Short-term affective consequences of specificity of rumination about unresolved personal goals
Roberts, H; Moberly, N; Cull, T; et al.Gow, H; Honeysett, M; Dunn, B
Date: 30 September 2019
Article
Journal
Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry
Publisher
Elsevier
Publisher DOI
Abstract
Background and Objectives
Rumination is a form of repetitive thinking that has been associated with both helpful and unhelpful consequences for mood and self-regulation. It has been suggested that the specificity of ruminative thought content may be one factor that determines whether state rumination about personal goals is adaptive. ...
Background and Objectives
Rumination is a form of repetitive thinking that has been associated with both helpful and unhelpful consequences for mood and self-regulation. It has been suggested that the specificity of ruminative thought content may be one factor that determines whether state rumination about personal goals is adaptive. The present study tested the hypothesis that state rumination about unresolved personal goals is associated with unhelpful affective consequences only when rumination is low in specificity.
Methods
We measured the extent and specificity of uninstructed rumination following the cueing of resolved and unresolved personal goals using a 30-minute go/no-go task with thought probes. Changes in state positive and negative affect from before to after cueing goals, and before to after rumination during the go/no-go task were assessed. ResultsCueing unresolved goals resulted in a significant increase in negative affect, and subsequent affective recovery during the go/no-go task. Cueing unresolved goals resulted in more goal-focused rumination than cueing resolved goals. When ruminative thoughts were low in specificity, rumination mediated the association between goal discrepancies and negative affect: greater rumination about unresolved goals significantly impaired affective recovery and perpetuated negative affect.
Limitations
The findings await replication in clinical populations, where rumination is more commonly associated with unhelpful outcomes.
Conclusions
Greater levels of goal-focused rumination were associated with unhelpful affective consequences only when rumination was low in specificity. Specificity of thought content may be an important determinant of whether goal-focused rumination has helpful or unhelpful effects.
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Except where otherwise noted, this item's licence is described as © 2019. This version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/