Perseverative cognition
Perseverative cognition [1] [2] is a collective term in scientific psychology for continuous thinking about negative events in the past or in the future (e.g. worry, rumination, brooding, but also mind wandering about negative topics [3] etc.). The psychological concept of perseverative cognition helps to explain how psychological stress, such as work stress and marital stress, leads to disease, such as cardiovascular disease. It seems that part of perseverative cognition is unconscious.
The perseverative cognition hypothesis
The ‘perseverative cognition hypothesis’ [2] holds that stressful events cannot affect one's health, unless they worry about these stressful events. It proposes that perseverative thoughts could be a mediator of the detrimental effects of stress on one's health. Since its publication scientific evidence for this hypothesis is accumulating [4].
See also
References
- ^ [Brosschot, J.F., Pieper, S. & Thayer J.F. (2005) Expanding Stress Theory: Prolonged Activation And Perseverative Cognition. Psychoneuroendocrinology, 30(10):1043-9]
- ^ a b [Brosschot, J.F, Gerin, W. & Thayer, J.F. (2006) Worry and health: the perseverative cognition hypothesis. Journal of Psychosomatic Research, 60, 113-12]
- ^ [Ottaviani, C., Shapiro, D., Couyoumdjian, A.(2013) Flexibility as the key for somatic health: From mind wandering to perseverative cognition. Biological Psychology, 94(1), 38-43.]
- ^ [Verkuil B., Brosschot J.F., Gebhardt W.A. & Thayer J.F. (2010), When worries make you sick: A review of perseverative cognition, the default stress response and somatic health., Journal of Experimental Psychopathology 1: 87-118.]