Effects of responses to depression on the remediation of depressive affect
Morrow and Nolen-Hoeksema's study is the experimental counterpart to the response styles theory the same author proposed. The theory holds that what people do when their mood drops determines how long the low mood lasts, and a survey cannot establish that, because the people who dwell on their feelings may simply be the people who feel worse. Here the response was assigned rather than measured: participants had a low mood induced, and were then directed into either a self-focused, ruminative task or a distracting one, before their mood was measured again. The title reports the outcome, that the induced response affected how far the low mood lifted. That is what turns rumination from a correlate of depression into a candidate cause of its duration, and it is the reason the theory was taken up so widely. It is a laboratory mood induction in a non-clinical sample, which is the standing limit on this design. Written without an abstract, from the title and the literature summarised here.
Morrow and Nolen-Hoeksema's study is the experimental counterpart to the response styles theory the same author proposed. The theory holds that what people do when their mood drops determines how long the low mood lasts, and a survey cannot establish that, because the people who dwell on their feelings may simply be the people who feel worse. Here the response was assigned rather than measured: participants had a low mood induced, and were then directed into either a self-focused, ruminative task or a distracting one, before their mood was measured again. The title reports the outcome, that the induced response affected how far the low mood lifted. That is what turns rumination from a correlate of depression into a candidate cause of its duration, and it is the reason the theory was taken up so widely. It is a laboratory mood induction in a non-clinical sample, which is the standing limit on this design. Written without an abstract, from the title and the literature summarised here.
Written from the the paper's title and the response styles literature already summarised here.
What our sources record
Reproduced as it was written when this source was checked, figures and all.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Negative mood induction followed by random assignment to a passive ruminative task or an active distracting task; sadness lifted in the distraction condition and not in the rumination condition.
Where we use it
- Why You Lie Awake at 3am Replaying One Conversation, Why We Care
Reliability of this reference
The link below was matched against the publisher's record on title, first author and year, and all three agree.
The source
https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.58.3.519
DOI: 10.1037/0022-3514.58.3.519