The relation between rumination and temporal features of emotion intensity

ABSTRACT

Intensity profiles of emotional experience over time have been found to differ primarily in explosiveness (i.e. whether the profile has a steep vs. a gentle start) and accumulation (i.e. whether intensity increases over time vs. goes back to baseline). However, the determinants of these temporal features remain poorly understood. In two studies, we examined whether emotion regulation strategies are predictive of the degree of explosiveness and accumulation of negative emotional episodes. Participants were asked to draw profiles reflecting changes in the intensity of emotions elicited either by negative social feedback in the lab (Study 1) or by negative events in daily life (Study 2). In addition, trait (Study 1 & 2), and state (Study 2) usage of a set of emotion regulation strategies was assessed. Multilevel analyses revealed that trait rumination (especially the brooding component) was positively associated with emotion accumulation (Study 1 & 2). State rumination was also positively associated with emotion accumulation and, to a lesser extent, with emotion explosiveness (Study 2). These results provide support for emotion regulation theories, which hypothesise that rumination is a central mechanism underlying the maintenance of negative emotions.

KEYWORDS:

• Emotion dynamics
• intensity profiles
• emotion regulation
• rumination

Acknowledgments

The authors thank Kristof Meers (KU Leuven), Joke Heylen (KU Leuven), and Noémi Schuurman (Utrecht University) for their help with data analysis.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. For the original psychometric properties (internal consistency and test-retest reliability) of these questionnaires, see Table S1 in the Supplementary Information.

2. Keeping these four participants did not alter any of the conclusions we report.

3. None of the additional questionnaires pertained to emotion regulation but instead assessed personality and well-being. The full list of questionnaires is available upon request.

4. Dropping this first inclusion criterion did not alter any of the conclusions we report.

5. It is notable that, when entering feedback number as a linear and quadrative predictor of explosiveness and accumulation at level 1, we found evidence for a negative linear effect of feedback number on emotion explosiveness and accumulation (no evidence for a quadratic trend was found). Controlling for this linear trend did not alter any of the conclusions we report.

6. We ran a formal post-hoc power analysis using Monte Carlo simulation as implemented in the powerCurve function of the SIMR R package (v. 1.0.2; Green & Macleod, 2016). We entered the observed effect-size of brooding as a predictor of accumulation, revealing the power of Study 1 to be .65.

7. In the larger study, the 114 participants were recruited as follows: In an initial pre-screening, 403 individuals completed the Big Five Inventory (BFI). From these 403 respondents, 147 were selected using a stratified sampling approach to maximize variation on neuroticism (for a similar approach, see Koval et al., 2015), a strong predictor of emotional responding to events (Diener, Oishi, & Lucas, 2003) and of emotion regulation (Gross & John, 2003). From the 121 participants who accepted to participate, 1 did not respond to more than 50% of the five attention checks, and 6 missed more than 50% of the questionnaires, leaving a final sample of 114.

8. Participants were paid $0.60 for the BFI completion, $2 for the baseline survey, $1 per completion day, and a $3 bonus when they completed all seven daily questionnaires.

9. Most of the additional questionnaires did not pertain to emotion regulation but instead assessed personality and well-being (the full protocol is available upon request), with two exceptions: the ERQ (Gross & John, 2003) and an ERQ under construction based on a new emotion regulation taxonomy (Kalokerinos, Greenaway, Ceulemans, & Kuppens, 2016). These measures strongly overlapped with the emotion regulation measures already reported, and are therefore described in supplementary materials instead (see supplementary materials). These results did not alter any of our conclusions.

10. In Study 2, the correlation between emotion duration and emotion explosiveness (r(480) = .10, p = .03) as well as the correlation between emotion duration and emotion accumulation (r(480) = .31, p < .001) were significant. However, the modest size of these correlations indicates that explosiveness, accumulation and duration are distinctive temporal features.

11. Results remain highly similar whether group-mean or grand-mean centring. Likewise, controlling for the duration of emotional episode duration did not alter any conclusion.

Additional information

Funding

The research leading to the results reported in this paper was supported in part by the Research Fund of KU Leuven (GOA/15/003) and by the Belgian Government – Interuniversity Attraction Poles programme (IAP/P7/06). Philippe Verduyn is supported as a postdoctoral fellow of the Research Foundation, Flanders – Fonds Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (FWO). Elise Kalokerinos is supported by a Marie Sklodowska-Curie individual fellowship (No 704298) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme.