Mindfulness
2026
Manuella B Kury, Barbara L. Fredrickson, Patty van Cappellen et al.
Extensive research documents that mindfulness meditation (MM) and loving-kindness meditation (LKM) have benefits for emotional, social, and mental health outcomes. Despite this work documenting the benefits of meditation practice, research also demonstrates that meditation does not always have equivalent effects for all people. So, who is most likely to benefit from meditation practice? In this...
Brain, behavior, and immunity
October 1, 2024
Itay Ricon-Becker, Taylor N West, Barbara L. Fredrickson et al.
To address the challenge of predicting psychological response to a psychosocial intervention we tested the possibility that baseline gene expression profiles might provide information above and beyond baseline psychometric measures. The genomics strategy utilized individual level inferences of transcription factor activity to predict changes in loneliness and affect in response to two...
Emotion (Washington, D.C.)
September 1, 2022
Taylor N West, Brian P Don, Barbara L. Fredrickson
Research on attachment theory holds that insecure attachment influences people's daily social and emotional experiences. Mindfulness meditation and loving-kindness meditation have been associated with improvements in physical and mental well-being often through their influence on emotion experience and regulation. Yet, little research has examined how emotional well-being may be improved in...
Mindfulness
May 1, 2022
Brian P Don, Patty van Cappellen, Barbara L. Fredrickson
Abstract Objectives Research demonstrates that meditation interventions tend to positively influence social well-being. Yet, prior research has exclusively examined meditation in relation to average levels of social outcomes (e.g., social connectedness), despite other work demonstrating variability or fluctuations in social functioning play a distinct role in contributing to well-being. This...
Mindfulness
May 1, 2022
Taylor N West, Jieni Zhou, Mary Brantley et al.
People raised in low socio-economic status (SES) households are at an increased risk for physical illness in adulthood. A shift in gene expression profiles in the immune system is one biological mechanism thought to account for elevated disease susceptibility, with a frequently-investigated profile being the conserved transcriptional response to adversity (CTRA), characterized by increased...
Mindfulness
March 1, 2021
Brian P Don, Sara B Algoe, Barbara L. Fredrickson
Social approach and avoidance goals - which refer to individual differences in the desire to pursue rewards versus avoid negative experiences in social relationships - have numerous implications for the health and quality of social relationships. Although endorsement of these goals largely arises from people's pre-dispositions towards approach and avoidance, in this research we proposed that...
UNC Libraries
November 8, 2020
Norman A. S. Farb, Philippe R. Goldin, Barbara L. Fredrickson et al.
Contemporary scholarship on mindfulness casts it as a form of purely non-evaluative engagement with experience. Yet, traditionally mindfulness was not intended to operate in a vacuum of dispassionate observation, but was seen as facilitative of eudaimonic mental states. In spite of this historical context, modern psychological research has neglected to ask the question of how the practice of...
Emotion
October 15, 2019
Patty van Cappellen, Lahnna I Catalino, Barbara L. Fredrickson
42 citations
New health behaviors are difficult to maintain and meditation is no different. We tested two key pathways of the upward spiral theory of lifestyle change (Fredrickson, 2013), which identifies positive emotions as critical ingredients for the maintenance of new health behaviors. The present experiment combined a laboratory session that introduced novices to meditation with a 3-week follow-up...
Psychoneuroendocrinology
October 1, 2019
Khoa D. Le Nguyen, Jue Lin, Sara B Algoe et al.
Combinations of multiple meditation practices have been shown to reduce the attrition of telomeres, the protective caps of chromosomes (Carlson et al., 2015). Here, we probed the distinct effects on telomere length (TL) of mindfulness meditation (MM) and loving-kindness meditation (LKM). Midlife adults (N = 142) were randomized to be in a waitlist control condition or to learn either MM or LKM...
