Preoccupied with the body: mild stress amplifies the relation between rumination and interoception

ABSTRACT

Classic and modern emotion theories suggest that the perception of bodily sensations, or interoception, is foundational to emotion processing. The present research examined whether interoception is enhanced among people high in ruminative tendencies, especially under stress. To test this notion, the present research examined the effects of a mild stressor on subjective and objective measures of interoception among people varying in ruminative tendencies. Under conditions of mild stress, rumination was positively associated with self-reported private body consciousness -a marker of interoceptive sensibility- in Study 1 (N = 312) and with heartbeat detection accuracy (especially in the presence of auditory interference) in Study 2 (N = 180). In both studies, rumination was not significantly associated with interoceptive sensibility or accuracy in the absence of stress. These findings suggest that stress-induced amplification of bodily sensations may be important in explaining emotional dysregulation among chronic ruminators.

KEYWORDS:

• State orientation
• body perception
• self-control
• heartbeat perception
• dimensions of interoception

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 We thank Tobias Maldei for suggesting the idea of auditory interference to us and Sarah Garfinkel for helping us with the theoretical interpretation of this procedure.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a Consolidator Grant from the H2020 European Research Council to Sander L. Koole [grant number ERC-2011-StG_20101124].