| Description |
Co-rumination refers to an extensive discussion of problems, speculation about problems, and focus on negative emotions engaged in by two or more people. Research on emotion coping suggests that co-rumination, or dwelling on problems, leads to problematic emotional adjustment. Girls have been found to more frequently to co-ruminate about sadness with their peers and internalize symptoms more than boys. In my project, I looked at aspects of anger conversations that might reflect co-rumination and its aftermath. I hypothesized that as operational definitions of co-rumination, particular listener behaviors would be associated with speaker rumination behaviors more so than others. I also hypothesized that girls would show more co-ruminative behaviors than boys and that more co-rumination would predict higher post-co-rumination anger. Conversations between peers were videotaped, transcribed, and coded to measure co-rumination between adolescent participants (N = 108, mean age = 12.9) and their same-sex peers while discussing anger experiences. Strong associations were found between listener corumination eliciting behaviors and speaker rumination behaviors, but no gender difference was found in co-rumination, and co-rumination behaviors did not predict post-conversation anger. Findings are discussed in terms of the literature on gender differences in corumination and the implications of co-rumination for adolescent emotional distress. |
