Association of Reactivity of Explanatory Flexibility and Ruminative Brooding in a Mood-Priming Paradigm to Depressive Symptoms: Six Month Follow-Up

1
Association of Reactivity of Explanatory
Flexibility and Ruminative Brooding in a
Mood-Priming Paradigm to Depressive Symptoms Six
Month Follow-Up Michael T. Moore David M.
Fresco, Kent State University

• DISCUSSION
• These findings support our hypothesis that
  reactivity in explanatory flexibility and
  brooding following an emotion evocation challenge
  is predictive of subsequent depressive symptoms
• Individuals who become rigid in their ability
  to explain causes to events in their lives in
  response to negative mood are more likely to
  develop more long-term depressive symptoms when
  faced with negative life events
• Individuals who tend to maladaptively ruminate
  in response to negative mood are also more likely
  to develop depressive symptoms when faced with
  negative life events
• Use of emotion evocation challenges may represent
  a psychological stress test useful in
  identifying individuals vulnerable to future
  emotional upheaval
• Limitations
• Participants consisted of relatively high-
  functioning college students, resulting in
  uncertain generalizability to the general public
• Attrition between the mood induction and
  follow-up assessment resulted in small sample
  size and questionable external validity
• Future Studies
• Replicating the current study utilizing a more
  representative population

ABSTRACT Current thinking in the area of
depressogenic attributional style posits that
this class of cognitive vulnerability factor is
latent until activated by stressful life events
or temporary negative mood states (Persons
Miranda, 1992). Research has shown that
attributional style, measured when primed, and
negative life events are better predictors of
depressed mood several days later than either
alone, or unprimed attributional style (Abela
Brozina, 20034). The current investigation sought
to evaluate the hypothesis of whether the
interaction between both cognitive reactivity (of
explanatory flexibility and ruminative brooding)
after a mood priming challenge and intervening
negative life events can predict depressed mood
assessed six months after the mood prime.
Participants were given measures of depressive
symptoms both before and after a negative mood
prime that prior research has shown capable of
inducing temporary negative affect (Segal, et
al., 1998). These same participants were then
followed-up six months later and given the same
measures of depressive symptoms. The interaction
of the reactivity of explanatory flexibility to
the mood prime and negative life events
significantly predicted depressive symptoms at
follow-up, and approached Cohens (1992)
convention for a large effect (f2 .28). The
interaction of the reactivity of ruminative
brooding did not significantly predict depressive
symptoms, however this finding corresponded to a
medium effect (f2 .11).
INTRODUCTION Explanatory flexibility and
pessimistic brooding represent recent
advancements from two well-established cognitive
behavioral theories of depression. Explanatory
flexibility refers to how flexible or rigid
individuals are at assigning causes to events
(Fresco Craighead, 2003). Individuals who view
each situation separately and contextually are
regarded as flexible. Fresco and Craighead
(2003) operationalized explanatory flexibility as
the standard deviation of an individuals
responses to the stable and global items for
negative events from the Attributional Style
Questionnaire (ASQ Peterson et al., 1982). A
large standard deviation represents flexibility
whereas a small standard deviation represents
rigidity. In this way, explanatory flexibility
arises from the theoretical tradition of the
learned helplessness and hopelessness theories of
depression (Abramson et al., 1978 1989) and is
conceptually related tobut statistically
distinct from explanatory style (the tendency to
see negative events arising from internal, stable
and global causes). Depressive rumination is
the tendency to focus attention perseveratively
on the causes, experience, and consequences of
depressed mood and has been associated with the
onset (Just Alloy, 1997), course (Kuehner
Weber, 1999), and duration of depressed mood
(Just Alloy, 1997). Brooding represents a
psychometric refinement of depressive rumination
to address concerns that earlier factor solutions
were confounded with the measurement of
depressive symptomatology. Treynor, Gonzalez, and
Nolen-Hoeksema (2003) eliminated items from the
rumination subscale of the Response Styles
Questionnaire related to the symptoms of
depression and developed a non-affectively
confounded two-factor (brooding and pondering)
solution for the RSQ in which brooding was shown
to be more strongly associated with depressed
mood than was pondering. The factor structure
was subsequently replicated using exploratory and
confirmatory factor analysis in both general
college student and a college student sample of
individuals endorsing cognitive vulnerability to
depression (Fresco et al., 2004). Support for
the brooding and pondering solution was also
found in a sample of currently and previously
depressed adults (Haigh et al., 2004). A
preliminary version of the current study (Fresco
et al., 2003) examined the effects of an emotion
evocation challenge on these two constructs
before and immediately after mood induction and
six weeks later. The sample consisted of 59
college students, 18 of whom met diagnostic
criteria for major depressive disorder or
generalized anxiety disorder. Findings revealed
that mood reactivity irrespective of diagnostic
status was associated with reduced explanatory
flexibility but not with higher brooding scores
following the emotion evocation challenge.
Rather, brooding scores remained stable as a
function of the mood priming challenge. Further,
residual change in explanatory flexibility and
post-induction brooding significantly predicted
subsequent levels of depression symptoms. Also,
residual change in explanatory flexibility
moderated the association of intervening negative
life events and subsequent depression. The
current investigation sought to further extend
the findings of Fresco, Moore et al. (2003) by
assessing the association between reactivity in
explanatory flexibility and brooding to mood in
this six-month follow-up.

• METHODS
• Participants
• 59 undergraduate students
• 31 male, 69 female
• Participants ranged from 18-29 years of age (M
  19.23, SD 1.73)
• Measures
• Attributional Style Questionnaire (ASQ Peterson,
  et al., 1982)
• Beck Depression Inventory (BDI Beck, Rush, Shaw,
  Emery, 1979)
• Life Experiences Survey (LES Sarason, Johnson,
  Siegel, 1978)
• Response Styles Questionnaire (RSQ
  Nolen-Hoeksema Morrow, 1991)

RESULTS A series of two hierarchical, set-wise
regression analysis were conducted to assess the
relationship of explanatory and brooding
reactivity, intervening negative life events, and
their interaction, to levels of depressive
symptoms at follow-up. In regression 1,
depressive symptoms at follow-up served as the
dependent variable, while pre-induction
depressive symptoms (entered in Step 1), residual
change in explanatory flexibility from pre- to
post-mood induction (Step 2), intervening
negative life events (Step 3), and the
interaction between flexibility and negative life
events (Step 4) served as predictors. The
residual flexibility x negative life events
interaction significantly added to the prediction
of depressive symptoms, ?F(1,19) 5.37, p .03,
f2 .28, and approached the convention for a
large effect In regression 2, depressive
symptoms at follow-up again served as the
dependent variable, while pre-induction
depressive symptoms (Step 1), post-induction
brooding (Step 2), intervening negative life
events (Step 3), and the interaction between
brooding and negative life events (Step 4) served
as predictors. The results are as
follows Although the post-induction brooding x
negative life events interaction did not
significantly add to the prediction of depressive
symptoms, ?F(1,19) 1.41, ns, f2 .10, the
effect size approached the convention for a
medium effect Analysis of Partial Variance was
again utilized to interpret the post-induction
brooding x negative life events interaction,
again examining residual change in depression as
the criterion and High and Low Brooding and
Negative Life Events as the predictor variables.
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