Rumination and future thinking in depression

Abstract

Future thinking is an important domain of cognitive functioning, with reduced ability to imagine positive future events associated with hopelessness in depression and parasuicide. Rumination has been shown to exacerbate negative cognitive biases in depression, and to reduce likelihood estimations for positive future events. We examine the hypothesis that, in depressed patients, rumination would reduce the ability to imagine positive future events, whilst increasing the ability to imagine negative future events. The ability to imagine positive and negative future events was assessed using the future thinking paradigm (MacLeod, Rose, & Williams, 1993). Depressed and nondepressed participants completed the future thinking task after being randomly allocated to either a rumination or distraction manipulation (Nolen-Hoeksema & Morrow, 1993). Mood was measured before and after the manipulation. Participants also completed a standard verbal fluency task. In the depressed group, compared to distraction, rumination increased both negative and positive future thinking, although the effect was only significant for negative future thinking once baseline levels of hopelessness were controlled for. These findings are consistent with the prediction that rumination would increase negative future thinking, but inconsistent with the prediction that rumination would reduce positive future thinking. Previous findings that, compared to controls, depressed patients generated fewer positive future events were replicated. Ruminative self-focus leads to greater negative future thinking in depressed patients, further confirming that rumination exacerbates negative cognitive biases in depression. The relationship between rumination and positive future thinking was unexpected, but might potentially reflect a general priming of self-related information by rumination.