When Support Seeking Backfires: Co-Rumination, Excessive Reassurance Seeking, and Depressed Mood in the Daily Lives of Young Adults

Research has linked depression to maladaptive variants of support seeking, including co-rumination (CR) and excessive reassurance seeking (ERS), which may contribute to symptom onset and maintenance. Although both CR and ERS are associated with depression, insufficient research has examined how daily behaviors and experiences interact with trait-level CR and ERS to predict daily mood. Fifty-one undergraduates, over-selected for internalizing symptoms, completed baseline assessments, followed by a 14-day daily diary assessing behaviors, stressors, and mood. Daily problem-related talk was associated with elevations in depressed mood for participants with high (but not low) trait CR, particularly for those with major depression. Trait ERS similarly moderated the association between daily reassurance seeking and depressed mood. CR, ERS, and daily reassurance seeking each predicted greater affective reactivity to daily stressors. Results align with daily processes hypothesized by CR and ERS models, and suggest that both constructs may be best understood within a diathesis-stress framework.