The everyday dynamics of rumination and worry: precipitant events and affective consequences

ABSTRACT

Rumination and worry are two perseverative, negatively valenced thought processes that characterise depressive and anxiety disorders. Despite significant research interest, little is known about the everyday precipitants and consequences of rumination and worry. Using an experience sampling methodology, we examined and compared rumination and worry with respect to their relations to daily events and affective experience. Participants diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder (MDD), Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD), co-occurring MDD–GAD, or no diagnosis carried an electronic device for one week and reported on rumination, worry, significant events, positive affect (PA), and negative affect (NA). Across the clinical groups, occurrences of everyday events predicted subsequent increases in rumination, but not worry. Further, higher momentary levels of rumination, but not worry, predicted subsequent decreases in PA and increases in NA. Thus, in these clinical groups, rumination was more susceptible to daily events and produced stronger affective changes over time. We discuss implications for theory and clinical intervention.

KEYWORDS:

• Rumination
• worry
• life stress
• affect
• experience sampling method

Acknowledgements

We thank Maria Lemus and M. Catalina Camacho for their help in data collection.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. We conducted exploratory models comparing the clinical diagnoses to each other (e.g., MDD vs. GAD). With two exceptions, the results indicated no significant differences among the clinical diagnoses. First, participants with GAD reported an increase in rumination following events that were rated as less controllable, whereas participants with co-occurring MDD-GAD were significantly less likely to do so, and did not show any such association (GAD group: b = −7.89, SE = 2.62; MDD–GAD group: b = 1.91, SE = 1.54; t(41) = 3.23, p < .01). Second, participants with MDD reported an increase in worry following events that were rated as more controllable, whereas participants with co-occurring MDD–GAD were less likely to do so, and did not show any such association (MDD group: b = 7.88, SE = 2.55; MDD–GAD group: b = −2.81, SE = 2.90; t(41) = −2.77, p < .01).

2. While we did not examine rumination and worry in relation to event valence due to the low rates of each specific event type, we should note that of all events reported, the clinical group categorized proportionally fewer events as positive than did the CTL group (clinical group: M = 37.48%, SE = 0.04%; CTL group: M = 59.33%, SE = 0.10%; t(59) = 2.08 p = .04), and marginally more events as negative than did the CTL group (clinical group: M = 43.76%, SE = 0.05%; CTL group: M = 25.61%, SE = 0.10%; t(59) = −1.98, p = .05).

3. To be comprehensive, we also conducted all models of precipitating events and affective consequences excluding concurrent level of worry in the analyses of rumination, and excluding concurrent level of rumination in the analyses of worry. All results remained the same with one exception: in the clinical group, when excluding rumination as a covariate, momentary level of worry increased more strongly in response to events that were rated as more stressful, p < .01. These results indicate that there is an association between stressful events and worry only when concurrent rumination is excluded. That is, the link between event stressfulness and worry is explained (statistically) by concurrent worry and rumination.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by grants from the National Institute of Mental Health [MH096385 to Katharina Kircanski, MH091831 to Renee J. Thompson, and MH059259 to Ian H. Gotlib] and the National Science Foundation [Graduate Research Fellowship to Lindsey Sherdell]. All authors report no competing or financial interests.