Anger rumination is perseverative only if considered uncontrollable. The role of metacognitions in a prospective study
Alessia Offredi, Davide Varalli, Giovanni Maria Ruggiero, Sandra Sassaroli, Gabriele Caselli
Anger rumination is a perseverative thinking style about causes and consequences of anger-inducing events. This study aimed to identify whether anger rumination was a self-maintained process based on internal procedural features or if it was perseverative because of specific metacognitive beliefs.
More specifically, metacognitive beliefs are beliefs that individuals hold about their own thoughts and the coping strategies they employ to manage them. A non-clinical sample of seventy-six participants were asked to complete a daily monitoring protocol over a two-week period, which assessed the number of anger episodes, anger rumination and metacognitive beliefs. Results showed that belief of thought uncontrollability over the four days following an anger episode was the only stable predictor of anger rumination, as opposed to the number of episodes of rage and rumination itself, which had a restricted short-term effect. Data supports the need to focus therapeutic intervention on conviction of uncontrollability through conceptualisation and treatment carried out in a metacognitive perspective.
Keywords
Perseverative thinking style, Anger rumination, Metacognitive beliefs,
Metacognitive therapy, Prospective study
