Frontiers in Psychology
June 16, 2022
Li Chen, Jiangxin Liu, Lezhen Fu et al.
Gratitude, a self-transcendent and pro-social emotion, may foster a stronger connection with nature and pro-environmental attitudes. In a questionnaire study with 890 participants divided into gratitude, recreation, and control groups, gratitude increased positive emotions of self-transcendence, which in turn strengthened connection to nature. This sequential pathway fully explained gratitude's indirect effect on both willingness to participate in environmental protection and willingness to sacrifice for the environment. The findings suggest that cultivating gratitude could help promote a harmonious human-nature relationship.
Frontiers in Psychology
May 26, 2022
Hao Chen, Chao Liu, Fang Zhou et al.
Animation-guided meditation, compared with audio-guided meditation, significantly increased mindfulness and creativity levels while reducing cognitive load over an 8-week intervention. Mindfulness had both a direct positive effect on creativity and indirect effects through flow and positive affect. The study involved 95 participants recruited from a creative industrial park, randomly assigned to animation (n=48) or audio (n=47) guided meditation sessions three times per week. Animation proved more effective than audio as a meditation guidance tool, likely because it lowers cognitive demands and improves cognitive ability, making it easier for people without meditation training to achieve a mindful state.
Frontiers in Psychology
May 19, 2022
Patrizio Paoletti, Rotem Leshem, Michele Pellegrino et al.
A hypothesis paper proposes the Sphere Model of Consciousness (SMC) to examine consciousness and self-awareness, aiming to address methodological issues in consciousness research. It presents a preliminary attempt to validate the SMC using a simplified electrophysiological topographic map of the Self, showing a gradual shift from faster to slower frequency bands that mirrors dynamics between SMC states of Self. A mini-review of studies explores whether different SMC states of Self correspond to specific frequency bands, and the theoretical argument suggests the SMC's hierarchical organization of three states of Self mirrors the hierarchy of Focused Attention, Open Monitoring, and Non-Dual meditation types. Testable predictions and potential applications are offered.
Frontiers in Psychology
May 18, 2022
Bandos Ros, Shinji Kaneko
Strong feelings of altruism significantly explain prosocial and pro-environmental behaviors, but the latent trait biosphere does not explain pro-environmental behavior such as past volunteering in clean-up activities. Subjects, whether overseas graduates or not, are more altruistic than biospheric by nature. Using the Graded Response Model, the study found that biosphere and altruism are independent of each other; merging them into a single dimension called self-transcendence makes the construct less reliable. Consistent with previous studies, the effect of self-transcendence could not be detected statistically, as it affects both past volunteering in environmental affairs and past volunteering in social welfare.
Frontiers in Psychology
April 1, 2022
André Mamede, Inge Merkelbach, G. Noordzij et al.
Mindfulness is linked to better mental health, and this study examined why. Surveying 493 adults during the COVID-19 pandemic, the authors found that mindfulness was associated with lower depression, anxiety, and psychological distress, both directly and through indirect pathways. Specifically, mindfulness was negatively associated with rumination and insomnia, which in turn were linked to fewer mental health problems. Rumination also increased insomnia, creating a chain of effects. For depression only, mindfulness was positively associated with cognitive reappraisal and negatively with suppression, which were respectively linked to fewer and more depressive symptoms. The authors suggest that targeting emotion regulation and sleep in mindfulness interventions could improve mental health.
Frontiers in Psychology
March 31, 2022
Asa Young, Isabella Robbins, Shivang Shelat
Consciousness may extend beyond the individual brain to form a hierarchical cognitive system when people interact. Building on evidence that the electromagnetic fields of interacting individuals synchronize, the authors propose that coupled agents can merge into a group-level conscious system through recurrent, entraining behavioral interactions. Using General Resonance Theory, they describe how synchronized electromagnetic fields optimize information flow, altering individual conscious states and enhancing group performance. While the existence of a physical basis for group consciousness remains speculative, the framework offers testable predictions for empirical research.
Frontiers in Psychology
March 30, 2022
Roberta Antonini Philippe, Sarah Morgana Singer, Joshua E. E. Jaeger et al.
Flow states in athletes and musicians unfold through three distinct phases: preparation to enter flow, entry into the flow state, and exit from the flow state. Emotions play a core role across all three phases, regulating the emergence, maintenance, and termination of flow over time. The findings highlight the temporal dynamics of flow and the phenomenological characteristics of its transition and maintenance.
Frontiers in Psychology
March 29, 2022
Leila Forbes, Susan K. Johnson
Online mindfulness training for people with Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) shows that the level of support affects how many people finish the program, but not the benefits they receive. Participants who received support completed the protocol at a rate of 44.1%, compared to 11.7% for those who were self-guided. Both groups experienced similar benefits. Common challenges to meditation did not predict adherence and did not change over time. The findings suggest that offering supported online mindfulness interventions can improve completion rates among IBD patients, who often face barriers to in-person programs due to symptoms like pain, fatigue, and incontinence.
