Daniel Johnson
Daniel P. Johnson is the first author, with Mark Whisman, of the 2013 meta-analysis of gender differences in rumination: fifty-nine studies and more than fourteen thousand adults. Women scored higher on rumination overall, and on both of its recognised forms. The authors themselves describe all three differences as small.
Who they are
Rumination is repetitive dwelling on distress and its causes. It is usually split into two forms: brooding, the passive, self-critical kind, which is the one associated with worse outcomes, and reflective pondering, the more analytic kind, which is not.
That word "small" is the finding. The gap is real, and it is nowhere near large enough to explain why roughly twice as many women are diagnosed with depression. Anyone reaching for this meta-analysis to explain the diagnosis gap is using it against its own conclusion.
His affiliation at the time of publication is recorded as the University of Colorado Boulder, on the strength of the institutional listing of the paper. No current post has been verified, and none is asserted here.
Key papers
Johnson, D. P., & Whisman, M. A. (2013). "Gender differences in rumination: a meta-analysis", Personality and Individual Differences, 55(4), 367 to 374. First author. Fifty-nine studies, 14,321 adults, with twenty-three studies contributing to the analysis of the two subtypes. Mark Whisman has no page on this site yet.
Key ideas
A real difference and a small one are not in conflict. Both are true of this result, and reporting only the first is how a modest finding ends up carrying a claim it cannot hold.
This is the vault's cleanest example of a small difference doing large work. The other is the material on differences between generations, where the same pattern appears.
It is a difference in average scores, not a description of any individual. A small average gap tells you almost nothing about any particular person, which is the point most often lost when this sort of number is quoted.
Concepts on this site
Brooding, the form associated with worse outcomes
Reflective Pondering, the form that is not
Generational Differences and The Law of Small Numbers are related and have no page on this site yet
Sources
- Johnson, D. P., & Whisman, M. A. (2013). Personality and Individual Differences, 55(4), 367 to 374. Fifty-nine studies, 14,321 adults. Standardised differences of 0.24 for rumination, 0.19 for brooding and 0.17 for reflection, all described by the authors as small.
- Vault record, 2026-09-11. Affiliation at the time of publication only; no current post verified.