Goal clarity as context for regulation success

The success of regulation attempts is highly context-specific, with factors that vary within people and across contexts such as emotional clarity and beliefs about emotion impacting the likelihood that strategies will lead to success. Regulation goal clarity, or how clear people are about their goals for regulating, may be a contextual factor that facilitates the selection of appropriate strategies to promote more successful regulation. The present study examined whether regulation goal clarity may enhance the likelihood that implementing strategies results in successful regulation in daily life. We hypothesized that regulation goal clarity will moderate the relation between use of regulation strategies and success such that greater goal clarity would strengthen the strategy-success link. A sample of 130 undergraduates completed a 14-day daily diary protocol during which they reported a major stressor, the use and helpfulness of strategies, and the clarity of their goals. Results revealed that goal clarity moderated the relationship between the use of problem-focused strategies and regulation success, such that higher strategy use was associated with greater regulation success at higher levels of goal clarity. No significant effects emerged with goal clarity as a moderator for the emotion-focused strategies-success link. It may be that problem-focused strategies are associated with greater action orientation, for which clarity is beneficial in guiding goal pursuit. Future work should continue to investigate the role of goal clarity in regulation, given that it is a goal-directed process. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).