Effectiveness of Rumination, Reappraisal and Music in Stress Recovery

Since stress has been linked to depression, PTSD, cardiovascular disease and high mortality, it is highly important to investigate positive and negative ways of coping with stress. Research suggests that whilst rumination is detrimental to stress recovery, reappraisal and music have a more positive impact on both psychological and physiological states. However, it is uncertain whether rumination indeed hinders stress recovery or the negative findings are purely a reflection of negative affect. Secondly, there is a very limited research on the effects of reappraisal. Finally, the findings regarding the effects of music are inconsistent. The main experiment aim of the present study was to assess potential differences in participants’ physiological and psychological recovery from a stress task between rumination, reappraisal and music stress recovery procedures. Participants performed a stress task consisting of a hypothetical job interview and were assigned to rumination, reappraisal or music conditions. SBP, DBP, HR and mood were measured at the baseline, during the stress task and at the 15-minute recovery. There were no differences between conditions in recovery on any of the studied physiological measures. The only significant difference in mood found was that participants were significantly more relaxed in the music than in the rumination condition. The findings suggest that the choice of stress recovery procedure in applied settings should be left to individuals’ personal preferences as they all appear to be similarly effective. This area, however, should be further investigated by comparing the effects of the studied stress recovery procedures with a no-intervention control condition to determine if any of them are any more effective than natural stress recovery.