Preventing Worry and Rumination by Induced Positive Emotion

Abstract

Background: Thus study aimed to test the hypothesis that positiveemotion can quell or undo the lingering worry and ruminationfollowing induced negative emotion.Methods: 32 female students in grade 1 of high school wererandomly recruited and assigned in two experimental and controlgroups. They completed questionnaires in a pretest that are listedherewith: (1) Rumination questionnaire; (2) Two scales of the bigfive factorial questionnaire (extraversion – introversion; (3) MMPI2;(4) Penn-state worry questionnaire. Then for the first group a sadmovie, for the second group a cheerful movie, and for the thirdgroup a neutral movie was played, and the fourth group remainedwithout intervention. Next day, all the group members completedthe worry and rumination questionnaire again. Research findingswere analyzed using covariance analysis and multivariate analysisof variance (MANOVA).Results: Those participants whose attention was turned towardthe cheerful movie recovered from negative emotions (ruminationand worry) more than those who saw either a neutral or sad movieor remained without intervention.Conclusions: Positive emotion is effective on negative emotionlike worry and rumination. This effect is called the undoing effectof positive emotionsKeywords: Induced emotion, negative emotion, positive emotion,rumination, worry