The Cognitive Mechanism And Neural Basis Of Trait Of Angry Rumination

Angry rumination refers to repetitive thoughts about a personally meaningful event that induced anger,accompanied by angry feelings or thoughts about revenge.Angry rumination can be divided into trait angry rumination and state angry rumination.Trait angry rumination is a kind of personality trait,which is relatively stable across situations and times,reflect a behavior model;while state angry rumination is a kind of behavior response which is not stable and determines by specific situations.In another words,trait angry rumination is stable cognitive pattern and could not be operated or changed by an experimental task;while state angry rumination is situational and short-lived cognitive process which could be operated by experimenter in research.Angry rumination is a complex psychological phenomenon involving processes of social cognition,negative affect,and emotion regulation and so on.In the past decade,research on angry rumination has been conducted in several fields,including personality psychology,social psychology and neuroscience.Previous behavioral studies have shown that angry rumination is associated with negative outcomes such as aggressive behavior,negative emotion,and depressive symptoms and episodes.previous studies concerning to the influencing factors of angry rumination were only focused on self-control,executive control,or self-compassion.However,there are few studies on the deeper cognitive mechanism of angry rumination.Previous studies have shown that hostile attribution bias and angry rumination both are important social cognitive factors of aggression;furthermore,there are much theoretical inferences on the casual relationship between hostile attribution bias and angry rumination.But there is no research to study the casual relationship between hostile attribution bias and angry rumination in empirical research.Previous studies have focused on state angry rumination,induced by experimental protocol such as the provocation-focused rumination task.To our knowledge,no study has examined the neural basis of trait angry rumination,which is measured by questionnaires.Therefore,the present study focuses on the cognitive mechanism and neural structural basis of trait angry rumination,revealing the casual relationship between hostile attribution bias and angry rumination and exploring the individual difference of the brain mechanism of trait angry rumination.The first study tries to explore the relationship between hostile attribution bias and angry rumination.1120 Chinese undergraduates were asked to fill in the Angry Rumination Scale and Social Information Processing–Attribution Bias Questionnaire in a 6-month interval(Time1-Time2).After Time 1,10.08% of the undergraduate students dropped out.So we finally received 942 valid data.Participants were 18-27 years old(M=21.09,SD=1.07),including 38.5% male.Then,we conducted the longitudinal cross-lagged panel analysis between the hostile attribution bias and angry rumination.The results indicated that hostile attribution bias at time 1 was found to have cross-lagged effects on time 2 angry rumination(? =0.03,z= 3.01,p <0.01).However,no cross-lagged effect was found to be statistically significant for angry rumination at time 1 on hostile attribution bias at time 2(? =0.03,z= 0.97,p >0.05).Results of the cross-lagged structural equation model reported that hostile attribution bias predicted angry rumination 6 months later,and angry rumination did not have longitudinal effect on hostile attribution bias.On the basis of studying one,the further study tries to explore the individual difference of brain mechanism of angry rumination and mediating role of hostile attribution boas in the relationship between trait angry rumination and brain mechanism.82 healthy volunteers(32 men;mean age =21.03,SD=1.9;age range: 18-27years)participated in the study.All participants were undergraduate students from Southwest University in China.Participants were instructed to complete paper-pencil questionnaires and fMRI scans.All of them were right-handed,and all completed the questionnaires.All participants signed an informed consent document prior to the experiment.In this study,we used VBM to explore the association between brain structure and trait angry rumination in healthy individuals and mediation analysis to explore the mediating role of hostile attribution bias.The multiple regression analysis revealed that angry rumination was positively associated with grey matter density in a cluster that mainly included an area in the left middle frontal gyrus(MFG)(x=-43.5,y=39,z=25.5,cluster size=308,t=4.27,p<0.001).Furthermore,significant negative associations were found between angry rumination and grey matter density in a cluster that mostly included the area in the right putamen(x=22.5,y=12,z=-7.5,cluster size=589,t=-4.63,p<0.001).Further mediation analysis indicated that hostile attribution bias significantly mediated the relationship between trait angry rumination and left middle frontal gyrus density(b=0.26,SE=0.11,t=2.39,p<0.05;95%CI= [0.2,0.58]).In summary,the present findings: 1)hostile attribution bias predicted angry rumination 6 months later;2)angry rumination was positively associated with grey matter density in a cluster that mainly included an area in the left middle frontal gyrus(MFG)and significant negatively associated with right putamen;3)hostile attribution bias significantly mediated the relationship between trait angry rumination and left middle frontal gyrus density.These findings suggest that hostile attribution bias may contribute to angry rumination,while the left middle frontal gyrus may play an important role in the development of hostile attribution bias.The study enriched the brain mechanisms of angry rumination,and play a role in revealing the cognitive mechanisms of the development of trait angry rumination.The finding that brain-but not the personality-level factors predicted trait angry rumination in our mediation models provides support to the idea of a directional link from brain structures to personality-level variables,and is consistent with previous evidence linking structural neuroanatomical features of the human brain with individual cognitive and personality traits.This finding sheds light on the underlying cognitive mechanisms of trait angry rumination with respect to the effects of grey matter density in the left middle frontal gyrus.Results of this study suggest that the neuroanatomical characteristics may influence cognitive habits and preferences,such as hostile attribution bias,and which in turn affect the development of the cognition traits such as trait angry rumination.