Inertia, innovation, and cross-lagged effects in negative affect and rumination: daily diary study among people...

The aim of this study was to examine individual differences in the day-by-day relationship between negative affect (NA) and rumination in terms of their inertia, innovation, and cross-lagged effects among people living with HIV (PLWH).

The participants were 217 PLWH with confirmed diagnoses of HIV and undergoing antiretroviral treatment. They assessed their NA and rumination for five consecutive days each evening via an online survey.

Results showed that inertia in NA is negatively related to inertia in rumination. Both innovations were unrelated. However, the individuals with relatively higher overall NA were also more reactive to external factors and/or had more variability in their daily lives, to which they respond with NA. Finally, the autoregressive effects were revealed to be important for spillover effects in a direction that is coherent with a given inertia. Thus, the direction of the cascade between daily NA and rumination depends on the area of major regulatory weakness.

The results support the view that intensity, inertia, and innovation are distinct dimensions in spite of the common assumption that higher overall intensity of emotions and coping should be strongly related or even synonymous to their perseveration.