Negative Emotional Events that People Ruminate about Feel Closer in Time

Abstract

Rumination is intrusive, perseverative cognition. We suggest that one psychological consequence of ruminating about negative emotional events is that the events feel as though they happened metaphorically “just yesterday”. Results from three studies showed that ruminating about real world anger provocations, guilt-inducing events, and sad times in the last year made these past events feel as though they happened more recently. The relationship between rumination and reduced temporal psychological distance persisted even when controlling for when the event occurred and the emotional intensity of the event. Moreover, angry rumination was correlated with enhanced approach motivation, which mediated the rumination-distance relationship. The relationship between guilty rumination and distance was mediated by enhanced vividness. Construal level and taking a 3rd person perspective contributed to the sense of distance when participants were prompted to think about less emotionally charged situations. A meta-analysis of the data showed that the relationship between rumination and reduced distance was significant and twice as large as the same relationship for neutral events. These findings have implications for understanding the role of emotional rumination on memory processes in clinical populations and people prone to rumination. This research suggests that rumination may be a critical mechanism that keeps negative events close in the heart, mind, and time.

Experimental Methods for Inducing Basic Emotions: A Qualitative Review

“…For experiments using music, participants in the control group will often not listen to music, or music that induces a different emotion (e.g., Sharman & Dingle, 2015). Researchers using autobiographical recall often ask participants to think or write about an instance(s) from their past when they experienced an ordinary event (e.g., an interaction with a stranger; Siedlecka, Capper, & Denson, 2015). Control groups for situational procedures usually retain the social aspect of the paradigm, but remove the emotion-eliciting aspect (e.g., writing an essay and receiving neutral, rather than positive or negative feedback; Bushman & Baumeister, 1998).…”

“…Researchers often ask participants to think or write about an instance(s) from their past when they experienced anger. The idea is that recall will reactivate the anger, thereby causing participants to relive the anger (e.g., Siedlecka et al, 2015). Numerous studies using autobiographical recall observed significant self-reported anger responses, and significantly increased physiological responses such as heart rate, skin conductance, and systolic blood pressure (e.g., Marci, Glick, Loh, & Dougherty, 2007).…”

Influence of emotional valence on perceived psychological distance depends on emotional intensity

“…Moreover, we adopted the same measure for psychological distance across the three studies. Although the adopted measure has been widely used previously (Ross & Wilson, 2002;Siedlecka, Capper, & Denson, 2015;Van Boven et al, 2010), it is important to replicate the findings using another measure. To overcome these limitations, we conducted Study 4.…”

Relationship satisfaction and the subjective distance of past relational events

“…Future research should explore additional mechanisms accounting for these patterns. For instance, negative memories that feel close may also prompt rumination, inhibit forgiveness, activate memories of other unrelated past transgressions, foster stable attributions, or create worry that history could repeat itself (Cortes & Wilson, 2016;Haddock, 2004;Siedlecka, Capper, & Denson, 2015;Wohl & McGrath, 2007).…”