Trapped in thought: Investigating reciprocal links between negative interpretation inflexibility, rumination, and dampening of positive emotions in daily life

Rumination and dampening of positive emotions are consistently linked to poor mental health outcomes, yet the mechanisms underlying these repetitive thinking patterns remain underspecified. One candidate mechanism is negative interpretation inflexibility (persistence of negative interpretations of ambiguous situations over time). However, little is known about how these processes unfold in everyday life. Addressing this gap, the present study examined whether momentary negative interpretation inflexibility predicts subsequent rumination and dampening in daily life, and whether these repetitive thought patterns in turn predict the persistence of negative interpretations. A community sample of 179 adults with varying depression and social anxiety levels completed a 14-day ecological momentary assessment (EMA) protocol (12,950 completed surveys). EMA prompts included a novel mobile cognitive task (the Daily Life Interpretation Inflexibility Task) to assess the persistence of negative interpretations, alongside self-report measures of rumination and dampening. Preregistered multilevel analyses showed that within-person increases in negative interpretation inflexibility predicted subsequent increases in rumination and dampening. In the reverse direction, rumination, but not dampening, predicted subsequent increases in negative interpretation inflexibility. These temporal relations were not moderated by depression or social anxiety. Complementary dynamic structural equation models revealed significant reciprocal cross-lagged effects between negative interpretation inflexibility and rumination, and small reciprocal cross-lagged effects with dampening. These findings highlight negative interpretation inflexibility as a dynamic process that both precedes and follows repetitive thinking patterns in daily life. This work highlights negative interpretation persistence as a potential target for ecological interventions to reduce harmful repetitive thought.