People change and transform psychologically all the time. But what exactly changes? This inquiry is too vast to address. It is plausible to claim all intrapsychic changes in the human mind fall into one or a combination of these three: Cognition, Emotion, and Perception, plus in the realms of Conscious and Unconscious. Behavior is excluded because this study focuses on inner experiences rather...
Background Cognitive-contemplative practices could potentially affect autonomic function, but existing research has focused on waking measures of heart rate variability (HRV). It remains unclear whether changes associated with brief interventions differ across sleep stages. Objective To determine whether differences in HRV according to sleep stage would differ in a group undergoing a 7-day,...
Acta PsychologicaSeptember 25, 2026Huimian Bian, Mansor Abu Talib, He Jiang
Quantitative research has reported associations between mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) and teacher stress and well-being, but less is known about how teachers themselves retrospectively experience and make sense of learning mindfulness. This interpretative phenomenological study examined eight Chinese junior high school teachers' retrospective accounts following a four-week standardized...
Career transitions require individuals to fundamentally redefine their working identity-the amalgam of professional roles, relationships, and narratives that constitutes one's sense of self at work. Although Ibarra's seminal "test-and-learn" model has advanced the current understanding of how identity transitions unfold, the psychological mechanisms that enable or constrain this process remain...
Tropical climates can impair aerobic performance and alter psychological responses during exercise. Mindfulness-based intervention has been associated with improvements in sport performance; however, to our knowledge, no studies have examined their effects on running performance in a Tropical Climate (TC). The present study aimed to investigate whether a 6-week mindfulness intervention was...
Acta PsychologicaAugust 21, 2026Esma Nur Gözütok, Ahmet Serhat Gözütok
Mindfulness-based interventions produce uneven benefits across individuals, and one underexamined source of this variation is whether people believe mindfulness skills can be trained or are essentially fixed. The Mindfulness Mindset Scale (MMS) was developed to measure this belief, but it has not been examined in Turkish-speaking samples. This study adapted the MMS into Turkish through...
Acta PsychologicaAugust 16, 2026J Friedrich, D Carrilho, D Araújo et al.
Psychological science is often hampered by the fact that mind and behavior are exceedingly complex subjects. There are many moving parts, and many interactions between these, which elicits a categorical shift in the nature of its variables. This demands a strong theoretic and meta-theoretic foundation to order and interpret results. Yet, especially the meta-theoretic foundation has been unduly...
The integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into athletic training is accelerating, yet its psychological implications for athletes remain insufficiently understood. Drawing on the transactional model of stress and the stress-buffering framework of mindfulness, this study examined whether mindfulness training can mitigate adverse psychological responses associated with AI-assisted training....
In a recent taxonomy of different philosophies of mind, Robert Lawrence Kuhn classified Rudolf Steiner's view as a mind-body dualism. We argue that this classification is incorrect. Rather, Steiner's view is trinitarian and represents a unification of monism and dualism. Hence, the trinitarian conception of the human being in Steiner not only challenges Kuhn's taxonomic placement of Steiner's...
Acta PsychologicaJune 20, 2026Paula Celeste Salamone, Nadia Alejandra Dowzuk, Martina Nayla Gallo et al.
Social touch plays a fundamental role in bodily self-awareness and emotional regulation. Alterations in how touch is perceived or sought may contribute to disturbances in self-perception, such as those seen in depersonalization. This study examined the relationship between depersonalization symptoms, social touch acceptance and seeking, and self-concept clarity in a non-clinical Argentinian...
Objectives: Compassion-based interventions, like Mindfulness-Based Compassionate Living (MBCL), are increasingly recognized as treatments for depression. This study explores the impact of MBCL on self-schemas. Methods: As part of an RCT on MBCL for depression, self-description interviews of approximately 3 min in duration were conducted with 24 patients before and after MBCL and were analyzed...
Empathy and compassion often arise in response to others' suffering but can be inhibited when the sufferers represent out-groups. Mindfulness meditation may help counter these blocks by reducing distress and fostering compassionate responses. In this study, we tested whether a brief, 10-min mindfulness intervention could enhance empathic and compassionate reactions to in-group and out-group...
