How Responses to Positive Affect Predict Subjective Well-being and Motivational Persistence

Previous research on depressive rumination has shown its association with undesirable outcomes and mental disorders. However, much less is known about responses to positive affect, especially outside the clinical population. Researchers of the present study identified positive rumination and dampening as two affect regulation strategies, where the former was distinguished into self-focused rumination and emotion-focused rumination. It was expected that positive rumination would positively predict subjective well-being and motivational persistence whereas dampening would be negatively related to the two variables. Data were collected through online self-report measures (n=345). Results indicate that a significant positive correlation exists between positive rumination and subjective well-being, while dampening is negatively related to it. Motivational persistence is found to be positively predicted by positive rumination. Implications and suggestions for future research are discussed.