Diurnal variation in rumination
Takano and Tanno sampled people's thoughts eight times a day for a week, at semi-random intervals, recording what they were thinking about and how they felt. People prone to rumination showed consistently more self-focused, more unpleasant and less controllable thinking across the week. The three features interacted rather than adding up: thinking about oneself was associated with much worse mood specifically when the thought was also unpleasant and hard to stop, which is a more precise description of rumination than self-focus alone. The finding this vault uses is the daily pattern. Rumination varied across the day following a curve, and the shape differed by level of depressive symptoms: people with higher symptoms were more likely to ruminate in the evening rather than in the morning. The authors suggest evening rumination may be what maintains and worsens depression, which makes the timing a target for intervention rather than only the content.
Takano and Tanno sampled people's thoughts eight times a day for a week, at semi-random intervals, recording what they were thinking about and how they felt. People prone to rumination showed consistently more self-focused, more unpleasant and less controllable thinking across the week. The three features interacted rather than adding up: thinking about oneself was associated with much worse mood specifically when the thought was also unpleasant and hard to stop, which is a more precise description of rumination than self-focus alone. The finding this vault uses is the daily pattern. Rumination varied across the day following a curve, and the shape differed by level of depressive symptoms: people with higher symptoms were more likely to ruminate in the evening rather than in the morning. The authors suggest evening rumination may be what maintains and worsens depression, which makes the timing a target for intervention rather than only the content.
Written from the abstract, OpenAlex.
What our sources record
Reproduced as it was written when this source was checked, figures and all.
Experience-sampling study; participants signalled eight times daily at semi-random intervals for one week. A composite of self-focus, unpleasantness and uncontrollability followed a quadratic (U-shaped) curve across the day, with the evening elevation specific to participants with higher depression scores.
Where we use it
- Why You Lie Awake at 3am Replaying One Conversation, Why We Care
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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/a0022757
DOI: 10.1037/a0022757