Rethinking Rumination

By Susan Nolen-Hoeksema, Blair E. Wisco, Sonja Lyubomirsky. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 2008

4,675 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The response styles theory (Nolen-Hoeksema, 1991) was proposed to explain the insidious relationship between rumination and depression. We review the aspects of the response styles theory that have been well-supported, including evidence that rumination exacerbates depression, enhances negative thinking, impairs problem solving, interferes with instrumental behavior, and erodes social support. Next, we address contradictory and new findings. Specifically, rumination appears to more consistently predict the onset of depression rather than the duration, but rumination interacts with negative cognitive styles to predict the duration of depressive symptoms. Contrary to original predictions, the use of positive distractions has not consistently been correlated with lower levels of depressive symptoms in correlational studies, although dozens of experimental studies show positive distractions relieve depressed mood. Further, evidence now suggests that rumination is associated with psychopathologies in addition to depression, including anxiety, binge eating, binge drinking, and self-harm. We discuss the relationships between rumination and worry and between rumination and other coping or emotion-regulation strategies. Finally, we highlight recent research on the distinction between rumination and more adaptive forms of self-reflection, on basic cognitive deficits or biases in rumination, on its neural and genetic correlates, and on possible interventions to combat rumination.

Subfields: Clinical Psychology, Education, Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/369b741775686c14974158cb6b18893c95b9ae59

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Citations in the corpus

Nature experience reduces rumination and subgenual prefrontal cortex activation (2015, background): “maladaptive distractions such as binge drinking of alcohol) has been shown to decrease rumination (27).”
How Does Sexual Minority Stigma “Get Under the Skin”? A Psychological Mediation Framework (2009, neutral): “…of concealed stigmas (a proximal stress process)—including preoccupation, self-monitoring, and increased hypervigilance (Pachankis, 2008)— have been associated with rumination (Lyubomirsky et al., 1999), a general psychological risk factor for depression (Nolen-Hoeksema et al., 2008).”
A Heuristic for Developing Transdiagnostic Models of Psychopathology (2011, background): “Mechanisms linking rumination to depression The mechanisms linking rumination to depression have been extensively studied and will be only briefly reviewed here (for comprehensive reviews, see Lyubomirsky & Tkach, 2004; Nolen-Hoeksema et al., 2008; Watkins, 2008, 2010).”
Self-Compassion: Theory, Method, Research, and Intervention. (2022, background): “This type of rumination narrows our focus and exaggerates implications for self-worth (Nolen-Hoeksema et al. 2008).”
The Healthy Quality of Mindful Breathing: Associations With Rumination and Depression (2011, background): “…in the Response Styles Theory (RST), means responding to sadness by focusing repetitively and passively on the meaning, causes, and consequences of one’s mood and is considered a central risk factor for depression relapse (Michalak et al. in press; Nolen-Hoeksema 1991; Nolen-Hoeksema et al. 2008).”