Abstract
Reasoning may help solving problems and understanding personal experiences. Ruminative reasoning, however, is inconclusive, repetitive, and usually regards negative thoughts. We asked how reasoning as manifested in oral autobiographical narratives might differ when it is ruminative versus when it is adaptive by comparing two constructs from the fields of psychotherapy research and narrative research that are potentially beneficial: innovative moments (IMs) and autobiographical reasoning (AR). IMs captures statements in that elaborate on changes regarding an earlier personal previous problem of the narrator, and AR capture the connecting of past events with other parts of the narrator’s life or enduring aspects of the narrator. A total of N = 94 university students had been selected from 492 students to differ maximally on trait rumination and trait adaptive reflection, and were grouped as ruminators (N = 38), reflectors (N = 37), and a group with little ruminative and reflective tendencies (“unconcerned,” N = 19). Participants narrated three negative personal experiences (disappointing oneself, harming someone, and being rejected) and two self-related experiences of more mixed valence (turning point and lesson learnt). Reflectors used more IMs and more negative than positive autobiographical arguments (AAs), but not more overall AAs than ruminators. Group differences were not moderated by the valence of memories, and groups did not differ in the positive effect of narrating on mood. Trait depression/anxiety was predicted negatively by IMs and positively by AAs. Thus, IMs are typical for reflectors but not ruminators, whereas the construct of AR appears to capture reasoning processes irrespective of their ruminative versus adaptive uses.
Highlights
Narrating an experience may help come to terms with it emotionally, cognitively, and socially (Habermas, 2019; Pennebaker and Seagal, 1999)
Groups did not differ in the past valence of events, ruminators rated them as most negative today, as having improved least, and there was a trend for ruminators to having learnt the least from them, while reflectors evidenced the opposite pattern
The study tested the hypothesis that those with a maximal difference between dispositions to ruminate and to reflect adaptively would differ in the arguments they use in oral narratives about specific negative and self-relevant personal experiences in a non-clinical sample
Summary
Narrating an experience may help come to terms with it emotionally, cognitively, and socially (Habermas, 2019; Pennebaker and Seagal, 1999). Narrating problematic personal experiences may help to re-experience events and the related emotions and to organize and understand them (Smorti and Fioretti, 2016) by sharing them with others (Rimé, 2020). Autobiographical reasoning may be used when narrating autobiographical memories and is an essential element in constructing a life story. IMs are statements about steps in the process of positive or adaptive change, whereas AR covers any kind of relation between local events and the rest of life or personality, independently of whether they refer to change or stability and of whether they are evaluated positively or negatively. Despite the differences between the two constructs, both IMs and AR refer to people’s efforts to understand life experiences
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