Eliciting event type: Rumination and emotional complexity

Past research has found positive associations between emotional complexity (the subjective experience of multiple simultaneous emotions; Hervas & Vazquez, 2011) and having a ruminative cognitive style. Numerous studies have suggested that the association between emotional complexity and rumination about sad events promote the risk of prolonged depression. However, no known research has investigated this about that relationship in other negative events. Thus, we tested the implications of remembering either a sad or an angry event on emotional complexity measures with participants (n = 182, female = 91, M age = 21.9, SD age = 3.35) who were recruited from the undergraduate research participant pool and community centers, like the YMCA. Participants were asked to rate subjective emotion levels before and after recalling the assigned memory. Then they responded to the rumination measures: the Rumination Response Scale (RRS) and Anger Rumination Scale (ARS). Our data shows that a relationship between emotional complexity and rumination is significant regardless of eliciting event type, but only in sad event memories did emotional complexity and rumination remain significantly correlated after controlling for baseline levels of emotional complexity. Future studies should determine what it is about angry and sad events that make this relationship different.