Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
January 1, 2003
Kirk Warren Brown, Richard M. Ryan
13,338 citations
Mindfulness, an attribute of consciousness, is linked to well-being. The Mindful Attention Awareness Scale (MAAS) was developed and validated to measure dispositional mindfulness. Studies show the MAAS captures a unique quality of consciousness related to well-being, distinguishes mindfulness practitioners, and is associated with enhanced self-awareness. An experience-sampling study found that both dispositional and state mindfulness predict self-regulated behavior and positive emotional states. In a clinical intervention with cancer patients, increases in mindfulness over time corresponded with declines in mood disturbance and stress.
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.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
January 1, 1989
Charles N. Alexander, Ellen J. Langer, Ronnie I. Newman et al.
297 citations
Practicing the Transcendental Meditation (TM) program may improve cognitive function, mental health, and blood pressure in elderly adults, while also increasing survival rates. In a study of 73 residents of homes for the elderly (average age 81), those randomly assigned to TM showed the greatest improvement in learning, cognitive flexibility, mental health, systolic blood pressure, and ratings of behavior and aging, compared to mindfulness training, relaxation, or no treatment. The mindfulness group improved most on perceived control and word fluency. After three years, survival was 100% for the TM group and 87.5% for mindfulness, versus lower rates in the other groups.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
July 26, 2010
Christopher P. Niemiec, Kirk Warren Brown, Todd B. Kashdan et al.
247 citations
People who are more mindful—characterized by receptive attention to present experience—show less defensive responding after being reminded of their own death. Seven experiments found that less mindful individuals displayed stronger worldview defense and self-esteem striving after mortality salience, whereas more mindful individuals did not defend values associated with mindfulness. More mindful participants wrote about their death for longer, which partly explained their reduced worldview defense, and they suppressed death thoughts less immediately after the reminder. The findings suggest mindfulness reduces typical defensive reactions to death awareness by altering conscious processing of threat.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
December 1, 2018
Emily K. Lindsay, Brian Chin, Carol M. Greco et al.
221 citations
Mindfulness interventions that train both monitoring of present-moment experiences and an accepting orientation toward them (Monitor + Accept) boost positive emotions in daily life, while training monitoring alone does not. Across two randomized controlled trials with stressed community adults, those who received Monitor + Accept training reported greater positive affect after the intervention compared with those who received monitoring-only training or no treatment. The effect appeared in end-of-day positive affect in an 8-week group-based study and in both end-of-day and momentary positive affect in a 2-week smartphone-based study. All active interventions reduced negative affect. Acceptance skills are a central mechanism for increasing positive emotions through mindfulness.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
December 2, 2021
Tonglin Jiang, Constantine Sedikides
166 citations
Awe, an emotion experienced when encountering something vast and beyond one's current understanding, can prompt people to pursue their authentic selves. This pursuit of an authentic self was associated with higher general prosocial behavior, but lower inauthentic prosocial behavior, based on a sample of 868 participants. The findings suggest that awe's relationship with the self is complex and nuanced, inviting further examination.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
December 23, 2021
Andrew Hafenbrack, Matthew L. Lapalme, Isabelle Solal
69 citations
Across five experiments with over 1,400 participants, focused-breathing meditation that cultivates state mindfulness reduces the desire to make amends after a transgression. Induced mindfulness lowered feelings of guilt and weakened the link between wrongdoing and reparative actions. In contrast, loving-kindness meditation increased prosocial reparation by boosting other-focus and feelings of love. The findings suggest that different meditation practices have distinct effects on prosocial behavior.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
September 1, 2024
Cindel J M White, Kathryn A Johnson, Behnam Mirbozorgi et al.
4 citations
Attributing good fortune to God evokes gratitude, admiration, and indebtedness, similar to thanking a person. Attributing good fortune to karma instead produces less gratitude but more pride and a sense of deservingness. Across four studies with 4,579 religiously diverse participants in the US and UK, these distinct emotional profiles emerged because God is seen as a personal external agent, while karma is viewed as a universal law or internal process. The findings suggest that spiritual beliefs shape how people explain positive events and, in turn, the emotions they feel.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
July 1, 1987
D M Wegner, D J Schneider, S R Carter et al.
Attempting to suppress a thought can make it more likely to return, a phenomenon known as the ironic process theory. In two experiments, people asked not to think of a white bear for five minutes were unable to do so, ringing a bell each time the thought occurred. After the suppression period, they reported significantly more thoughts about the white bear than people who were simply asked to think about it from the start. Providing a specific distracting thought during suppression reduced this later preoccupation. The findings suggest that thought suppression can backfire as a self-control strategy, potentially intensifying the very obsession it aims to eliminate.