Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
October 27, 2008
Barbara L. Fredrickson, Michael Cohn, Kimberly A. Coffey et al.
2,359 citations
Daily experiences of positive emotions can compound over time to build personal resources that enhance well-being. In a field experiment with 139 working adults, half were randomly assigned to practice loving-kindness meditation. This meditation increased daily positive emotions, which led to growth in mindfulness, purpose in life, social support, and fewer illness symptoms. These gains then predicted greater life satisfaction and reduced depressive symptoms. The findings suggest that loving-kindness meditation generates positive emotions in a way that counteracts the hedonic treadmill, making it an effective intervention for building psychological resources.
The Journal of Positive Psychology
September 1, 2010
Michael Cohn, Barbara L. Fredrickson
302 citations
A 15-month follow-up of a loving-kindness meditation intervention found that many participants continued meditating, and those who did reported more positive emotions than those who stopped or never meditated. All participants maintained gains in psychological resources like resilience and social support made during the initial intervention, regardless of continued practice. Continuing meditators did not differ in resources at baseline but showed more positive emotions and a faster emotional response to the intervention. The results suggest that positive psychology interventions have lasting value beyond the intervention period.
Psychological Inquiry
October 2, 2015
Eric L Garland, Norman A. S. Farb, Philippe R. Goldin et al.
228 citations
Mindfulness-based interventions reduce symptoms of anxiety and depression, and they appear to work by changing how people appraise or relate to their thoughts and emotions rather than by eliminating negative content. The review synthesizes evidence from multiple studies showing that mindfulness training fosters decentering and acceptance, which in turn lowers psychological distress. The authors suggest that these cognitive and emotional processes are central to the therapeutic benefits of mindfulness, though the exact mechanisms remain an area of active investigation.
Cognition & Emotion
May 13, 2013
Patty van Cappellen, Vassilis Saroglou, Caroline Iweins et al.
184 citations
Spirituality is typically studied as a response to hardship, but this research explores whether it can also arise from positive emotions that transcend the self, such as admiration and elevation. In two experiments, inducing these emotions—using different methods—boosted participants' spirituality compared to neutral or merely happy (mirth) states. The effect was especially strong among non-religious participants. The increase in spirituality was explained by shifts in basic worldviews: a stronger belief that life is meaningful and that others and the world are benevolent. Spirituality may function not only as a coping mechanism but as part of an upward spiral with self-transcendent positive emotions.
Journal of Clinical Psychology
March 6, 2009
David P. Johnson, David L Penn, Barbara L. Fredrickson et al.
158 citations
Loving-kindness meditation (LKM) may help reduce negative symptoms of schizophrenia-spectrum disorders, such as anhedonia, avolition, and asociality, while enhancing hope and purpose in life. Case studies illustrate how to conduct this group treatment, its potential benefits, and difficulties that may arise. LKM requires further empirical support but promises to be an important intervention given the limited treatments for negative symptoms.
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience
June 17, 2016
Patty van Cappellen, Baldwin M. Way, Suzannah F. Isgett et al.
138 citations
Intranasal oxytocin increased self-reported spirituality in midlife men, an effect that persisted for at least a week. The hormone also boosted positive emotions during meditation, both explicitly and implicitly. The effect was moderated by genetic variations in the oxytocin receptor gene (OXTR rs53576) and CD38 (rs6449182 and rs3796863). These findings provide experimental evidence that the oxytocin system, known for social bonding, may also support spirituality.
Emotion
October 15, 2019
Patty van Cappellen, Lahnna I Catalino, Barbara L. Fredrickson
42 citations
Maintaining a new health behavior like meditation is difficult. An experiment with 240 midlife adults tested two pathways of the upward spiral theory of lifestyle change, which holds that positive emotions help sustain new behaviors. Participants were randomly assigned to learn about prioritizing positivity or a control topic, and to practice either loving-kindness meditation (which generates positive emotions) or mindfulness meditation (which does not). Those exposed to the prioritizing positivity microintervention experienced more positive emotions during loving-kindness meditation than during mindfulness meditation. The more positive emotions participants felt during their first meditation session, the more frequently and longer they meditated over the next 21 days. Initial enjoyment of meditation can be amplified and predicts continued practice.
Social and Personality Psychology Compass
January 1, 2013
Bethany E Kok, Christian E. Waugh, Barbara L. Fredrickson
39 citations
Meditation practices offer a promising method for studying how mental states influence physical health, particularly immune function, cardiovascular health, and pain perception. This review describes how meditation may work by enhancing emotion regulation, self-regulation, or repeatedly inducing specific mental states like love or meta-cognitive awareness. The field needs large randomized controlled trials with active control groups and dual-blind designs to test whether changes in cognitive and affective processes from meditation directly cause improvements in physical health. Meditation is a potentially powerful tool for understanding mind-body interactions.
UNC Libraries
November 8, 2020
Norman A. S. Farb, Philippe R. Goldin, Barbara L. Fredrickson et al.
Mindfulness is often described as non-evaluative awareness, but its traditional purpose was to foster eudaimonic well-being. The Mindfulness-to-Meaning Theory proposes that mindfulness enhances interoceptive attention, which increases cognitive flexibility, enabling reappraisal of adversity and savoring of positive experiences. This process is theorized to deepen meaning-making and engagement with life, addressing a gap in psychological research on how mindfulness influences emotion regulation and sense of meaning.
