Richard Gonzalez
Richard Gonzalez is a quantitative psychologist at the University of Michigan and the second author of the 2003 analysis that pulled rumination apart into two different habits, brooding and reflective pondering. His contribution is the measurement side of that paper, which is the part that makes it worth anything: the split only holds because the questionnaire items that were really asking about depression itself were stripped out before the analysis was run.
Who they are
A quantitative psychologist is someone whose speciality is how psychological things are measured rather than any one subject they are measured about. On a paper like this one, that is not a supporting role. The long-standing complaint about the old rumination questionnaire was that several of its questions asked about symptoms of depression, so the finding that ruminators became more depressed was in danger of being the finding that depressed people are depressed. Removing those items first is what turns the result into a result.
His affiliation was confirmed through the University of Michigan's hosting of the paper. No further biography was verified in this pass, and none is claimed.
Key papers
Treynor, W., Gonzalez, R., & Nolen-Hoeksema, S. (2003). "Rumination reconsidered: a psychometric analysis", Cognitive Therapy and Research, 27(3), 247 to 259. Second author. A community sample of 1,328 people. Ten surviving items separated into two groups of five, and only one of the two groups went with more severe depression over time.
Key ideas
The order of credit runs Treynor first. The paper is usually cited as a refinement by the famous third name on it. It is not. Wendy Treynor is the first author and this site names her first.
The technique involved, factor analysis, looks for the smallest number of underlying patterns that can account for how people answer a set of questions. Two patterns came out of these ten, which is why the field now treats rumination as two habits rather than one.
The measurement caution that applies to the whole area applies here too. Both halves are measured by asking people to report on their own thinking, and so are most of the outcomes they predict.
Concepts on this site
Sources
- Treynor, W., Gonzalez, R., & Nolen-Hoeksema, S. (2003). Cognitive Therapy and Research, 27(3), 247 to 259. Full text hosted on his University of Michigan page.
- Vault record, 2026-09-11. Affiliation confirmed through that hosting. No later post verified.