Mental Health 507adolescence make their ruminative response
more detrimental. These negative events in-
clude troublesome body changes, difficulties
in relationships, and awareness of the limits
of the female gender role (i.e., role inconsis-
tent with independence and achievement).
These difficulties are addressed in the section
on adolescence and depression.
A related construct that we addressed
in Chapter 8 is co-rumination—a repetitive
and ruminative discussion of a problem with
a friend. Like rumination, females engage in
co-rumination more than males. One study of
college students showed that co-rumination
with the closest friend explained part of the
reason that females were more depressed
than males but also part of the reason fe-
males were more satisfied with their friend-
ships than males (Calmes & Roberts, 2008).
Similarly, a study of urban African American
adolescents showed that this coping style
explained part of why girls were more dis-
tressed than boys (Carlson & Grant, 2008).
Thus, co-rumination is a double-edged
sword for females—it draws them closer to
their friends but at the expense of increase in
psychological distress.Private Self-Consciousness. Private
self-consciousness, or attending to one’s in-
ner thoughts and feelings, is typically con-
sidered a personality trait rather than a way
of coping. Because self-awareness or self-
consciousness is so closely linked to rumi-
nation, I discuss it here. Sample items from
the private self-consciousness scale are “I’m
always trying to figure myself out” and “I
generally pay attention to my inner feelings”
(Fenigstein, Scheier, & Buss, 1975).
There is no strong evidence for a sex dif-
ference in private self-consciousness. Early
studies in this area showed no sex differences
in private self-consciousness (Fenigstein et al.,This differential encouragement of emotional
expression predicted greater female than male
rumination four years later. In another study,
sixth, seventh, and eighth graders responded
to vignettes of men and women ruminat-
ing or distracting (Broderick & Korteland,
2002). Distraction was viewed as more ap-
propriate for males than females, and rumi-
nation was viewed as more appropriate for
females than males. People might encourage
women to ruminate because they do not be-
lieve it is maladaptive—at least for women.
When I ask students in my classes why they
think that women live longer than men, one
of the first responses (usually from a female)
is that women think about their feelings and
talk about their feelings while men keep their
emotions bottled up inside. This answer may
be partly correct, but it is also partly incor-
rect in a very important way. When thinking
about their feelings becomes brooding, there
are costs to health for women.
Given that women are more likely than
men to ruminate and rumination is related to
depression, does rumination explain the sex
difference in depression? The causal sequence
between rumination and depression was
identified in a study of over 1,200 adolescents
(Jose & Brown, 2008). The sex difference in
rumination appeared at age 12 and the sex
difference in depression appeared at age 13,
suggesting that rumination precedes depres-
sion. A study of 11- to 13-year-olds showed
that rumination predicted an increase in de-
pression over seven months and accounted
for the sex difference in depression (Hilt,
McLaughlin, & Nolen-Hoeksema, 2010).
Rumination appears to be an interac-
tive cause of sex differences in depression,
as Nolen-Hoeksema (1994) originally sug-
gested. Females are more likely than males
to ruminate even before adolescence, but the
negative events that occur to females duringM13_HELG0185_04_SE_C13.indd 507 6/21/11 12:55 PM