Documente Academic
Documente Profesional
Documente Cultură
Mindfulness
ISSN 1868-8527
Mindfulness
DOI 10.1007/s12671-016-0520-1
1 23
1 23
ORIGINAL PAPER
Why Being Mindful May Have More Benefits Than You Realize:
Mindfulness Improves Both Explicit and Implicit
Mood Regulation
Carina Remmers 1,2 & Sascha Topolinski 3 & Sander L. Koole 4
Abstract Prior research has consistently observed that mindfulness facilitates emotion regulation. However, this research
mainly examined explicit, self-reported emotion. Does mindfulness also facilitate regulation of implicit emotional responses? To address this question, the authors induced sadness among a group of healthy volunteers (N = 72), after
which participants performed a mindfulness, distraction, or
rumination exercise. Implicit mood changes were assessed
with the Implicit Positive and Negative Affect Test and explicit mood changes were assessed with the Positive and Negative
Affect Schedule. Participants implicit and explicit negative
mood improved in the mindfulness and distraction groups, but
not in the rumination group. The mindfulness group displayed
greater congruence between implicit and explicit mood than
the other groups. Trait mindfulness was associated with lower
implicitbut not explicitnegative mood across the whole
sample both before and after the strategy induction but did not
moderate the effects of the strategy induction on mood improvement. These findings indicate that mindfulness can facilitate emotion regulation on both implicit and explicit levels.
* Carina Remmers
remmers.carina@gmail.com
Introduction
When people are mindful, they are focusing on their present
feelings, thoughts, and bodily sensations in a open, accepting,
and non-judgmental manner (Segal et al. 2002). Over the past
decades, many studies have observed positive associations
between mindfulness and life satisfaction (Brown and Ryan
2003). Moreover, mindfulness-based interventions have been
used to treat a wide array of psychological as well as physical
problems (Keng et al. 2011). It is therefore important to learn
more about the psychological mechanisms that can explain the
effects of mindfulness.
One key mechanism by which mindfulness has its beneficial effects is by promoting effective emotion regulation
(Hoelzel et al. 2011; Roemer et al. 2015). When people are
in a mindful state, they are sensitive to emotional cues in their
experiential field (Teper et al. 2013). Moreover, mindfulness
encourages people to non-judgmentally view their emotions
as transient mental events rather than reflections of reality
(Segal et al. 2002). This accepting attitude may thus keep
people from using dysfunctional emotion regulation strategies
such as experiential avoidance (Hayes et al. 1996) and rumination (Nolen-Hoeksema et al. 2008). In short, mindfulness
may allow people to deal with their emotions in a more adaptive manner (Roemer et al. 2015).
In line with the foregoing, trait mindfulness is consistently
correlated with adaptive emotion regulation (e.g., Coffey et al.
2010; Desrosiers et al. 2013; Hill and Updegraff 2012).
Moreover, experimental studies using brief mindfulness inductions in meditation nave participants have supported the
idea that mindfulness fosters adaptive emotion regulation
Method
Participants
Seventy-eight students of the University of Hildesheim as well
as individuals of other professional backgrounds were recruited through flyers on campus. Participants were rewarded by
entering them in a raffle for a 15 AMAZON voucher. Six
participants were excluded as they prematurely terminated the
experiment (n = 3) or refused to undergo the sad mood induction (n = 3). This resulted in a sample of n = 72 (63 female)
participants, who completed the whole experiment. All participants reported German as their native language. The mean
age of the sample was 22 years (SD = 3.6, range 1835 years,
three participants did not report their age). The majority of
participants (72 %) had no experience with any meditation
or mindfulness practice. Randomization to the three strategy
induction groups leads to the following distribution: mindfulness n = 22 (20 female, mean age 23), distraction n = 27 (23
female, mean age 22), and rumination n = 23 (20 female, mean
age 22).
For our main prediction, the present two (within-subjects)
X 3 (between-subjects) interaction on implicit emotional responses, we conducted a power analysis for the required sample size and assumed a medium effect size (Cohens f = 0.25;
Cohen 1988). Using G*Power (Faul et al. 2007), we determined the required sample size to be Nrequired = 42 to detect
this interaction with a power of 1 = 0.80. The present study
was thus appropriately powered.