This study investigates how mindfulness meditation influences time perception by comparing practicing meditators and non-meditators (n = 30) on retrospective and prospective timing tasks. Retrospective time perception was assessed after an 11-min session of Naad Brahma meditation (for meditators) or listening to an audio story (for controls). Prospective time estimation was measured using...
Background: Positive psychology helps individuals enhance their attention, self-awareness, and positive thinking. Recent research has explored the impact of mindfulness—one of the core techniques in positive psychology—on behavioral addictions such as smartphone overuse. However, the effects of positive psychology courses that integrate mindfulness meditation, particularly in promoting digital...
Knowledge workers often face high stress due to deadlines and overcommitment, which negatively impacts their well-being. They have specific characteristics and challenges, such as a tendency to work in isolation or in intense team environments, sleep deprivation, and making decisions under pressure. To support preventive measures, this study provides a comprehensive, systematic understanding of...
Although previous studies have explored factors influencing teachers' professional identity, limited attention has been given to its underlying psychological mechanisms from a metacognitive perspective. In particular, few studies have examined how mindfulness, a core psychological resource, relates to professional identity among early childhood education teachers, a group facing unique...
This two-wave longitudinal study investigates how loving-kindness compassion is associated with employees' psychological well-being through intrinsic motivation and self-acceptance, and how these organismic states are linked to proactive coping and relationship-maintenance behaviors. Data were collected over a one-month period. Data from 386 Vietnamese employees and 355 American respondents...
A striking feature of expert performance "in the wild" is how experts fluidly mesh or alternate between multiple kinds of competencies. To do justice to this fact, both, an integrative theory and methodology are called for. My first task is to provide a review of different theory frameworks of skills in the motor domain, which reveals great differences of emphasis. While cognitivist approaches...
Story reading is often accompanied with mental visualization of the described scenes and events. Recent findings indicate that individuals who report not experiencing any visual imagery (a condition called aphantasia), also report being less absorbed and engaged when reading stories. In the present study, we explored how aphantasics (n = 8) and controls (n = 20) read imagery-rich stories. We...
Our thoughts often drift away from the tasks at hand. Various factors influence this phenomenon, including changes in the external environment, individual cognitive characteristics, and fluctuations in bodily reactions. This study investigated the relationship between fluctuations in cardiac activity and thought state transitions, focusing on individual differences such as cardiac...
Acta PsychologicaSeptember 1, 2025Eunha Kim, Teemu H Laine, Youbin Lee
The purpose of this study was to examine whether cognitive restructuring and mindfulness-based meditation would alleviate stress and anxiety induced by a social VR-based TSST within StressMeta, the platform that we developed. Additionally, we investigated whether the effectiveness of these interventions would vary based on trait anxiety levels. A total of 60 college students were randomly...
Acta PsychologicaJune 20, 2025Ivaylo Borislavov Iotchev, Hein Thomas van Schie1 citation
Neuroscientific support for the equivalence hypothesis, stating that perception can be either conscious or unconscious, rests upon overlap in the brain areas activated during conscious perception and subliminal priming. This interpretation is argued here incompatible with the implications of the biased competition model, wherein different interpretations of the world compete and one must be...
Acta PsychologicaMay 1, 2025Fengbo Liu, Qingyang Yu, Shichang Cai et al.2 citations
To explore the impact of brief mindfulness training on athletes' mood and the moderating effect of burnout between them. This study has employed the mixed experimental design of 2 (experimental conditions) × 2 (time points), randomly assigned 60 athletes into a mindfulness training group and a control group (30 athletes in each group), and selected the Five Facets Mindfulness Questionnaire...
The multifaceted self refers to how non-clinical individuals perceive themselves as possessing a more sophisticated self-compared to others by accumulating pairs of opposing positive traits. Conversely, depressed individuals are more multifaceted on negative traits, revealing an absence of self-enhancement strategies, which are known to be associated with psychological adjustment. A...
This exploratory study examines the effects of a single, brief (3-h) Chamber Restricted Environmental Stimulation Therapy (REST) session on emotional experience, state mindfulness, and physiological regulation in young adults. Previous research has shown preliminary evidence, that REST offers a range of benefits in managing stress and mental well-being. We focused on young adult population, a...