Frontiers in Psychology
January 1, 2022
Daniela Aisenberg-Shafran, Margalit Harmatz
A brief, 8-session mindfulness intervention designed for seniors (MBIS) improved depression and mood in nursing home residents, regardless of whether sessions were spread over 8 weeks or 4 weeks. The intervention also enhanced mindfulness skills such as non-reactivity, acting with awareness, and non-judging. Cognitive improvements, specifically an adaptive sequential effect in the Simon task, appeared only in the 8-week group. The findings suggest that a short, simple mindfulness program delivered by nursing home staff can effectively reduce emotional distress and improve cognitive control in older adults, offering a practical treatment option during quarantine.
Frontiers in Psychology
January 1, 2022
Chao Liu, Hao Chen, Fang Zhou et al.
An 8-week loving-kindness meditation (LKM) training, guided either by an animated pedagogical agent (APA) or by audio alone, improved spirituality and subjective wellbeing among 82 flight attendants. APA-guided meditation also significantly enhanced social presence, whereas audio-guided meditation did not affect social presence. The findings suggest that APA-guided LKM offers a simple, accessible method for boosting mental health, particularly in contexts where in-person guidance is unavailable.
Frontiers in Psychology
January 1, 2022
Jennifer S Mascaro, Marianne P Florian, Marcia J Ash et al.
Christian healthcare chaplains who completed an intensive course in Cognitively-Based Compassion Training (CBCT) reported increased belief that compassion can be developed. The mixed-method study of 40 chaplains in a 1-year Clinical Pastoral Education residency found high variability in how individuals practiced compassion meditation and perceived its impact. Interviews revealed diverse subjective experiences of learning and practicing compassion meditation. The findings suggest that individual differences in practice and beliefs play a role in how compassion meditation is learned and enacted, offering insights into contemplative learning processes.
Frontiers in Psychology
January 1, 2022
Mel Slater, Maria V. Sanchez-Vives
The abstract contrasts two views of consciousness: the standard scientific view that matter is primary and consciousness arises from brain activity, versus an alternative view that consciousness is a primary force in nature from which physical laws might derive. The authors argue that virtual reality (VR) provides an experimental context where consciousness is a first-order phenomenon, making the alternative view intuitively accessible. They discuss the Interface Theory of Perception, which holds that perceptions are not veridical but based on evolutionary payoffs, and suggest this theory accurately describes perception and consciousness within VR. They propose an experimental study to explore this but do not draw conclusions about physical reality or challenge the emergence of consciousness from brain function.
Frontiers in Psychology
January 1, 2022
Yundong Ma, Xia Feng, Di Wang et al.
Childhood adversity is associated with the content of adult dreams, specifically the characters, friendly interactions, and objects that appear in them. In a cross-sectional study of 120 healthy adults aged 18–35 who recorded dreams for 10 consecutive days, those who reported more childhood trauma also showed differences in dream elements, as coded by the Hall and Van de Castle system. Regression models predicted dream characters and objects from childhood adversity scores. No gender differences were found in dream recall, sleep quality, emotional state, or childhood adversity levels.
Frontiers in Psychology
January 1, 2022
Naotsugu Tsuchiya, Hayato Saigo, Steven Phillips
The relationship between qualia (subjective experiences), the contents of consciousness, and behavioral reports is examined through the lens of category theory, specifically the mathematical concept of adjunction. While some theorists argue that reports of one's own qualia are inherently incomplete and inaccurate, hindering formal research, empirical researchers have still made progress in understanding qualia structure from such reports. The authors propose that adjunction captures nuanced aspects of this relationship, establishing coherence between two categories that are not equivalent but importantly related. This mathematical formulation clarifies conceptual issues and suggests new empirical experiments to test predictions about qualia and reports, advancing consciousness research.
Frontiers in Psychology
January 1, 2022
Teresa Fazia, Francesco Bubbico, Andrea Nova et al.
During Italy's March 2020 COVID-19 lockdown, a short online mindfulness-based meditation program (Integral Meditation, IM) was tested in healthy adults. The quasi-experimental study matched 84 participants into treated and control groups. Linear mixed-effect models showed that IM significantly improved wellbeing (WEMWBS score increased by 4.61 points) and reduced state anxiety (STAI-X1 score decreased by 8.24 points) only among those with higher baseline trait anxiety. No significant effect on perceived stress was found. The program may benefit mental health specifically for people prone to anxiety.
Frontiers in Psychology
January 1, 2022
Dawson Church, Peta Stapleton, Donna Gosatti et al.
A one-day virtual EcoMeditation workshop, combining heart rate variability coherence, Emotional Freedom Techniques, mindfulness, and neurofeedback, led to significant reductions in anxiety (-42.3%), depression (-37.5%), posttraumatic stress (-13.0%), and pain (-63.2%) from pre- to post-workshop, alongside increases in happiness (+111.1%), flow states (+17.4%), and transcendent experiences (+18.5%). At three-month follow-up, improvements in anxiety, depression, pain, flow, happiness, and transcendent experiences remained significant, with over 71% of participants showing clinically meaningful change. EcoMeditation appears to be an effective stress reduction method that improves psychological symptoms and enhances transcendent states.