Mindfulness
January 1, 2026
Manuella B Kury, Barbara L. Fredrickson, Patty van Cappellen et al.
People with lower self-compassion before starting meditation training tend to gain greater emotional and mental health benefits. In a randomized intervention, 217 adults received six weeks of either mindfulness meditation or loving-kindness meditation. Those who began with lower self-compassion showed larger reductions in depressive symptoms and greater improvements in positive emotions and social connectedness over the intervention period. Increases in self-compassion from before to after training explained the link between meditation and lower depression, but only for those initially low in self-compassion. The findings suggest that individual differences in self-compassion shape how much people benefit from meditation, with those lowest in self-compassion potentially gaining the most.
Brain, behavior, and immunity
October 1, 2024
Itay Ricon-Becker, Taylor N West, Barbara L. Fredrickson et al.
Baseline activity of the CREB transcription factor pathway, inferred from gene expression profiles in blood samples, predicted psychological responses to compassion-based meditation but not to mindfulness meditation. In two randomized controlled trials, individuals with higher pre-intervention CREB activity showed greater reductions in loneliness and negative emotions, and greater increases in life satisfaction, after compassion meditation. CREB activity was unrelated to baseline psychometric measures, suggesting that gene expression profiles may capture non-conscious psychobiological states that could help personalize intervention selection.
Emotion (Washington, D.C.)
September 1, 2022
Taylor N West, Brian P Don, Barbara L. Fredrickson
Insecurely attached midlife adults from low-SES backgrounds who practiced meditation experienced shifts in their daily emotional profiles. Over 10 weeks, 113 participants were randomly assigned to either loving-kindness or mindfulness meditation for 6 weeks. Those with high attachment anxiety who practiced mindfulness showed increases in positive emotions and decreases in negative emotions over time. Individuals high in attachment avoidance experienced decreases in negative emotions regardless of meditation type. On a daily basis, more anxious individuals showed the strongest dose-response relationship: longer meditation sessions were linked to same-day increases in positive emotions and decreases in negative emotions. The findings suggest meditation can improve emotional well-being in those at risk for chronic illness.
Mindfulness
May 1, 2022
Brian P Don, Patty van Cappellen, Barbara L. Fredrickson
Training in either mindfulness or loving-kindness meditation for six weeks reduced day-to-day fluctuations in social connectedness among 224 mid-life adults, beyond simply raising average levels of connectedness. This smoothing of social ups and downs was partly explained by a corresponding reduction in the variability of both positive and negative emotions. The results suggest meditation helps stabilize social well-being by calming emotional swings.
Mindfulness
May 1, 2022
Taylor N West, Jieni Zhou, Mary Brantley et al.
A 6-week workshop in mindfulness meditation reduced expression of proinflammatory genes linked to early-life low socioeconomic status (SES), while loving-kindness meditation unexpectedly increased that same gene expression profile. In 88 at-risk midlife adults, those who learned mindfulness meditation showed significant declines in the conserved transcriptional response to adversity (CTRA), whereas those who learned loving-kindness meditation showed significant increases. Both groups reported more positive and fewer negative emotions over the six weeks, but this emotional change did not explain the gene expression differences. The findings suggest mindfulness meditation may help reverse the biological effects of childhood low SES in midlife.
Mindfulness
March 1, 2021
Brian P Don, Sara B Algoe, Barbara L. Fredrickson
Loving-kindness meditation training directly reduced social avoidance goals and indirectly increased social approach goals by enhancing positive emotion. In a randomized intervention with 138 mid-life adults, those who received loving-kindness training reported lower avoidance goals compared to a wait-list control group, while mindfulness training did not produce these effects. The findings suggest that practicing loving-kindness meditation can shift people's motivational tendencies in ways that may improve their social relationships.
Psychoneuroendocrinology
October 1, 2019
Khoa D. Le Nguyen, Jue Lin, Sara B Algoe et al.
Loving-kindness meditation (LKM) may buffer the shortening of telomeres, the protective caps of chromosomes, while mindfulness meditation (MM) does not show the same protective effect. In a randomized trial with 142 midlife adults, telomere length decreased significantly in both the MM group and a waitlist control group over the study period, but not in the LKM group. The LKM group also experienced significantly less telomere attrition than the control group. The MM group's telomere changes fell between those of the LKM and control groups and were not significantly different from either. Self-reported emotions and practice duration or frequency did not explain the group differences. This work is the first to separate the effects of LKM and MM on telomere length.
Psychological Science
July 1, 2013
Bethany E Kok, Kimberly A. Coffey, Michael Cohn et al.
A longitudinal field experiment tested whether generating positive emotions through loving-kindness meditation can improve physical health by strengthening perceptions of social connections. Participants randomly assigned to the meditation group showed increased positive emotions compared to a waiting-list control group, an effect that was stronger for those with higher baseline vagal tone, a measure of physical health. Increased positive emotions led to further increases in vagal tone, and this effect was mediated by greater perceptions of social connections. The findings suggest an upward-spiral dynamic in which positive emotions, social connections, and physical health mutually reinforce each other.
Schizophrenia Research
July 1, 2011
David P Johnson, David L Penn, Barbara L. Fredrickson et al.
Loving-kindness meditation was feasible for people with schizophrenia-spectrum disorders who had significant negative symptoms. Participation was associated with decreased negative symptoms and increased positive emotions and psychological recovery.