Procedure
At the arrival in the lab, participants were seated at a desk with
a computer and were asked to report demographics and to fill
out a questionnaire measuring trait mindfulness. Then, informed consent was obtained from all individual participants
included in the study. After this, participants put on headphones provided on the desk. To induce sad mood, we used
a well-established multi-modal procedure in which participants first listened to a piece of sad music (Adagio in gminor by Tomaso Albinoni, arranged for strings and organ
by Remo Giazotto). At the same time, the Velten technique
(Teasdale and Russell 1983) was realized by asking participants to concentrate on sentences (e.g., I feel hopeless), which
were presented on the screen. After the music had finished,
participants were asked to recall personal events in which they
had felt sad and to concentrate on this feeling. The efficacy of
this procedure of 6 min in length has been supported in previous studies (e.g., Remmers et al. 2015). After the sad mood
induction, participants completed the implicit as well as the
explicit mood measure (sequence counter-balanced across
participants, time 1).
Then, participants were randomly assigned to one of the
three strategy inductions, namely, mindfulness (n = 22), distraction (n = 27), or rumination (n = 23), each lasting about
5 min. The procedure for inducing rumination and distraction
was based on Morrow and Nolen-Hoekema (1990). The procedure to induce mindfulness was based on recent extensions
of the aforementioned procedures (e.g., Huffziger and
Kuehner 2009; Remmers et al. 2015). In the original paradigm, participants are asked to focus their attention on
sentences printed on cards (Huffziger and Kuehner 2009). In
the present study, however, we used an audio induction, in
which a research assistant verbally read these sentences to
participants via headphones (Singer and Dobson 2007). In this
way, participants could more easily concentrate on and
Measures
We used the Implicit Positive Affect and Negative Affect Test
(IPANAT; Quirin et al. 2009) to measure current implicit
mood. The IPANAT consists of six artificial words
(SAFME, VIKES, TUNBA, TALEP, BELNI, SUKOV),
which are neutral in their affectivity. During the test, each
artificial word is paired with an adjective describing an affective state (positive: happy, cheerful, energetic; negative: helpless, tense, inhibited). Before completing the IPANAT, participants received the following text that introduced them to the
phenomenon of Bonomatopoeia^ and to the task: BIn the following, you will see words from an artificial language. They
are intended to express various moods. In all languages, there
are words that help to express their meanings by the way they
sound (for example the word rattle almost sounds like something rattles). In poetry and literature, this phenomenon is
known as onomatopoeia. Please indicate for each of the following words, how well each artificial words expresses different moods (for example to what extent does the sound of the
artificial word FILNU convey each of the following moods:
happy, helpless, energetic, tense, cheerful, inhibited?). In making these ratings, let yourself be guided by your spontaneous
Results
Mood Levels
As a randomization check, we first analyzed whether participants differed with respect to negative and positive mood directly after the sadness induction. As expected, because all
participants underwent the sad mood induction prior to randomization to the respective strategy conditions, the results of
separate ANOVAs showed that participants of the three conditions did not differ in terms of implicit negative and explicit
negative mood, Fs < 1. Likewise, there was no significant difference between groups with regard to implicit positive and
explicit positive mood Fs < 1.7.
Implicit Mood Levels
We first ran a 2 (time) X 3 (strategy induction) mixed ANOVA
on implicit negative mood. Participants generally showed a
decline in implicit negative mood from time 1 (M = 2.02,
SD = 0.41) to time 2 (M = 1.91, SD = 0.44), F(1,69) = 10.69,
p = .002, 2 = .13. Furthermore, the interaction between time
and strategy induction was significant, F(2,69) = 3.67, p = .03,
2 = .1 (other effects F < 1). As shown in in Table 1,
planned t tests revealed that in the mindfulness as well as in
the distraction condition, implicit negative mood decreased
from time 1 to time 2. In contrast, in the rumination condition,
there was no significant change in implicit negative mood (see
also Fig. 1).
