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Updated: Jun 11, 2025

Design and Implementation of an fMRI Study Examining Thought Suppression in Young Women with, and At-risk, for Depression
Published on: May 19, 2015
The association between aspects of expressive suppression emotion regulation strategy and rumination traits: a
Mingxuan Zou1,2, Bin Liu2, Lei Ren3,4
1Public Health School, Shaanxi University of Chinese Medicine, Xianyang, 712046, China.
Abstract:
Expressive suppression is an abnormal emotion regulation strategy, and its relationship with rumination traits is unclear. In this study with 395 participants in China (33.9% female, Mean age = 21.22, SD = 2.11), we estimated the association between expressive suppression and rumination traits, using the Rumination Response Scale (RRS) and the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (ERQ) respectively. Considering there may be complex correlations between different behavioral symptoms of expressive suppression ("Keeping emotions to myself", "Inhibiting positive emotion responses", "Controlling emotions by not expressing them", "Inhibiting negative emotion responses") and different subtypes of rumination traits, this study employed a symptom-based network analysis method to uncover the differential association between rumination traits and expressive suppression, and the key symptoms linking the two. The study found the S3 node (Controlling emotions by not expressing them) had significant positive correlations with symptom rumination, brooding, and reflective pondering. Among the network, the S3 node acts as a bridge between two variables. This suggests that interventions targeting the S3 symptom may improve rumination traits. The present study was a cross-sectional study with limitations in revealing the causal relationships between expression suppression and rumination traits. Future studies could employ longitudinal tracing methods to explore the relationship between them.
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