Mindfulness Broadens Awareness and Builds Eudaimonic Meaning: A Process Model of Mindful Positive Emotion Regulation

Abstract

Contemporary scholarship on mindfulness casts it as a form of purely non-evaluative engagement with experience. Yet, traditionally mindfulness was not intended to operate in a vacuum of dispassionate observation, but was seen as facilitative of eudaimonic mental states. In spite of this historical context, modern psychological research has neglected to ask the question of how the practice of mindfulness affects downstream emotion regulatory processes to impact the sense of meaning in life. To fill this lacuna, here we describe the Mindfulness-to-Meaning Theory, from which we derive a novel process model of mindful positive emotion regulation informed by affective science, in which mindfulness is proposed to introduce flexibility in the generation of cognitive appraisals by enhancing interoceptive attention, thereby expanding the scope of cognition to facilitate reappraisal of adversity and savoring of positive experience. This process is proposed to culminate in a deepened capacity for meaning-making and greater engagement with life.

The Impact of a Mindfulness-Based Intervention on Happiness: A Reflection on the Relevance of Integrating a Positive Psychology Framework within Mindfulness Research in Youth

“…Furthermore, given that it is not possible to live a life devoid of unpleasant and stressful events, it is possible that the MBI helped Mike increase his happiness by increasing his awareness of positive experiences and by building his resilience to stress (Wong 2011). Accordingly, past research has suggested that MBIs have an impact on well-being by bringing awareness to and enhancing the savoring of day-to-day experiences (Garland et al 2015;Ivtzan et al 2016;Lindsay and Creswell 2015).…”

Wisdom, bias, and balance: Toward a process-sensitive measurement of wisdom-related cognition.

“…We hypothesized that state-level wise reasoning would be positively associated with such constructs (Baltes & Staudinger, 2000;Kunzmann & Baltes, 2003;Tiberius, 2008), without fully overlapping with them (Grossmann, Na, Varnum, et al, 2013;Staudinger & Glück, 2011;Staudinger et al, 1997). Mindfulness, openness, emotional intelligence, and attributional complexity have been shown to lead to positive social-cognitive outcomes (Fletcher, Danilovics, Fernandez, Peterson, & Reeder, 1986;Goldstein & Gigerenzer, 2002;Kabat-Zinn, 2000;Law, Wong, & Song, 2004;Wong & Law, 2002; see Table 6) that are also associated with wisdom (Baltes & Smith, 2008;Dambrun & Ricard, 2011;Garland, Farb, Goldin, & Fredrickson, 2015;Grossmann, Na, Varnum, et al, 2013;Staudinger & Glück, 2011;Sternberg, 1998). Therefore, we selected these measures as part of our nomological network assessment.…”

The Emotional Factor and its Significance in the Formation of Adaptatic Capabilities of the Organism to Intellectual Loads

“…Це процес пізнавальної діяльності, ха-рактеризується узагальненим й опосередкованим відбиттям дійсності. Для здійснення розумової діяльності в головному мозку відбувається широка взаємодія різних його відділів, розпочинаючи від відділів кори півкуль великого мозку, лімбічної сис-теми й закінчуючи ретикулярною формацією стов-бура мозку [2,3]. На тему зв'язку емоцій та мис-лення існує велика кількість досліджень.…”