JAMA Psychiatry
February 1, 2017
Bethany E Kok, Tania Singer
Loneliness is a risk factor for depression and other illnesses and may be caused and reinforced by maladaptive social cognition. Secularized classical meditation training programs address social cognition, but practice typically occurs alone. Little is known about the effectiveness of contemplative practice performed in dyads. To introduce and assess the effectiveness of contemplative dyadic...
Mindfulness
August 18, 2016
Bethany E Kok, Tania Singer
154 citations
Despite increasing interest in the effects of mental training practices such as meditation, there is much ambiguity regarding whether and to what extent the various types of mental practice have differential effects on psychological change. To address this gap, we compare the effects of four common meditation practices on measures of state change in affect, mind-wandering, meta-cognition, and...
International journal of psychophysiology : official journal of the International Organization of Psychophysiology
July 1, 2015
Anna-Lena Lumma, Bethany E Kok, Tania Singer
Meditation is often associated with a relaxed state of the body. However, meditation can also be regarded as a type of mental task and training, associated with mental effort and physiological arousal. The cardiovascular effects of meditation may vary depending on the type of meditation, degree of mental effort, and amount of training. In the current study we assessed heart rate (HR),...
Psychological Science
July 1, 2013
Bethany E Kok, Kimberly A. Coffey, Michael Cohn et al.
The mechanisms underlying the association between positive emotions and physical health remain a mystery. We hypothesize that an upward-spiral dynamic continually reinforces the tie between positive emotions and physical health and that this spiral is mediated by people's perceptions of their positive social connections. We tested this overarching hypothesis in a longitudinal field experiment...
Social and Personality Psychology Compass
2013
Bethany E Kok, Christian E. Waugh, Barbara L. Fredrickson
39 citations
Abstract Psychological interest in the impact of mental states on biological functioning is growing rapidly, driving a need for new methods for inducing mental states that last long enough, and are sufficiently impactful, to have significant effects on physical health. The many traditions of meditative practice are one potential pathway for studying mind‐body interactions. The purpose of this...