Aashna Sunderrajan 1, Yara Mekawi 1, Chinmayi Tengshe 1, Sophie Lohmann 1, Colleen Hughes 2, and Aishwarya Balasubramaniyan 1 1 University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, 2 University of Indiana, Bloomington Self-control, perseverative thinking, and internalizing psychopathology: A meta-analytic review Two mediation models were proposed to help explain how self-control and perseverative thinking relate in predicting psychopathology Lower self-control may lower individuals’ ability to successfully inhibit perseverative thinking, which then leads to psychopathology Perseverative thinking may reduce the ability to successfully engage in self-control, which then leads to psychopathology Theories of internalizing psychopathology (PP) emphasize the role of perseverative thinking (PT) as a risk factor in the development and maintenance of psychopathological symptoms (Nolen-Hoeksema, 2000; Nolen-Hoeksema, Parker & Larson, 1994) Depressed individuals tend to engage in rumination (Nolen-Hoeksema et al., 2008), and anxious individuals tend to engage in worry (Berenbaum, 2010) As depressive and anxiety disorders have a high lifetime prevalence rate (Kessler et al., 2005), understanding the mechanisms that underlie the PT-PP association can provide insights on the etiology, prevention, and treatment of these disorders Self-control may be such a mediator, defined as the degree to which individuals are able to attend to stimuli, inhibit and suppress their response, shift between tasks and update their working memory (based on executive functioning dimensions; Miyake, 2000) Various facets of self-control are negatively correlated with both perseverative thinking (Joormann, 2006; Whitmer & Banich, 2007) and psychopathology (Snyder, 2013) Little is known about how these constructs function and lead to psychopathology There is limited work simultaneously testing the direct and indirect effects of PT and self- control on PP Conducted a search of PsychINFO, PubMed and Web of Science This search yielded 2009 articles, published between the years 1992 and 2015 Inclusion criteria: 1.Presence of at least one self-control, one perseverative thinking, and one psychopathology (depression or anxiety) measure 2.Presence of appropriate statistics (correlations, F ratios, or t values required for calculating the appropriate correlations). When unavailable, authors were contacted for missing data. Exclusion criteria: 1.Animal studies, self-help books or manuals, theoretical/review pieces or book chapters, and case studies 2.Studies exclusively relying on neural data, qualitative data, state measures or induction tasks, and measures incongruent with our definitions 1942 reports were excluded, leaving k = 67, with n = 8885 Table 1. Sample demographics. All correlations were transformed into Fisher’s z for the analysis, and were transformed back to correlations in the results we report We used a two-stage meta-analytic structural equation modeling approach Table 2. Overall correlations. Self-control, rumination and depression pathways We found a significant indirect effect with rumination mediating the effect of self-control on depression The indirect and direct effects were almost equal in size (1 : 0.90) We found a significant indirect effect with self- control mediating the effect of rumination on depression The indirect effect was smaller in comparison to the direct effect (1 : 0.04) This provides greater support for the theory that the association between self-control and depression may be due to rumination Self-control, worry, and anxiety pathways We found a significant indirect effect with worry mediating the effect of self-control on anxiety The indirect and direct effects were almost equal in size (1 : 1.33) There was no significant indirect effect with self- control mediating the effect of worry on anxiety The indirect effect was smaller in comparison to the direct effect (1 : 0.02) This provides greater support for the theory that the association between self-control and anxiety may be due to worry Mean age, % female, % clinical, and sample size were not significant moderators of this model; self-control questionnaires led to smaller effects than self-control tasks There is a slight indication of publication bias There is greater support for perseverative thinking as a mediator of the association between self-control and psychopathology However, there is support for both models, which may suggest a bidirectional relationship In parallel to treatments targeting depression and anxiety, it may be efficacious to develop treatments that reduce the likelihood of developing these disorders Bolstering self-control capacity may be one such preventative strategy Limitations include the use of cross-sectional data, and the assumption that the self-control construct is homogeneous Figure 1. Associations between SC-PT-PP. Berenbaum, H. (2010). An initiation-termination two-phase model of worrying. Clinical Psychology Review, 30, 962– 975. Joormann, J. (2006). Differential effects of rumination and dysphoria on the inhibition of irrelevant emotional material: Evidence from a negative priming task. Cognitive Therapy and Research, 30, Kessler, R. C., Berglund, P., Demler, O., Jin, R., Merikangas, K. R., & Walters, E. E. (2005). Lifetime prevalence and age-of-onset distributions of DSM-IV disorders in the National Comorbidity Survey Replication. Archives of General Psychiatry, 62, Miyake, A., Friedman, N. P., Emerson, M. J., Witzki, A. H., & Howerter, A. (2000). The unity and diversity of executive functions and their contributions to complex "frontal lobe" tasks: A latent variable analysis. Cognitive Psychology, 41, Nolen-Hoeksema, S. (2000). The role of rumination in depressive disorders and mixed anxiety/depressive symptoms. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 109, Nolen-Hoeksema, S., Parker, L. E., & Larson, J. (1994). Ruminative coping with depressed mood following loss. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 67, 92–104. Nolen-Hoeksema, S., Wisco, B., & Lyubomirsky, S. (2008). Rethinking rumination. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 3, 400–424. Snyder, H. R. (2013). Major depressive disorder is associated with broad impairments on neuropsychological measures of executive function: A meta-analysis and review. Psychological Bulletin, 139, Whitmer, A., & Banich, M. (2007). Inhibition versus switching deficits in different forms of rumination. Psychological Science, 18, Self-control PT PP [-0.22, -0.11] [-0.16, -0.03] 0.46 [0.40, 0.52] Indirect effect: [-0.11, -0.05] PT Self-control PP [-0.22, -0.11] 0.46 [0.40, 0.52] [-0.16, -0.03] Indirect effect: 0.02 [0.01, 0.03] Introduction Aims Method Sample characteristicsk Sample size M Clinical Summary % Clinical Non-clinical Age Age M (SD)29.26 (15.41)65 Adults % Gender & Education % Female University students Race/Ethnicity % White Asian Black Results Conclusions References Self-Control1 2. Depression-0.19*1 3. Anxiety-0.15*0.57*1 4. Rumination-0.17*0.53*0.44*1 5. Worry-0.17*0.44*0.52*0.361