Perspectives on Psychological Science
August 22, 2022
Maria Monroy, Dacher Keltner
141 citations
How do experiences in nature or in spiritual contemplation or in being moved by music or with psychedelics promote mental and physical health? Our proposal in this article is awe. To make this argument, we first review recent advances in the scientific study of awe, an emotion often considered ineffable and beyond measurement. Awe engages five processes-shifts in neurophysiology, a diminished...
Perspectives on Psychological Science
May 10, 2022
Sonja Lyubomirsky
27 citations
Psychedelic science has generated hundreds of compelling published studies yet with relatively little impact on mainstream psychology. I propose that social psychologists have much to gain by incorporating psychoactive substances into their research programs. Here I use (±)-3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) as an example because of its documented ability in experiments and clinical...
Perspectives on Psychological Science
February 16, 2021
Simon B. Goldberg, Kevin M. Riordan, Shufang Sun et al.
492 citations
In response to questions regarding the scientific basis for mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs), we evaluated their empirical status by systematically reviewing meta-analyses of randomized controlled trials (RCTs). We searched six databases for effect sizes based on four or more trials that did not combine passive and active controls. Heterogeneity, moderators, tests of publication bias,...
Perspectives on Psychological Science
August 28, 2020
Vera U. Ludwig, Kirk Warren Brown, Judson A. Brewer
69 citations
To reach longer-term goals and live aligned with their values, people typically must regulate their behavior. Effortful self-control is one way to achieve this and is usually framed as a forceful struggle between lower-level impulses and higher-level cognitive control processes. For example, people may restrain themselves from eating cake in order to lose weight. An alternative avenue of...
Perspectives on Psychological Science
February 13, 2020
Ann Taves
127 citations
Although many researchers in psychology, religious studies, and psychiatry recognize that there is overlap in the experiences their subjects recount, disciplinary silos and challenges involved in comparing reported experiences have left us with little understanding of the mechanisms, whether biological, psychological, and/or sociocultural, through which these experiences are represented and...
Perspectives on Psychological Science
October 10, 2017
Nicholas T. van Dam, Marieke K. van Vugt, David R. Vago et al.
1,500 citations
During the past two decades, mindfulness meditation has gone from being a fringe topic of scientific investigation to being an occasional replacement for psychotherapy, tool of corporate well-being, widely implemented educational practice, and "key to building more resilient soldiers." Yet the mindfulness movement and empirical evidence supporting it have not gone without criticism....
Perspectives on Psychological Science
October 10, 2017
Richard J. Davidson, Cortland J. Dahl
123 citations
Van Dam et al. raise a number of critical issues in contemporary research on mindfulness and meditation and offer a prescriptive agenda for future work in this area. While we agree with all of the key points made in their article, there are a number of important issues omitted that are central to a comprehensive agenda for future research in this area. This commentary highlights five key...
Perspectives on Psychological Science
October 14, 2011
Britta K. Hölzel, Sara W. Lazar, Tim Gard et al.
2,997 citations
Cultivation of mindfulness, the nonjudgmental awareness of experiences in the present moment, produces beneficial effects on well-being and ameliorates psychiatric and stress-related symptoms. Mindfulness meditation has therefore increasingly been incorporated into psychotherapeutic interventions. Although the number of publications in the field has sharply increased over the last two decades,...