The Effects of Rumination and Depressive Symptomson the Prediction of Negative Attributional StyleAmong College Students

摘要

Research on cognitive vulnerability to depres-sion has identified negative cognitive style and ruminationas distinct risk factors for depression but how ruminationwould influence negative cognitive style remains unclear.The present study investigated the relationship betweenrumination and negative attributional style and specificallytested the potential moderating effect of depressive symp-toms and processing mode during rumination on activatingnegative attributional style. After completing the baselinemeasures of depressive symptoms, dysphoric affect, andnegative attributional style, participants were randomlyassigned to three experimental conditions: analytical self-focus, experiential self-focus, and distraction, in which thedegree of self-focus and mode of processing were manip-ulated. A second set of mood and cognitive measures wasadministered afterwards. Results showed that a strongerpositive relationship between negative attributional styleand level of depressive symptoms was found in the ana-lytical self-focus condition, relative to the experiential anddistraction conditions. This finding suggested that pro-cessing mode in rumination interacted with depressivesymptoms to predict negative attributional style.