Abstract
This study examined the relations among rumination, emotional intelligence,and anxiety, particularly focusing on whether emotional intelligence moderated the association between rumination and anxiety. A total of 439undergraduates completed the instruments measuring rumination, emotional intelligence, and anxiety. Results of the hierarchical regression analysis indicated that emotionalintelligence moderated the association between rumination and anxiety. When participants reported a low level of emotional intelligence, those with higherrumination reported greateranxiety. However, the impact of rumination on anxiety was not significant in the group with high emotional intelligence. The foremost finding of this study is that emotional intelligence could serve as a protective factor in the path from rumination to anxiety.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Aiken, L. S., & West, S. G. (1991). Multiple regression: Testing and interpreting interactions: Sage.
Akerjordet, K., & Severinsson, E. (2004). Emotional intelligence in mental health nurses talking about practice. International Journal of Mental Health Nursing, 13(3), 164–170.
Barber, L., Maltby, J., & Macaskill, A. (2005). Angry memories and thoughts of revenge: The relationship between forgiveness and anger rumination. Personality and Individual Differences, 39(2), 253–262.
Baron, R. A., & Markman, G. D. (2000). Beyond social capital: How social skills can enhance entrepreneurs' success. The Academy of Management Executive, 14(1), 106–116.
Beck, A. T., Epstein, N., Brown, G., & Steer, R. A. (1988). An inventory for measuring clinical anxiety: psychometric properties. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 56(6), 893–897.
Bonanno, G. A., Papa, A., Lalande, K., Zhang, N., & Noll, J. G. (2005). Grief processing and deliberate grief avoidance: a prospective comparison of bereaved spouses and parents in the United States and the People's Republic of China. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 73(1), 86.
Brockmeyer, T., Kulessa, D., Hautzinger, M., Bents, H., & Backenstrass, M. (2015). Mood-incongruent processing during the recall of a sad life event predicts the course and severity of depression. Journal of Affective Disorders, 187, 91–96.
Brozovich, F., & Heimberg, R. G. (2008). An analysis of post-event processing in social anxiety disorder. Clinical Psychology Review, 28(6), 891–903.
Ciarrochi, J., Deane, F. P., & Anderson, S. (2002). Emotional intelligence moderates the relationship between stress and mental health. Personality and Individual Differences, 32(2), 197–209.
Conway, M., Csank, P. A., Holm, S. L., & Blake, C. K. (2000). On assessing individual differences in rumination on sadness. Journal of Personality Assessment, 75(3), 404–425.
Di Schiena, R., Luminet, O., & Philippot, P. (2011). Adaptive and maladaptive rumination in alexithymia and their relation with depressive symptoms. Personality and Individual Differences, 50(1), 10–14.
Erskine, J. A., Kvavilashvili, L., & Kornbrot, D. E. (2007). The predictors of thought suppression in young and old adults: Effects of rumination, anxiety, and other variables. Personality and Individual Differences, 42(6), 1047–1057.
Fabio, A. D. (2015). Beyond fluid intelligence and personality traits in social support: the role of ability based emotional intelligence. Frontiers in Psychology, 6, 395–413.
Feldman, G., Dunn, E., Stemke, C., Bell, K., & Greeson, J. (2014). Mindfulness and rumination as predictors of persistence with a distress tolerance task. Personality and Individual Differences, 56, 154–158.
Fernandez-Berrocal, P., Alcaide, R., Extremera, N., & Pizarro, D. (2006). The role of emotional intelligence in anxiety and depression among adolescents. Individual Differences Research, 4(1), 16–27.
Field, A. P., Psychol, C., & Morgan, J. (2004). Post-event processing and the retrieval of autobiographical memories in socially anxious individuals. Journal of Anxiety Disorders, 18(5), 647–663.
Flett, G. L., Madorsky, D., Hewitt, P. L., & Heisel, M. J. (2002). Perfectionism cognitions, rumination, and psychological distress. Journal of Rational-Emotive & Cognitive-Behavior Therapy, 20(1), 33–47.
Harrington, J. A., & Blankenship, V. (2002). Ruminative Thoughts and Their Relation to Depression and Anxiety1. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 32(3), 465–485.
He, F., Cao, R., Feng, Z., Guan, H., & Peng, J. (2013). The impacts of dispositional optimism and psychological resilience on the subjective well-being of burn patients: A structural equation modelling analysis. PLoS ONE, 8(12), e82939.
