Acceptance alone is a better predictor of psychopathology and well-being than emotional competence, emotion regulation and mindfulness

•We investigate central processes that are in play in emotional disorders.•We compare the predictive ability of emotional competence, emotion regulation, mindfulness and acceptance.•We highlight the possible central role of acceptance in emotional disorders.

Emotional competence, emotion regulation, mindfulness and acceptance have all been strongly associated to emotional disorders and psychological well-being in multiple studies. However little research has compared the unique predictive ability of these different constructs. We hypothesised that they will all share a large proportion of common variance and that when compared to the broader constructs emotional competence, emotion regulation and mindfulness, acceptance alone would predict a larger proportion of unique varianceMethods228 participants from a community sample completed anonymously measures of anxiety, depression, happiness, acceptance, mindfulness, emotional competence and emotion regulation. We then ran multiple regressions to assess and compare the predictive ability of these different constructs.ResultsFor measures of psychological distress, the acceptance measure uniquely accounted for between 4 and 30 times the variance that the emotional competence, emotion regulation and mindfulness measures did.LimitationsThese results are based on cross-sectional designs and non-clinical samples, longitudinal and experimental studies as clinical samples may be useful in order to assess the potential protective power of acceptance over time. Another limitation is the use of self-report questionnaires.ConclusionsResults confirmed our hypothesis, supporting the research on the importance of acceptance as a central factor in the understanding of the onset and maintenance of emotional disorders.