Time 2
M (SD)
2.02 (0.35)
2.08 (0.52)
1.82 (0.45)
1.90 (0.50)
3.09
2.63
< .01
.01
1.98 (0.33)
2.00 (0.37)
.42
.68
Mindfulness
1.93 (0.69)
1.45 (0.48)
3.91
< .01
Distraction
Rumination
1.84 (0.59)
1.89 (0.33)
1.40 (0.51)
1.71 (0.65)
5.73
1.75
< .01
.10
Negative Mood
3.00
Time 1
Time 2
2.50
2.00
1.50
1.00
0.50
0.00
implicit
explicit
Mindfulness
implicit
explicit
Distraction
implicit
explicit
Rumination
exercise than in participants from the distraction and rumination conditions. Correlational analyses for each group separately indicated that in none of the groups there was a significant association between implicit and explicit positive mood.
However, in line with our predictions, we found that in the
mindfulness group, implicit and explicit negative mood scores
were strongly and significantly associated, r = .58, p < .006,
whereas implicit and explicit negative moods were not significantly associated in the distraction group, r = .12, n.s., and the
rumination group, r = .27, n.s.
We proceeded by exploring whether the congruence between implicit and explicit negative mood was significantly
stronger in the mindfulness condition than in the distraction
and rumination conditions by again using the regression
approach suggested by Job and Brandstaetter (2009) and
Koole et al. (2009). We first examined whether the distraction
and rumination conditions differed in terms of their associations between implicit and explicit negative mood. We
regressed implicit negative mood on explicit negative mood,
manipulation condition (dummy-coded 1 for rumination and
1 for distraction), and their interaction term. None of the variables significantly predicted implicit negative mood in this
model, R2 = .05, p = .53, indicating that distraction and rumination did not differ in terms of congruence between explicit
and implicit levels of mood. Therefore, in the next analysis,
we combined the latter two conditions and compared them
jointly against the mindfulness condition.
We ran the same analysis by entering explicit negative mood
(z-transformed), manipulation condition (coded 1 for mindfulness and 1 for rumination and distraction, taken together),
and their interaction term. The analysis revealed a significant
main effect for explicit negative mood, b = .45, t(68) = 3.21,
p < .003. The interaction between manipulation condition and
explicit negative mood was marginally significant, b = .26,
t(68) = 1.86, p = .06 (inserting explicit negative mood at time
1 still yielded an interaction of p = .08). The overall fit of the
model was R2 = .15, p = .01. In a parallel set of follow-up analyses, we compared the mindfulness condition against the rumination and distraction conditions, separately. These analyses
yielded significant main effects of explicit negative mood,
ts > 2.4, ps < .003, and marginal interaction effects between
condition and explicit negative mood for the comparison between mindfulness and rumination, b = .28, t(40) = 1.94,
p = .06, and the comparison between mindfulness and distraction, b = .24, t(45) = 1.65, p = .11. Thus, although the predicted pattern was only marginally significant, implicit and explicit
negative mood was more strongly associated in the mindfulness
condition than in the distraction and rumination conditions.
Effects of Trait Mindfulness
Recall that our third hypothesis was that the effects of trait
mindfulness would be largely independent of the effects of
Discussion
In the present experiment, we examined whether a short mindfulness induction improves not only explicit, self-reported
negative mood, but also implicit negative mood. To address
this question, we investigated changes in implicit and explicit
mood after a sad mood induction among participants who
engaged in either a mindfulness, distraction, or rumination
exercise. Results revealed that positive mood increased in all
conditions across both implicit and explicit measures. With
regard to down-regulation of negative mood, results confirmed our main hypothesis and showed that only participants
in the mindfulness and distraction groups displayed significant mood improvement. Participants in the rumination condition maintained their negative mood, a finding that is in line
with previous research on the effects of rumination on mood
(Nolen-Hoeksema et al. 2008). Importantly, we observed this
pattern of results across both implicit and explicit measures of
negative mood. Thus, the present experiment extends previous empirical research on the interplay between mindfulness
and emotion regulation and demonstrates that a short mindfulness exercise leads to the down-regulation of negative
mood on both explicit and implicit levels by directly assessing
implicit mood changes.
