An examination of happiness as a buffer of the rumination-adjustment link: Ethnic differences between European and Asian American students

Individuals who ruminate (i.e., a tendency to respond to negative life events with negative self-reflection) have consistently been found to be associated with maladaptive functioning (i.e., anxious and depressive symptoms). Happy individuals, on the other hand, have been found to have minimized anxious and depressive symptoms. Not surprisingly, rumination is negatively correlated with happiness. However, ethnic variations in the associations between these variables have not been studied previously. Thus, an integrative model involving rumination and happiness as predictors of psychological maladjustment (viz., depressive and anxious symptoms) was proposed and tested in 184 Asian Americans and 238 European Americans. For European Americans and not Asian Americans, results of hierarchical regression analysis indicated a significant Rumination × Happiness interaction in predicting each of the maladjustment measures after accounting for the influences of both rumination and happiness. These findings are taken to offer support for a more interactive regression model of psychological maladjustment involving rumination and happiness.