Dispositional mindfulness attenuates the emotional attentional blink.
Consciousness and Cognition January 1, 2019 Dominique Makowski, Marco Sperduti, Samantha Lavallée et al.
Emotional images can automatically capture attention and slow detection of subsequent targets. Dispositional mindfulness, especially the Non-reacting facet, relates to faster disengagement of attention from negative emotional stimuli. Participants viewed rapid sequences of pictures where targets were sometimes preceded by negative, neutral, or scrambled distractors. Those higher in the Non-reacting facet of mindfulness showed quicker recovery of attention after emotional distractors. This suggests mindfulness is linked to faster emotional recovery rather than a reduced initial emotional response, with potential implications for anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorders where attentional bias toward emotional stimuli is exaggerated.