Daily Mindfulness Components and State Affect: A Day Reconstruction Study

Abstract Objectives The assessment of state mindfulness often involves detecting mindful experiences during formal practices such as meditation. However, state mindfulness is also experienced moment by moment throughout typical daily experiences. The current research employed the day reconstruction method (DRM) to assess whether different components of state mindfulness, captured via reflections of experiences from the previous day, uniquely predict state affect.

Method: On 2 consecutive days, undergraduate students were asked to recall episodes from the previous day, and for each episode, report on their level of state mindfulness and state affect, as well as other covariates likely to predict affect. State mindfulness was assessed with the newly created State Four Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire (state-4FMQ), adapted from the commonly used trait Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire. Before and after completing the 2-day DRM task, participants completed several trait measures.

Results: Multilevel modeling revealed that daily experiences of state ActAware and Nonjudgment, and to a lesser degree Observing, uniquely predicted state affect. Describing was not uniquely predictive of state affect. Various analyses on the current data also provided further validation of the state-4FMQ. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) tests revealed there was no significant long-term benefit to completing the DRM per se.

Conclusions: Different components of daily mindfulness uniquely contribute to state affect, even when accounting for relevant covariates. These effects can be accurately assessed by repeatedly measuring the state-4FMQ within the DRM. Preregistration This study was preregistered at the Open Science Framework: https://osf.io/j7tfn.