A Systematic Review of the Relationship Between Rumination and Suicidality

Rumination has been persistently implicated in the etiology of hopelessness and depression, which are proximal predictors of suicidality. As a result, researchers have started to examine the role of rumination in suicidality. This systematic review provides a concise synopsis of the current progress in examining the relationship between rumination and suicidality, and highlights areas for future research. A search of the international literature was conducted using the three main psychological and medical databases. Eleven studies were identified providing evidence, with one exception, of a relationship between rumination and suicidality. This review also highlights the considerable dearth of studies on this area of concern, specifically of case‐control and prospective, clinical studies, in the worldwide literature.     

Aliens behaving badly: children's acquisition of novel purity-based morals

The traditional cognitive developmental perspective on moral acquisition posits that children actively construct moral beliefs by assessing the negative impacts of antisocial behaviors. This account is not easily applied to actions that are considered immoral despite lacking consequences for others' welfare. We studied the moralization of behaviors without tangible impacts, specifically examining the independent and joint roles of feelings and norms in children's acquisition of purity-based morals. Seven-year-olds were shown pictures of anthropomorphic aliens engaged in unfamiliar activities and were asked to judge whether these actions were wrong or OK. Relative to a control condition matched for valence and informational complexity, children made elevated wrongness judgments when they were either disgusted or led to believe that the behaviors were unnatural. However, it was only in a condition that included both disgust induction and information about unnaturalness that children exhibited robust tendencies to judge the actions as wrong. This research therefore demonstrates that feelings and norms work in concert such that purity morals are most readily acquired when both factors are involved. The implications for accounts of moral development are discussed.