Frontiers in Psychology
January 1, 2022
Vincent Ringgaard Christoffersen, Borut Škodlar, Mads Gram Henriksen
Tranquility is a fundamental human experience that has been pursued across Eastern and Western philosophical, religious, and spiritual traditions, yet its experiential nature has not been systematically compared. This theoretical study examines central experiences of tranquility from both traditions, sorting them into four categories based on focus: the body, emotions, the mind, and mysticism. The authors propose that these diverse tranquil experiences share common features: a sense of presence and inner peace as content, and a structure involving detachment and absorption. The account is exploratory, aiming to identify what different tranquil experiences may have in common.
Frontiers in Psychology
January 1, 2022
Nicola De Pisapia, Martina Dall'Avanzi
A two-week program of Examination of Conscience, a contemplative practice of reviewing past and future daily actions, led participants to report decreased vividness and coherence in their metamemory—awareness of their own memory processes. No other changes in metamemory, prospective or retrospective memory, or stress levels were observed compared to a control group that listened to a literary novel. The results suggest that even a short period of this practice can increase awareness of memory limitations.
Frontiers in Psychology
January 1, 2022
Devanshi Agrawal, Surekha Chukkali, Sabah Singh
Grit—perseverance and passion for long-term goals—has become a key factor in workplace success, especially after the pandemic shifted focus from hard work to sustained effort. Among 209 working professionals in India, metacognition, flow, optimism, and empathy significantly contribute to developing grit. Higher grit, in turn, is linked to greater job satisfaction and job performance. The findings offer organizations a framework for designing interventions that boost workplace efficiency by cultivating these psychological resources.
Frontiers in Psychology
January 1, 2022
Jochen Müsseler, Sophia Von Salm-Hoogstraeten, Christian Böffel
Avatars in digital environments can cause users to feel that their self merges with the avatar, a continuous process influenced by factors such as body ownership, agency, and perspective taking. The paper introduces an event-coding approach to the self and reviews human-avatar interaction literature to argue that self-controlled avatars lead to avatar-self merging through goal setting, action planning, and comparing predicted with actual motion outcomes. This merging is not all-or-nothing; it involves affective, cognitive, and visuo-spatial perspective taking. Evidence shows that users taking the avatar's perspective can exhibit spontaneous behavioral tendencies that contradict their own.
Frontiers in Psychology
December 22, 2021
Debananda S. Ningthoujam, Nilkamal Singh, S. Mukherjee
Cyclic meditation (CM) is a moving meditation technique that combines physical postures with relaxation procedures, derived from an ancient Indian Upanishad. Scientific studies report that practicing CM produces various physiological and mental health benefits, including effects on psychophysiological states. The practice involves a sequence of postures such as isometric muscle contraction, supine rest, standing at ease, bending movements, and backward bending, with emphasis on relaxation and awareness throughout.
Frontiers in Psychology
December 20, 2021
James W. Moore
Consciousness, as defined by Julian Jaynes, centers on volition—the experience of willing or choosing. Jaynes argued that consciousness emerged recently in human history, between the writing of the Iliad and the Odyssey. This article highlights the overlooked role of volition in Jaynes' theory, noting that for Jaynes, changes in volitional experience mark the emergence of consciousness. The author draws attention to the fact that volition is central to Jaynes' definition of consciousness, a point not widely noted in critiques of his work.
Frontiers in Psychology
December 17, 2021
P. S. Swathi, Raghavendra Bhat, Apar Avinash Saoji
A 20-minute session of Trataka, a yogic visual concentration practice, improved working memory, spatial memory, and spatial attention as measured by the Corsi-block tapping task, outperforming both baseline and a control session of eye exercises alone. Forty-one healthy adults aged about 23 years participated; after two weeks of training in Trataka and a one-week washout, each person completed both a Trataka session and an eye exercise session on separate days. The eye exercise session produced no significant changes in the task. The findings suggest Trataka may offer immediate cognitive benefits beyond simple eye movements.
Frontiers in Psychology
December 3, 2021
Cornelia Herbert
A single 30-minute session of yoga exercise, whether performed with or without controlled breathing and mindful body awareness instructions, immediately improved cardiac autonomic activity as measured by heart rate variability, increased the speed and accuracy of emotional judgments, and heightened awareness of bodily signals in healthy young women. The yoga session did not alter self-referential processing. Adding breathing and mindfulness instructions did not produce superior cardiac effects compared to practicing the same movements alone. The findings suggest that even a brief yoga session can boost cardiac and emotional resilience in this population.
Frontiers in Psychology
November 11, 2021
Maya Sanilevici, Omer Reuveni, S. Lev‐Ari et al.
An online 8-week Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program improved mindfulness, reduced anxiety and stress, and increased emotion regulation in 92 adults during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. These benefits persisted one month after the program ended, even as public-health restrictions tightened. The program did not affect participants' ability to tolerate uncertainty. The improvement in mental health was partially explained by better emotion regulation. The findings suggest that online MBSR can support mental health during highly stressful periods.