experiencing more intense emotions, particularly negative emotions, and a wider variety of emotions over time (e.g., greater emodiversity) even when controlling general verbal fluency. However, emotion fluency was not related to measures associated with the specificity or precision with which one uses emotion concepts to report their experiences (e.g., emotional granularity and alexithymia). Findings suggest that having ready access to many emotion concepts may enable a person to use a lot of different emotion concepts when reporting feelings, but that greater emotion fluency does not necessarily result in using those concepts in more specific, context-dependent ways. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).