He, F., Guan, H., Kong, Y., Cao, R., & Peng, J. (2014). Some individual differences influencing the propensity to happiness: Insights from behavioral economics. Social Indicators Research, 119, 897–908.
Herpertz, S., Schütz, A., & Nezlek, J. (2016). Enhancing emotion perception, a fundamental component of emotional intelligence: Using multiple-group SEM to evaluate a training program. Personality and Individual Differences, 95, 11–19.
Hubbard, N. A., Faso, D. J., Krawczyk, D. C., & Rypma, B. (2015). The dual roles of trait rumination in problem solving. Personality and Individual Differences, 86, 321–325.
Ju, C., Lan, J., Li, Y., Feng, W., & You, X. (2015). The mediating role of workplace social support on the relationship between trait emotional intelligence and teacher burnout. Teaching and Teacher Education, 51, 58–67.
Keng, S.-L., Smoski, M. J., & Robins, C. J. (2011). Effects of mindfulness on psychological health: A review of empirical studies. Clinical Psychology Review, 31(6), 1041–1056.
Kin-wing, S. (2002). A study of psychometric properties, normative scores and factor structure of Beck anxiety inventory Chinese version. Chinese Journal of Clinical Psychology, 10(1), 4–6.
Kocovski, N. L., Endler, N. S., Rector, N. A., & Flett, G. L. (2005). Ruminative coping and post-event processing in social anxiety. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 43(8), 971–984.
Lian, P., Sun, Y., Ji, Z., Li, H., & Peng, J. (2014). Moving away from exhaustion: how core self-evaluations influence academic burnout. PLoS ONE, 9(1), e87152.
Lyubomirsky, S., Layous, K., Chancellor, J., & Nelson, S. K. (2015). Thinking about rumination: The scholarly contributions and intellectual legacy of Susan Nolen-Hoeksema. Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, 11, 1–22.
Martin, M., & Chapman, S. C. (2010). Cognitive processing in putative functional gastrointestinal disorder: rumination yields orientation to social threat not pain. European Journal of Pain, 14(2), 207–213.
Martin, R. C., & Dahlen, E. R. (2005). Cognitive emotion regulation in the prediction of depression, anxiety, stress, and anger. Personality and Individual Differences, 39(7), 1249–1260.
Martin, L. L., & Tesser, A. (1996). Some ruminative thoughts. Advances in Social Cognition, 9, 1–47.
Maxwell, J., & Siu, O. L. (2008). The Chinese Coping Strategies Scale: Relationships with aggression, anger, and rumination in a diverse sample of Hong Kong Chinese adults. Personality and Individual Differences, 44(5), 1049–1059.
McCullough, M. E., Bellah, C. G., Kilpatrick, S. D., & Johnson, J. L. (2001). Vengefulness: Relationships with forgiveness, rumination, well-being, and the Big Five. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 27(5), 601–610.
Michl, L. C., McLaughlin, K. A., Shepherd, K., & Nolen-Hoeksema, S. (2013). Rumination as a mechanism linking stressful life events to symptoms of depression and anxiety: longitudinal evidence in early adolescents and adults. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 122(2), 339–353.
Miville, M. L., Carlozzi, A. F., Gushue, G. V., Schara, S. L., & Ueda, M. (2006). Mental health counselor qualities for a diverse clientele: Linking empathy, universal-diverse orientation, and emotional intelligence. Journal of Mental Health Counseling, 28(2), 151–165.
Monroe, S. M., Slavich, G. M., & Gotlib, I. H. (2014). Life stress and family history for depression: The moderating role of past depressive episodes. Journal of Psychiatric Research, 49, 90–95.
Nolen-Hoeksema, S. (1991). Responses to depression and their effects on the duration of depressive episodes. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 100(4), 569–582.
Nolen-Hoeksema, S. (2000). The role of rumination in depressive disorders and mixed anxiety/depressive symptoms. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 109(3), 504–511.
Nolen-Hoeksema, S., Wolfson, A., Mumme, D., & Guskin, K. (1995). Helplessness in children of depressed and nondepressed mothers. Developmental Psychology, 31(3), 377–387.
