Rumination and Psychopathology: Are Anger and Depressive Rumination Differentially Associated With Internalizing and Externalizing Psychopathology?

Abstract

Existing literature on rumination has predominately focused on depressive rumination; thus, there is little research directly comparing different forms of rumination as correlates of psychopathological outcomes. The present study investigated anger and depressive rumination as correlates of internalizing and externalizing psychopathology. Cross-sectional confirmatory factor analyses on data from 764 young adults from the Colorado Longitudinal Twin Study indicated that anger and depressive rumination were separable at the latent variable level, and were both associated with lifetime symptoms of internalizing and externalizing psychopathology. However, depressive rumination was more strongly associated with psychopathology than was anger rumination. Further analysis indicated that depressive rumination was independently associated with internalizing psychopathology, whereas associations between anger rumination and psychopathology were predominately due to shared variance with depressive rumination. Anger rumination was independently associated with externalizing psychopathology in women and was inversely associated with internalizing psychopathology in men. This result supports the clinical relevance of ruminative thought processes and the potential differential utility of anger and depressive content for understanding internalizing and externalizing psychopathology.

Factorial analysis and invariance by sex and age of the Anger Rumination Scale ARS Spanish version

“…In this regard, anger rumination has had a high adaptive value in human history by serving on the one hand as a mechanism of regulation of aggressive impulses (reactive aggression), and on the other hand to establish improvements in social relations through forgiveness (low proactive aggression) (Denson, 2012); however, although the correlations were significant, it is not possible to undermine the scope of these hypotheses of evolutionary nature. Therefore, it can be affirmed that the ARS showed significant predictive capacity in a multiple linear regression model except for proactive ag-gression, and constitutes new evidence of the validity of the convergent criterion of the instrument herein analyzed, although it is necessary to further explore these future hypotheses in transdiagnostic models based on this construct (du Pont et al, 2017).…”

“…These reports show that anger rumination seems to have a mediating role between different causal variables (structural and functional), anger responses and proactive and reactive aggressive behaviors, results that support the transdiagnostic capacity of this variable and its usefulness in the development of advances in the explanation of antisocial and criminal behaviors (du Pont, Rhee, Corley, Hewitt, & Friedman, 2017;McLaughlin, Aldao, Wisco, & Hilt, 2014). However, further research is needed to expand these findings, including measurements of rumination anger with psychometric instruments recognized for their accuracy and their discriminatory or convergent capabilities in different populations.…”

Rumination and Emotional Profile in Children with Specific Learning Disorders and Their Parents

“…A wide literature showed that students with SLD often exhibit internalizing symptoms, such as anxiety and depression [11,12] and found that these symptoms are increased by comorbid disorders [13]. Both in children and in adults, such internalizing symptoms are associated with rumination (see [14] for a recent review), which is particularly supposed to become a risk factor for the development of psychopathological symptoms during adolescence via poor self-regulation [15]. Indeed, Nolen-Hoeksema conceptualized rumination as a trans-diagnostic factor [16], which, although being mainly associated with depression [17,18], represents a risk factor for multiple forms of psychopathology including anxiety in adults and young people [19,20].…”

Fear of Uncertainty Makes You More Anxious? Effect of Intolerance of Uncertainty on College Students’ Social Anxiety: A Moderated Mediation Model

“…Individuals who cannot tolerate uncertainty are more likely to respond to stress in social situations with repetitive thinking such as worry or rumination (Morgan and Banerjee, 2008;Yook et al, 2010). Rumination is defined as "persistent" thinking about their own experience, the emotional causes, and various adverse consequences of their negative coping style (Nolen-Hoeksema et al, 2008;Pont et al, 2018). Rumination has a significant positive effect on SA (Sergiu and Aurora, 2015) and is recognized as an important factor to trigger, maintain, and accelerate SA based on the theory of reaction style (Fang and Sun, 2018).…”