Watkins (2004) found that the mode of processing adopted during expressive writing following a failure influenced emotional recovery from the failure as a function of level of trait rumination. At higher levels of trait rumination, negative mood 12 hours after the failure was greater, but only in an abstract, evaluative writing condition and not in a concrete, process-focused condition. The current study examined whether this interaction of trait rumination with processing mode would generalize to emotional vulnerability to a subsequent negative stressor. Participants repeatedly focused on both positive and negative scenarios in either a concrete, process-focused or an abstract, evaluative mode, before a failure experience. As predicted, after the failure experience, higher levels of trait rumination were associated with lower levels of positive affect, but only for participants in the abstract, evaluative condition and not for participants in the concrete, process-focused condition. This finding is consistent with processing mode influencing the relationship between trait rumination and emotional vulnerability.
Elucidating the processes that influence emotional vulnerability—the extent to which affect becomes less positive or more negative and persists as such in response to a stressful event—is particularly important in understanding the development of psychopathology (Harvey, Watkins, Mansell, & Shafran, 2004). One process implicated in emotional vulnerability is depressive rumination, defined as “behavior and thoughts that focus one’s attention on one’s depressive symptoms and on the implications of these symptoms” (Nolen-Hoeksema, 1991, p. 569). Focus on depressed mood, problems, and other aspects of negative self-experience has detrimental consequences: increased self-focus is associated with depression (Ingram, 1990 and Pyszczynski & Greenberg, 1987), and depressive rumination increases the likelihood, severity, and duration of syndromal depression (e.g., Just & Alloy, 1997, Kuehner & Weber, 1999, Nolen-Hoeksema, 2000 and Spasojevic & Alloy, 2001). In experimental studies, depressive rumination intensifies dysphoric mood and negative thinking and impairs problem-solving (e.g., Lyubomirsky & Nolen-Hoeksema, 1995, Lyubomirsky et al., 1999 and Watkins & Baracaia, 2002).
