American Psychologist
October 1, 2015
Richard J. Davidson, Alfred W. Kaszniak
778 citations
Research on mindfulness and meditation has grown rapidly, but interpreting findings is difficult due to unique conceptual and methodological challenges. Key issues include studying first-person experience, the impossibility of true double-blinding in intervention trials, designing appropriate control conditions, adequately describing training protocols, measuring mindfulness, limitations of self-report measures, and study design and data analysis considerations. These topics affect both basic science and clinical studies and have important implications for future understanding.
American Psychologist
October 1, 2015
Antoine Lutz, Amishi P. Jha, John D. Dunne et al.
724 citations
Mindfulness meditation practices are a set of attention-based, regulatory, and self-inquiry training regimes used for wellbeing and psychological health. This article examines the construct of mindfulness in psychological research and reviews recent nonclinical work. Instead of proposing a single definition, mindfulness is interpreted as a continuum of practices involving states and processes that can be mapped into a multidimensional phenomenological matrix expressed in a neurocognitive framework. This matrix serves as a heuristic to guide next-generation research hypotheses from cognitive/behavioral and neuroscientific perspectives. The review identifies significant gaps in the literature and outlines new directions for research.
American Psychologist
January 1, 2006
Roger Walsh, Shauna L. Shapiro
686 citations
Meditation is a widely practiced and researched psychotherapeutic method, but its integration with Western psychology has been hindered by misunderstandings that overlook the richness of meditative traditions and their underlying psychologies and philosophies. These traditions offer valuable insights into cognition, attention, mental training, health, pathology, and human potentials. Approaching meditative traditions with greater cultural and conceptual sensitivity could lead to mutual enrichment, benefiting both meditative practices and Western psychology.
American Psychologist
January 1, 2006
B. Alan Wallace, Shauna L. Shapiro
606 citations
Mental health is not merely the absence of disease but the cultivation of positive well-being, an idea that clinical psychology has only recently begun to explore. The Buddhist tradition, with over 2,500 years of experiential and theoretical inquiry, offers insights into exceptional mental well-being and the treatment of psychological problems. Drawing on both Buddhist thought and Western experimental research, the authors present an innovative model for attaining mental well-being through the cultivation of four types of mental balance: conative, attentional, cognitive, and affective. This framework integrates ancient wisdom with modern science to expand the understanding of positive mental health.
American Psychologist
October 1, 2015
Sona Dimidjian, Zindel V. Segal
297 citations
Mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) like mindfulness-based cognitive therapy and mindfulness-based stress reduction are widely studied, but their public health impact could be improved by embedding them in a broader clinical psychological science framework. Using the National Institutes of Health stage model, the authors identify gaps in the current evidence base and argue that continuing to produce similar studies without addressing these gaps will limit the relevance and reach of MBIs. Seven recommendations are offered to integrate core research questions, improve methodological quality, and strengthen links among stages of clinical translation to better address mental health needs.
American Psychologist
August 7, 2025
J. David Creswell, Simon B. Goldberg
14 citations
Meditation apps have rapidly spread worldwide, changing how millions learn and practice meditation, but research has not kept pace with public adoption. Recent randomized controlled trials and meta-analyses show that app-based meditation interventions produce modest but consistent reductions in depression and anxiety. Initial mechanistic studies suggest improvements in worry, repetitive negative thinking, and self-reported mindfulness skills may underlie these effects, alongside early findings on blood pressure reduction and pro-inflammatory gene expression. Compared to traditional in-person programs, meditation apps typically lack interpersonal support, offer briefer practice sessions, have lower sustained engagement, but provide greater opportunities for personalization and large-scale data capture. Hybrid models combining app content with human support and just-in-time interventions are promising directions.
American Psychologist
January 1, 2015
Anne Harrington, John D. Dunne
Over the past two decades, mindfulness-based therapies have become widely accepted in clinical practice and popular culture, but with that acceptance has come growing criticism. Critics worry that stripping mindfulness from its original ethical frameworks turns it into a commodity for goals like weight loss, workplace productivity, or better school performance—uses it was never intended to serve. Yet the clinical and religious communities have long used meditation pragmatically for healing. This essay steps back to ask why these concerns are surfacing now, aiming to understand the historical roots of the current discontent rather than simply joining the critique.