Cardiovascular and affective consequences of ruminating on a performance stressor depend on mode of thought.

Psychological detachment from work is important for facilitating recovery. This can be threatened by rumination, or thinking about the day's stressors. Rumination may lead to distress, fatigue and extended activation of stress-related systems, but findings are not unequivocal. Level of construal (abstract or concrete) and type of mentation (imagery or verbal thought) used during stressor-focused rumination may shape physiological and affective responses and impact recovery. This study tested whether blood pressure (BP) and anxiety responses to stressor-focused rumination differ by mentation type and construal level. Healthy undergraduates (n = 136) performed a speech stressor and then completed a rumination task in one of four randomly assigned conditions: concrete imagery, abstract imagery, concrete verbal thought or abstract verbal thought. Anxiety and continuous BP were assessed. Concrete rumination led to greater BP, whereas rumination with abstract construals led to lower BP. Furthermore, participants in the abstract conditions had greater increases in anxiety following stressor-focused rumination than in the concrete conditions. Results suggest that the immediate physiological and psychological consequences of stressor-focused rumination depend upon mode of thought.