A Double-Edged Sword? Unpacking the Effects of Rumination on Emotional Clarity

Rumination, or thinking passively and repetitively about one’s distress, and low emotional clarity, or not understanding one’s emotions, are risk factors for psychopathology. It has been suggested that people attempt to increase emotional clarity by ruminating, but whether ruminating works to help or harm emotional clarity in the moment is unknown. In N = 74 adults, following an idiographic negative mood induction, we experimentally manipulated rumination and two comparison conditions – distraction and mindfulness – to assess their effects on negative emotion, subjective and implicit indices of emotional clarity, and self-insight. Manipulation checks showed that conditions produced a pattern of distinct experiences theoretically consistent with each response style. Compared to comparison conditions, rumination was less effective in alleviating negative emotion. However, all conditions produced similar effects on emotional clarity and self-insight. Whereas each condition failed to influence subjective emotional clarity, they increased implicit clarity and perceived self-insight. Results underscore the importance of incorporating multiple measures of emotional clarity and suggest that, compared to other cognitive emotion response styles, rumination may function as a double-edged sword that keeps one entrenched in negative emotion but without impairing implicit emotional clarity and self-insight. Findings may have implications for why people ruminate despite its negative impact on well-being.