Susan Nolen-Hoeksema
Susan Nolen-Hoeksema founded the study of rumination. She originated response styles theory and established rumination as a construct in its own right: passive, repetitive attention to your own distress and its causes, which prolongs low mood rather than resolving it. Almost everything written about overthinking since descends from her work, usually without her name attached. She was born in 1959 and died in 2013, aged 53, while chair of the psychology department at Yale.
Who they are
Her 1991 paper is the founding citation. The claim it makes is more specific than the popular version. It is not that thinking about your problems is bad. It is that a particular style of response to feeling low, turning attention repeatedly onto the feeling and its causes without moving towards anything, makes a depressive episode last longer than it otherwise would.
This page exists partly to correct an error this site made. The rumination entry here once recorded the construct's originator as a contemporary trade author, which is precisely the failure the house standards warn about: an originator field filled in with the nearest author to hand rather than the person who did the work. He reports the construct. She built it.
Key papers
Nolen-Hoeksema, S. (1991). "Responses to depression and their effects on the duration of depressive episodes", Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 100(4), 569 to 582. The founding statement of response styles theory.
Morrow, J., & Nolen-Hoeksema, S. (1990). "Effects of responses to depression on the remediation of depressive affect", Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. People were put into a low mood and then assigned at random either to a passive ruminative task or to an active distracting one. The sadness lifted in the distraction condition and did not lift in the rumination condition.
Nolen-Hoeksema, S., Wisco, B. E., & Lyubomirsky, S. (2008). "Rethinking rumination", Perspectives on Psychological Science, 3(5), 400 to 424. The review reporting that rumination worsens mood, makes negative memories easier to reach, impairs problem solving, interferes with getting things done and erodes social support.
Key ideas
The 1990 study is the reason the construct is more than a correlation. People were assigned at random to ruminate or to be distracted, which is the kind of design that can say something about direction of cause, and most work in this area cannot.
Her construct was later shown not to be one thing. The 2003 analysis first-authored by Wendy Treynor split it into brooding and reflective pondering, and only the first predicted worse depression over time. That refinement is built on her measure, not against it.
The same shape of thought was described 2,500 years earlier in Buddhist psychology, which this site records rather than treats as a discovery.
Concepts on this site
Sources
- Nolen-Hoeksema, S. (1991). Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 100(4), 569 to 582.
- Morrow, J., & Nolen-Hoeksema, S. (1990). Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
- Nolen-Hoeksema, S., Wisco, B. E., & Lyubomirsky, S. (2008). Perspectives on Psychological Science, 3(5), 400 to 424.
- Vault correction record, 2026-09-02. Added to correct a misattributed originator field on the rumination entry.