The emergence of social media consciousness-raising campaigns, such as #MeToo and #TimesUp that encourage individuals to share their experiences of harassment and hold perpetrators accountable, might, in part, serve to promote a group-focused way of thinking about unwelcomed events that may be adaptive. In the current research, we propose a distinction between two forms of rumination, personal rumination on how that experience personally affected oneself, and group-focused rumination on how the experience is shared by many other members of one’s group, and how it impacts them. We apply this distinction to the sexual harassment of women and test the hypothesis that these two forms of post-event rumination predict markedly different psychological consequences. Consistent with a proposed dual rumination model of sexual harassment, we found that personal rumination uniquely mediated an association between sexual harassment and depression through increased brooding about oneself, in an undergraduate (N = 306) and community (N = 203) sample of women. In contrast, group rumination uniquely mediated an association between sexual harassment and gender critical consciousness (systemic injustice awareness and collective action engagement). This pattern suggests that ruminations prompted by a sexual harassment experience are not invariably maladaptive. Repetitive thoughts targeting group-focused construals of a personal, social injustice experience may be both politically adaptive and psychologically beneficial.

#MeToo 和 #TimesUp 等社交媒体意识提升活动的出现，鼓励个人分享自己的骚扰经历并追究肇事者的责任，这可能在一定程度上有助于促进以群体为中心的方式来思考不受欢迎的事件，可能是适应性的。在当前的研究中，我们提出了两种沉思形式的区别，即关于该经历如何影响自己的个人沉思，以及以群体为中心的沉思关于团队中的许多其他成员如何分享经验以及它如何影响他们。我们将这种区别应用于对女性的性骚扰，并检验了这样的假设：这两种形式的事后反思预示着明显不同的心理后果。与提出的性骚扰双重反思模型一致，我们发现，在本科生 (N = 306) 和社区 (N) 中，个人反思通过增加对自己的思考，独特地介导了性骚扰和抑郁之间的关联。= 203) 女性样本。相比之下，群体反思独特地介导了性骚扰和性别批判意识（系统性不公正意识和集体行动参与）之间的关联。这种模式表明，性骚扰经历引发的沉思并不总是适应不良。针对个人、社会不公正经历的以群体为中心的解释的重复想法可能既具有政治适应性，又具有心理益处。