Research has shown that anxious and depressed individuals tend to think about their problems abstractly. In a study conducted by Joachim Stöber and Thomas Borkovec (2002), individuals diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) were asked to describe the two main problems that they were currently worried about and their potential negative consequences. It was found that compared to people without the disorder, individuals with GAD described their problems in terms that were less specific and less distinct to the situation. A similar study carried out by Edward Watkins (2007) with depressed individuals found that compared to non-depressed people, they also described their problems less specifically and less distinctly.

Abstract thinking is vague, general, and non-specific to a situation. Thoughts are concerned with why something happened, what it means, and what it implies for the future. For example, an individual who is at a restaurant awaiting the arrival of a friend and notices that they are running late may wonder if something bad happened to their friend, if their friend does not like them anymore, or why this is happening to them. Rather than focusing on the details that make a situation unique (“I noticed there was an interruption in public transit when I was on my way to the restaurant, perhaps that’s why my friend is late”), one is instead thinking about the broad implications of the situation (“Maybe my friend does not respect me”).

Thinking about a problem generally rather than specifically makes it challenging to find alternative, more neutral explanations. It also makes it difficult to carry out specific actions to prepare for, prevent, or solve a problem. This encourages avoidance of the problem rather than head-on confrontation of it, meaning that it is never truly eliminated, and worry and negative thinking about it will continue. 

It is clear that the tendency of anxious and depressed individuals to think about their problems abstractly is actually quite unhelpful. So how can one fix this? If thinking too generally is the issue, then one should see an improvement in their mood when they begin to think in a more specific, concrete way. To examine this idea, Edward Watkins, Celine Baeyens, and Rebecca Read (2009) developed an intervention called concreteness training (CNT), which aims to train individuals out of an abstract thinking style and into a more concrete one. In an initial study, an experimenter guided depressed individuals to practice thinking concretely about six provided scenarios (half positive and half negative) and three personal, specific scenarios from memory. This entailed focusing on the details of each scenario using all of one’s senses, noticing what made each scenario’s events unique, imagining the process of how the events unfolded, and coming up with a step-by-step plan of how to move forward. Individuals then received a recording of the training, which they were asked to practice with once per day for one week. It was found that after one week, depression symptoms for those who had received CNT (compared to those who received a comparison training that was not expected to do much) were significantly reduced.

Ultimately, concrete thinking may be beneficial because encouraging an individual to vividly imagine an event happening in the present moment urges them to confront it. This often allows them to realize that the situation is not actually that bad or threatening, leading them to overcome it. Further, this type of thinking encourages one to take action, meaning that they may be more likely to discover and use more effective strategies to cope with and solve the problems that worry or distress them. Given the success observed with training depressed individuals to adopt a more concrete thinking style, future research should seek to uncover whether this is an equally beneficial intervention for anxious individuals.

References

Stöber, J., & Borkovec, T. D. (2002). Reduced concreteness of worry in generalized anxiety disorder: Findings from a therapy study. Cognitive Therapy and Research, 26(1), 89-96. doi:10.1023/A:1013845821848

Watkins, E. (2007). Reduced concreteness of rumination in depression: A pilot study. Personality and Individual Differences, 43(6), 1386-1395. doi:10.1016/j.paid.2007.04.007

Watkins, E., Baeyens, C. B., & Read, R. (2009). Concreteness training reduces dysphoria: Proof-of-principle for repeated cognitive bias modification in depression. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 118(1), 55-64. doi:10.1037/a0013642