The current findings fit with the idea that the non-judgmental, non-reactive attitude that people adopt during mindfulness
practice may interrupt otherwise automatically operating processes (Crescentini and Capurso 2015; Moore and
Malinowski 2009; Segal et al. 2002). This de-automization
process may help people to accept negative feelings rather
than automatically being drawn into self-perpetuating cycles
of dysfunctional responding to negative emotions. Notably,
we do not assume that the mood-regulatory effect of mindfulness is the result of repression of negative emotions. Cousin
and Crane (2015) for example found that a mindfulness-based
intervention leads to a decreased use of disengagement coping
styles. Thus, in a mindful state it is BOK^ to have negative
feelings (Segal et al. 2002). Correspondingly, recent work has
shown that during very early processing stages (i.e., within
100 ms of encountering an emotional stimulus), mindfulness
fosters sensitivity to negative emotion (Teper et al. 2013).
Combined with our findings, we tentatively conclude that
the down-regulation of negative emotional responses in a state
of mindfulness might be based on an early and accepting
detection of negative emotional cues, which fosters subsequent integrative cognitive processing. Future work is needed
to assess which ingredient of the mindfulness exercise (e.g.,
acceptance or present-moment awareness) may lead to the
observed mood changes.
One empirical marker of mindfulness-induced integrative
processing may be a higher congruence between implicit and
explicit mood, evidenced by the higher correlation between implicit and explicit emotional responses (Brown and Ryan 2003;
still needs to be examined. Moreover, as the current mindfulness exercise was rather brief and our participants had little
experience with mindfulness meditation, generalizing our
findings to clinical samples or samples with extensive
mindfulness experience should be done with care. According
to this, Chiesa et al. (2013) suggest that neural correlates underlying mindful emotion regulation depend on mindfulness
practice. Overall, future research should disentangle the potentially differential effects of long-term mindfulness experience
versus short-term mindfulness interventions used in our study.
In addition, as a manipulation check was missing the in the
current study, it may still be that observed implicit and explicit
mood changes were the result of natural recovery. We suggest
that upcoming research should investigate whether short mindfulness interventions used in laboratory settings effectively alter
levels of state mindfulness or not. More generally, in future
studies, researchers would do well in clearly defining whether
they investigate mindfulness as a state or trait. It should be
explored whether the effects deriving from active mindfulness
exercises are comparable to processes related to measures of
trait mindfulness. Consequently, future research should clearly
distinguish between research on trait mindfulness and research
investigating the effects of mindfulness interventions designed
to increase mindfulness (Cousin and Crane 2015).
A further critical point is the unexpected increase in explicit
and implicit positive mood that we observed across the session
in all participants. We tentatively suggest that the observed
increases in positive mood reflect a general resilience mechanism that counter-regulates the effects of negative emotion
(Tugade and Fredrickson 2004). However, we cannot rule out
that the increase in positive mood signifies that the negative
mood induction lost potency from time 1 to time 2.
Furthermore, we would like to state that the IPANAT as a measure for implicit negative mood has limitations. Some emotion
regulation processes might operate within milliseconds (Quirin
et al. 2009; Mauss et al. 2007). If these processes come into
question, researchers should draw on reaction time (e.g., the
IAT) or physiological measures. Additionally, the IPANAT
does not prescribe a restricted time window within which participants have to provide their responses. Therefore, deliberate
processes may disturb the measurement. Finally, the present
experiment, it did not include a condition without specific emotion regulation instructions. Future research in this domain
would do well to include an uninstructed regulation condition.
These caveats notwithstanding, the present research sheds
important new light on the interface between mindfulness and
emotion regulation. It appears that mindfulness fosters emotion
regulation not only on explicit levels but also on implicit levels.
Especially with regard to highly prevalent forms of psychopathology such as depression, it may be of clinical relevance, to
bring implicit mood states under control by preventing the activation of dysfunctional, negative automatic feelings. Recent dual process models of depression (Beevers 2005) suggest that
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