Abstract
Rumination and worry are two types of repetitive negative thinking (RNT) that have been identified as risk factors for depression and anxiety, but it remains unclear whether the common (i.e., RNT) and/or distinct (i.e., temporal orientation and thought content) features of these thinking styles are associated with internalizing psychopathology. The goal of the current study was to represent rumination and worry with common and distinct components and test their associations to internalizing symptoms. Bifactor modeling was used to create common RNT, rumination-specific, and worry-specific factors in an emerging adult undergraduate sample (N=224) at the beginning of the academic semester. Structural equation modeling tested these factors as predictors of anhedonic depression and anxious arousal symptoms at the end of the semester. The common RNT factor was a predictor of later (but not change in) anhedonic depression and anxious arousal symptoms, while the specific factors did not show any consistent associations with either symptom dimension. These results suggest that the common process of RNT is the primary pathway through which rumination and worry are associated with risk for internalizing psychopathology. Clinical interventions that reduce RNT as a general thought process, rather than targeting specific thought content, may be effective.
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The preregistration is available at https://osf.io/ub94w. The datasets and analysis files are available at https://osf.io/6kxrb/.
Notes
See Supplemental Materials for information on departures from the pre-registration.
Participants completed cognitive tasks and additional questionnaires not relevant to the current hypotheses, which will be reported elsewhere. Selection of variables for the analyses in this paper were pre-registered.
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Funding
Research was supported by funds from Brandeis University. Morgan M. Taylor is supported by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences of the National Institutes of Health [Award No. 1T32GM132498-0]. The funding sources had no role in study design, data collection, analysis and interpretation, manuscript preparation, or decision to submit this article for publication.
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Morgan M. Taylor developed the research question and hypotheses, contributed to data collection, performed all analyses, and drafted the manuscript. Hannah R. Snyder designed the research study and provided input on the research question, hypotheses, analyses, and manuscript. All authors have approved the final article.
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Taylor, M.M., Snyder, H.R. Repetitive Negative Thinking Shared Across Rumination and Worry Predicts Symptoms of Depression and Anxiety. J Psychopathol Behav Assess 43, 904–915 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10862-021-09898-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10862-021-09898-9