Onur, E., Alkın, T., Sheridan, M. J., & Wise, T. N. (2013). Alexithymia and emotional intelligence in patients with panic disorder, generalized anxiety disorder and major depressive disorder. Psychiatric Quarterly, 84(3), 303–311.
Ouyang, Z., Sang, J., Li, P., & Peng, J. (2015). Organizational justice and job insecurity as mediators of the effect of emotional intelligence on job satisfaction: A study from China. Personality and Individual Differences, 76, 147–152.
Papageorgiou, C., & Wells, A. (2001). Metacognitive beliefs about rumination in recurrent major depression. Cognitive and Behavioral Practice, 8(2), 160–164.
Raes, F., & Hermans, D. (2008). On the mediating role of subtypes of rumination in the relationship between childhood emotional abuse and depressed mood: Brooding versus reflection. Depression and Anxiety, 25(12), 1067–1070.
Roelofs, J., Muris, P., Huibers, M., Peeters, F., & Arntz, A. (2006). On the measurement of rumination: A psychometric evaluation of the ruminative response scale and the rumination on sadness scale in undergraduates. Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry, 37(4), 299–313.
Roelofs, J., Papageorgiou, C., Gerber, R. D., Huibers, M., Peeters, F., & Arntz, A. (2007). On the links between self-discrepancies, rumination, metacognitions, and symptoms of depression in undergraduates. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 45(6), 1295–1305.
Schutte, N. S., Malouff, J. M., Hall, L. E., Haggerty, D. J., Cooper, J. T., Golden, C. J., & Dornheim, L. (1998). Development and validation of a measure of emotional intelligence. Personality and Individual Differences, 25(2), 167–177.
Shieh, G. (2011). Clarifying the role of mean centring in multicollinearity of interaction effects. British Journal of Mathematical and Statistical Psychology, 64(3), 462–477. doi:10.1111/j.2044-8317.2010.02002.x.
Siegling, A., Petrides, K., & Martskvishvili, K. (2015). An Examination of a New Psychometric Method for Optimizing Multi-Faceted Assessment Instruments in the Context of Trait Emotional Intelligence. European Journal of Personality, 29(1), 42–54.
Treynor, W., Gonzalez, R., & Nolen-Hoeksema, S. (2003). Rumination reconsidered: A psychometric analysis. Cognitive Therapy and Research, 27(3), 247–259.
Wang, X., Cai, L., Qian, J., & Peng, J. (2014). Social support moderates stress effects on depression. International Journal of Mental Health Systems, 8(1), 1.
Watkins, E., & Baracaia, S. (2001). Why do people ruminate in dysphoric moods? Personality and Individual Differences, 30(5), 723–734.
Yeung, A., Chang, D., Gresham Jr., R. L., Nierenberg, A. A., & Fava, M. (2004). Illness beliefs of depressed Chinese American patients in primary care. The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 192(4), 324–327.
Ysseldyk, R., Matheson, K., & Anisman, H. (2007). Rumination: Bridging a gap between forgivingness, vengefulness, and psychological health. Personality and Individual Differences, 42(8), 1573–1584.
Yu, X., Zhou, Z., Fan, G., Yu, Y., & Peng, J. (2014). Collective and Individual Self-Esteem Mediate the Effect of Self-Construals on Subjective Well-Being of Undergraduate Students in China. Applied Research in Quality of Life. doi:10.1007/s11482-11014-19362-y.
Zhang, J., Miao, D., Sun, Y., Xiao, R., Ren, L., Xiao, W., & Peng, J. (2014). The impacts of attributional styles and dispositional optimism on subject well-being: A structural equation modelling analysis. Social Indicators Research, 116(3), 809–822.
Zhao, X., Huang, C., Li, X., Zhao, X., & Peng, J. (2015). Dispositional optimism, self-framing and medical decision-making. International Journal of Psychology, 50(2), 121–127.
Zhou, X., & Wu, X. (2016). The relationship between rumination, posttraumatic stress disorder, and posttraumatic growth among Chinese adolescents after earthquake: A longitudinal study. Journal of Affective Disorders, 193, 242–248.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflict of Interest
Ming Liu declares that he has no conflict of interest; Shizhong Ren declares that he has no conflict of interest.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Liu, M., Ren, S. Moderating Effect of Emotional Intelligence on the Relationship between Rumination and Anxiety. Curr Psychol 37, 272–279 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-016-9510-7
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-016-9510-7