• attention
• rumination
• philosophy of psychology
• philosophy of mind
• psychology
• cognition
• involuntary attention

Much of the literature on rumination characterizes it as repetitive thinking with highly negative content and outcomes, highlighting the traditional link between rumination and depression, and identifying this link as the main motivation behind the study of the nature and functioning of this psychological construct.

Even though the evidence of a relationship between rumination and depressive symptoms is well known, the nature of this relationship does not yet seem entirely clear. In particular, it is unclear whether rumination per se causes the onset and maintenance of such symptoms, or whether it is a kind of medium term that can, under certain conditions, lead to the worsening of pre-existing negative mood.

From these two possibilities, two types of attitudes emerge: the hypothesis that rumination is necessarily dysfunctional leads to the normative conclusion that it should be avoided or counteracted to prevent the production of such outcomes. On the contrary, the hypothesis that rumination may contingently mediate both positive and negative outcomes stimulates reflection on possible functional and dysfunctional individual conditions, and on the possibility of intervening on these conditions to ensure that rumination mediates positive outcomes.

The desire to delve deeper into this reflection is the main reason that motivated the development of this thesis.