I prithee speak to me, as to thy thinkings,
As thou dost ruminate, and give thy worst of thoughts
The worst of words.
(Shakespeare, Othello, III, iii, 131–133.)
To ruminate upon evils… is to add unto our own tortures.
(Sir Thomas Browne, 1682.)
Twenty years have passed since the publication of Nolen-Hoeksema’s (
1987) seminal article on response styles theory, originally developed and presented to help explain the two-to-one female-to-male gender disparity in the incidence and prevalence of depression. In that context, response styles theory predicts that women are more likely than men to ruminate (e.g., think deeply about the causes of their depressive mood), while men are more likely than women to distract themselves (e.g., engage in activity to divert attention from their emotional state). Many studies have since confirmed the clear correlation between individuals’ tendency to ruminate in response to dysphoric mood states and the length and severity of their mood disorders. Although much of the early research focused on the role that rumination plays in depression, later work has shown that the ruminative process may be an important link in other psychological and even physical disorders. …
