The Effects of Depressive Rumination on Psychological Distance and Construal Levels in Non-Clinical Samples

• Main Authors: Yu-Hsiang Chou, 周裕翔
• Other Authors: Sue-Huei Chen
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2013
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/23945143276228397730

碩士 === 國立臺灣大學 === 心理學研究所 === 101 === Introduction: Literature review shows that ruminative states and styles can be divided in the adaptive or maladaptive forms, i.e., reflection and brooding, respectively. Several conditions are found to be related to the maladaptive states (here referred to depression), including ruminating with higher depression, farther psychological distance, less concreteness of the construal levels, and a tendency toward brooding ruminative style. Nevertheless, it remains unclear that: (a) whether non-depressive ruminative state is more adaptive than depressive ruminative state, (b) what would be the natural phenomena of psychological distance and construal levels during rumination, and (c) whether different combinations of ruminative states and styles have different outcomes. Purpose: The present thesis, with two studies using private negative interpersonal experience and common negative experience, respectively, aimed to empirically investigate the effects of depressive/non-depressive ruminative states and ruminative styles on the psychological distance and construal levels during rumination. Method: Recruited undergraduate students were randomly assigned to “negative mood induction” (depressive ruminative group[DR]) or “non-negative mood induction ” (non-depressive ruminative group[nDR]) procedure by listening to the music without lyrics. Participants (n = 102) in Study 1 were invited to write and ruminate on the topic of “private negative interpersonal experience”. In Study 2, participants (n = 70) ruminate on the topic of “the common negative experience”, which was created in the experiment to control the confounding effect of occurrence time, place and content of personal event. After rumination task, participants rated their sadness, happiness and psychological distance on visual analogue scale (0 to 100), then completed the Chinese Version of Response Styles Questionnaire_Rumination_10 items[C_RSQ_r10] for measuring the tendency of ruminative styles and Beck Depression Inventory-II for depression measure. At the end, debriefing and thanks were given. In terms of index for construal levels, two raters scored the concreteness of the rumination writing contents, which was examined to meet satisfactory agreement. Results: (1) Considering the ruminative states, in Study 1, the temporal and special psychological distance in DR were greater than in nDR. However, in Study 2, the findings were different, and specifically, temporal, special and self distance were closer in DR than in nDR. The concreteness of the rumination content was not different between DR and nDR in both two studies. (2) Concerning the correlation between ruminative styles and psychological distance, there were no significant results in Study 1. However, in Study 2, participants’ reflective ruminative style was found to correlate with farther temporal and special psychological distance, and brooding ruminative style was significantly correlated with the closer special and self psychological distance. Of the correlation between ruminative style and construal level, only individuals with higher depression (i.e., BDI-II > 13) in Study 1 displayed negative corrections of C_RSQ_r10 total score and reflective ruminative style with concreteness of rumination contents. Discussion and Conclusions: Several possible limitations such as sample characteristics, musical mood induction procedure, and time of rumination were considered. The discussion on the findings was addressed. Finally, possible clinical applications and future research directions were further provided.