Sadness and ruminative thinking independently depress people's moods

Abstract

Depression and rumination often co-occur in clinical populations, but it is not clear which causes which, or if both are manifestations of an underlying pathology. Does rumination simply exacerbate whatever affect a person is experiencing, or is it a negative experience in and of itself? In two experiments we answer this question by independently manipulating emotion and rumination. Participants were allocated to sad or neutral (in Experiment 1), or sad, neutral or happy (Experiment 2) mood conditions, via a combination of emotionally evocative music and autobiographical recall. Afterwards, in both studies, participants either ruminated by thinking about self-relevant statements or, in a control group, thought about self-irrelevant statements. Taken together, our data show that, independent of participants' mood, ruminators reported more negative affect relative to controls. The findings are consistent with theories suggesting that self-focus is itself unpleasant, and illustrate that depressive rumination comprises both affective and ruminative components, which could be targeted independently in clinical samples.

Rumination on unwanted intrusive thoughts affects the urge to neutralize in nonclinical individuals

“…Neither rumination on the UIT nor rumination on negative mood affected depressed mood or state affect. This is not a surprise, given that rumination is thought to have an effect on depressive mood only if individuals are already dysphoric prior to experimental induction of rumination, which has been shown in the majority of studies (e.g., Lyubomirsky & Nolen-Hoeksema, 1995;McLaughlin et al, 2007;Nolen-Hoeksema et al, 1993; for other results, however, see Jahanitabesh et al, 2017). The important conclusion for the present study is that rumination on a UIT had a specific effect on urge to neutralize.…”

“…Most previous studies showed that rumination did not affect depressed mood unless participants were dysphoric prior to the rumination instruction (e.g., Lyubomirsky & Nolen-Hoeksema, 1995;McLaughlin et al, 2007;Nolen-Hoeksema, Morrow, & Fredrickson, 1993). However, a recent study (Jahanitabesh, Cardwell, & Halberstadt, 2017) has suggested that rumination results in increased negative mood irrespective of the mood state prior to the rumination induction. Thus depressed mood was included as an additional exploratory variable without any specific hypothesis.…”

Use of autobiographical stimuli as a mood manipulation procedure: Systematic mapping review

“…In these cases, the participant is asked to access and retrieve an autobiographical event from a specific cue that is consistent with the emotion to be induced. Such cues may be auditory [ 78 , 79 ], visual (e.g. an image) or olfactory [ 50 , 80 ], with the participant being asked to describe and define the event in written or oral form, or to narrate it in line with a series of guided questions.…”

Emotions Induced by Recalling Memories About Interpersonal Stress

“…Autobiographical recall is frequently used as an emotion induction procedure in laboratory settings (e.g., Suardi et al, 2016;Siedlecka and Denson, 2019). This method typically instructs participants to vividly recall episodic memories associated with certain emotions, such as happiness, anger, and sadness, or any other pleasant or unpleasant emotions (e.g., Strack et al, 1985;Damasio et al, 2000;Krauth-Gruber and Ric, 2000;Marci et al, 2007;Gadeikis et al, 2017;Monnier et al, 2018;Jahanitabesh et al, 2019;Nawa and Ando, 2019). A specific discrete emotion (e.g., sadness) is frequently assigned to be induced; however, it has been argued that emotions usually emerge in groups, in various combinations, and with varying degrees of intensity.…”