A cross-cultural look at the role of rumination in the relationship between trait anxiety and romantic breakup distress

Abstract

Romantic breakups are considered ”normative” events because of their high prevalence, but they can also be stressful, and even traumatic experiences. Although there is an increasing interest in studying romantic breakups, there are few studies proposing mechanisms that turn a romantic breakup into a health problem. Based upon existing literature, we chose rumination as a mediator between trait anxiety and breakup distress. In addition, given that culture plays a significant role in both grief response and the process of rumination, we expected rumination plays a differential role in mediating the relationship between trait anxiety and breakup distress across Argentinian and North American samples, although we did not specify a moderation hypothesis due to absence of previous antecedents in the literature. To set a firm measurement foundation, we initially evaluated measurement invariance prior to testing substantive models. 415 Argentinians (78% female) and 383 USA (66% female) students who experienced a romantic breakup were recruited. Several measurement adjustments were needed to support metric invariance for the items. The indirect effect involving brooding rumination between the trait anxiety and breakup distress was significant in both countries, and not significantly different between the countries. Rumination thinking was shown as a full cross-cultural mediator of the relationship between trait anxiety and breakup distress in both countries. Our results could point at a starting point to think of rumination as a cross-culturally invariant mechanism explaining why insecure individuals (i.e., high trait anxiety) tend to suffer more during a breakup compared to less anxious individuals.