THE RELATIONSHIP OF COPING STYLE AND ETHNICITY/CULTURE TO CO-RUMINATION IN ADOLESCENTS

Co-rumination refers to the excessive and repeated discussion of personal problems with another person while focusing almost exclusively on the negative feelings that these problems have elicited. Although it has been shown to be correlated with certain negative adjustment outcomes for adolescents, little is known about the ways in which factors such as coping style and ethnicity/culture are related to the extent to which adolescents co-ruminate. In the present study, students from one all-male (n = 445) and one all-female (n = 432) parochial high school responded to questionnaires that assessed co-rumination, coping style, and ethnicity/culture. Co-rumination was positively correlated with involuntary engagement coping and negatively associated with voluntary disengagement coping for both males and females. It was positively correlated with involuntary disengagement coping for females only and positively correlated with primary control engagement coping and negatively correlated with secondary control engagement coping for males only. Asian American/Pacific Islander females reported significantly greater co-rumination than did African American and Hispanic/Latin American females; ethnicity/culture was not related to co-rumination for males. Implications for future research on the mechanisms by which coping and culture are associated with co-rumination are discussed.