The Role of Emotional Granularity in Vulnerability to Post-traumatic Stress Disorder

Objective: Emotional granularity refers to the ability to recognize and distinguish between different emotional states, allowing individuals to respond appropriately to situations and manage their emotions more effectively. One of the main problems in post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is the lack of clarity and emotional awareness that causes vulnerability to PTSD and the persistence of its symptoms. The present study aims to investigate the role of emotional granularity in vulnerability to PTSD.  Methods: The present study used a descriptive and correlational research design. The statistical population included PTSD patients referred to Roozbeh Hospital. The sample size of the research was 205 people. To collect data, the Mississippi scale for PTSD, positive and negative affect schedule (PANAS), difficulties in emotion regulation scale, and semantic similarities test were used. Also, multiple regressions were used to analyze data using SPSS software, version 26. Results: The components of emotional granularity explain 32.7% of PTSD variance. Among the components of emotional granularity, the components of positive affect (β=-0.312), and semantic similarities (β=-0.379) had significant and inverse effects (P 0.01) on PTSD. Also, components of negative emotion (β=0.304), lack of emotional clarity (β=0.382), and lack of emotional awareness (β=0.362) had a significant and direct effect (P 0.01) on PTSD. Conclusion: Emotional granularity is one of the essential factors in predicting vulnerability to PTSD because high emotional granularity is associated with greater clarity, awareness, and emotional differentiation. Low emotional granularity is associated with a need for more differentiation and emotional clarity and as a result, expressing emotions in the form of vocabulary.