Psychology research suggests a common response to negative emotions is worse for you in certain countries

A new study suggests that repetitively thinking about negative experiences is associated with lower daily well-being, but this link tends to be stronger for people in the United States compared to people in Japan. The findings provide evidence that the psychological effects of how we process negative emotions depend on our cultural background. The research was published in Social Psychological and Personality Science.

Rumination refers to a mental habit where a person repetitively focuses on the causes and consequences of their unpleasant experiences. In psychological research, this concept is often divided into two categories: trait rumination and state rumination. Trait rumination is a person’s general, long-term tendency to dwell on negative thoughts. State rumination describes the specific act of ruminating at a particular moment in time.

Past research indicates that trait rumination is linked to higher levels of depression and anxiety, particularly in Western countries. In Western cultures, people tend to focus on individual traits and might interpret repetitive negative thoughts as a sign of personal failure or incompetence. In East Asian cultures, people often view personal traits as flexible and are more likely to adopt a distanced perspective, sometimes seeing rumination as a way to learn from mistakes and improve.

To date, studies on cultural differences have largely relied on global questionnaires that ask participants to look back on their general habits. This retrospective approach can be influenced by memory biases or personal beliefs. To better understand how emotional regulation unfolds naturalistically, the authors sought to track people’s actual ruminative behaviors in real time.

“Rumination, which involves repetitively focusing on the causes and implications of one’s negative experiences, is often associated with poorer psychological health,” said study authors Danfei Hu, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of York in the UK, and Maya Tamir, a professor of psychology at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (mayatamir.com). “There is some evidence suggesting that the implications of rumination may vary across cultures.”

“In general, the more people ruminate, the worse off they tend to be; but, this association appears to be weaker among people of East Asian descent than among individuals from Western cultures,” Hu and Tamir explained. “Most of this evidence comes from retrospective self-report measures that ask people how much they typically ruminate, either in general or over the past week.”

Because global surveys only offer a broad overview, researchers wanted a closer look at daily routines. “As a result, we know relatively little about how rumination unfolds in everyday life as people encounter negative experiences in real time,” the researchers added. “This study was motivated by the need to capture rumination in daily life and examine whether its moment-to-moment associations with psychological health differ across culture.”

To observe these daily patterns, the researchers conducted two separate studies using a technique called ecological momentary assessment. This method involves sending participants frequent prompts via a smartphone app to answer brief surveys about their immediate feelings and behaviors. In the first study, the sample included 128 university students from a private college in Washington, D.C., and 93 students from a public university in Tokyo, Japan. Participants first completed baseline questionnaires measuring their general tendency to ruminate and their recent depressive symptoms.

Over the next seven days, participants received smartphone notifications eight times a day. Each prompt asked them to rate on a 9-point scale how much they were focusing on what was making them feel bad. They also rated their current psychological distress, which included feelings of depression, hopelessness, and loneliness, as well as their general well-being, which captured feelings of life satisfaction, physical health, and connection to others. The scientists controlled for variables like gender, age, and a person’s prior well-being levels earlier in the day to ensure these factors did not artificially inflate the results.

The baseline questionnaire showed that a general tendency to ruminate was associated with higher depressive symptoms among the American students, but this association was not statistically significant among the Japanese students. In the daily life assessments, state rumination was linked to lower well-being for all participants. The negative association between moment-to-moment rumination and well-being was weaker in Japan than in the United States. On a 9-point scale, Japanese students reported an average daily well-being score of 5.80, and the U.S. average was 5.63. Interestingly, when it came to acute psychological distress, ruminating in the moment was linked to higher distress in both countries equally.

To confirm these initial patterns, the researchers conducted a second study using a similar design. The second sample included 105 university students from a private college in St. Louis, Missouri, and 113 students from the same public university in Tokyo. The baseline and daily assessments were largely identical to the first study. The primary difference was the addition of a question asking participants about their physical pain or discomfort as part of the daily psychological distress measure. The authors again controlled for age, gender, and prior mood levels.

In the second study, the baseline questionnaire found that general trait rumination was associated with higher depressive symptoms in both the American and Japanese samples, showing no cultural difference at the trait level. The daily tracking phase successfully replicated the momentary findings of the first study. Ruminating during the day was linked to reduced well-being for both groups, and this negative link was again weaker for the Japanese students. Similar to the first study, daily rumination was associated with higher immediate psychological distress in both cultures. The average daily well-being score in this second sample was 5.29 for Japan and 5.64 for the United States on a 9-point scale.

These findings provide observational evidence, meaning they track natural behaviors without manipulating them. This design limits the ability to determine causality. It is possible that ruminating leads to different levels of well-being across cultures, or it could be that people with different levels of well-being are more or less likely to ruminate depending on their cultural background.

The questions used to measure daily rumination were broad and did not distinguish between different types of repetitive thinking. For instance, pondering a problem to find a solution might have different emotional effects than passively dwelling on negative feelings without attempting to resolve them. Future research could investigate whether people from different cultures engage in these specific types of rumination at different rates.

“Our findings raise the question of why rumination is less harmful for some people than for others,” Hu and Tamir said. “One reason may be that not all forms of rumination are the same. Some forms are characterized by self-blame, making them more harmful. Others are more oriented toward self-reflection and personal growth, which may be less harmful and can sometimes even be beneficial.”

Cultural contexts likely play a role in which form of rumination people adopt. “Cultural beliefs may shape how, why, and when people ruminate, as well as whether rumination leads to self-criticism or self-growth,” the authors noted. “It’s important to distinguish these differences and help people think when rumination might be harmful and when it may instead be helpful.”

Comparing students from the United States and Japan offers a narrow view of Western and East Asian cultures. The results might not apply to other populations or age groups within these regions. Expanding the research to include participants from other nations and demographic backgrounds would help clarify how cultural values shape emotional regulation.

The study, “Rumination in Daily Life Is Linked to Poorer Psychological Health in the United States Than in Japan,” was authored by Danfei Hu, Yuri Miyamoto, Yulia Chentsova-Dutton, Lisya Kaspi, Renee J. Thompson, Tomotaka Okuyama, and Maya Tamir.