Current Opinion in Psychology
January 14, 2019
E. Garland, Barbara L. Fredrickson
131 citations
The Mindfulness-to-Meaning Theory (MMT) is a temporally-dynamic process model of mindful positive emotion regulation that elucidates downstream cognitive-affective mechanisms by which mindfulness promotes health and resilience. Here we review and extend the MMT to explicate how mindfulness fosters self-transcendence by evoking upward spirals of decentering, attentional broadening, reappraisal,...
Mindfulness
May 29, 2017
Barbara L. Fredrickson, Aaron J. Boulton, A. Firestine et al.
The purpose of this study was to uncover the day-to-day emotional profiles and dose-response relations, both within persons and between persons, associated with initiating one of two meditation practices, either mindfulness meditation or loving-kindness meditation. Data were pooled across two studies of midlife adults (N = 339) who were randomized to learn either mindfulness meditation or...
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience
June 17, 2016
Patty van Cappellen, Baldwin M. Way, Suzannah F. Isgett et al.
138 citations
The oxytocin (OT) system, critically involved in social bonding, may also impinge on spirituality, which is the belief in a meaningful life imbued with a sense of connection to a Higher Power and/or the world. Midlife male participants (N = 83) were randomly assigned to receive intranasal OT or placebo. In exploratory analyses, participants were also genotyped for polymorphisms in two genes...
Psychological Inquiry
October 2, 2015
Eric L Garland, Norman A. S. Farb, Philippe R. Goldin et al.
228 citations
Over the past several decades, a corpus of research has emerged detailing the therapeutic outcomes and processes of mindfulness. The emergence of the field of contemplative science has given rise t...
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...
Cognition & Emotion
May 13, 2013
Patty van Cappellen, Vassilis Saroglou, Caroline Iweins et al.
184 citations
Spirituality has mostly been studied in psychology as implied in the process of overcoming adversity, being triggered by negative experiences, and providing positive outcomes. By reversing this pathway, we investigated whether spirituality may also be triggered by self-transcendent positive emotions, which are elicited by stimuli appraised as demonstrating higher good and beauty. In two...
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...
Schizophrenia Research
July 1, 2011
David P Johnson, David L Penn, Barbara L. Fredrickson et al.
This pilot study examined loving-kindness meditation (LKM) with 18 participants with schizophrenia-spectrum disorders and significant negative symptoms. Findings indicate that the intervention was feasible and associated with decreased negative symptoms and increased positive emotions and psychological recovery.
Clinical Psychology Review
November 1, 2010
Eric L Garland, Barbara L. Fredrickson, Ann M. Kring et al.
This review integrates Fredrickson's broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions with advances in affective neuroscience regarding plasticity in the neural circuitry of emotions to inform the treatment of emotion deficits within psychopathology. We first present a body of research showing that positive emotions broaden cognition and behavioral repertoires, and in so doing, build durable...
The Journal of Positive Psychology
September 1, 2010
Michael Cohn, Barbara L. Fredrickson
302 citations
A number of positive psychology interventions have successfully helped people learn skills for improving mood and building personal resources (e.g., psychological resilience and social support). However, little is known about whether intervention activities remain effective in the long term, or whether new resources are maintained after the intervention ends. We address these issues in a...
Journal of Clinical Psychology
March 6, 2009
David P. Johnson, David L Penn, Barbara L. Fredrickson et al.
158 citations
In this article, we describe the clinical applicability of loving-kindness meditation (LKM) to individuals suffering from schizophrenia-spectrum disorders with persistent negative symptoms. LKM may have potential for reducing negative symptoms such as anhedonia, avolition, and asociality while enhancing factors consistent with psychological recovery such as hope and purpose in life. Case...
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
October 27, 2008
Barbara L. Fredrickson, Michael Cohn, Kimberly A. Coffey et al.
2,359 citations
B. L. Fredrickson's (1998, 2001) broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions asserts that people's daily experiences of positive emotions compound over time to build a variety of consequential personal resources. The authors tested this build hypothesis in a field experiment with working adults (n = 139), half of whom were randomly-assigned to begin a practice of loving-kindness meditation....