What do people mean when they talk about mindfulness?

Psychological theories cast mindfulness as a form of awareness in which accepting the presence of stressful thoughts and feelings facilitates engaged exploration and identification of adaptive responses. Critics of mindfulness' popularization suggest that lay people misconstrue acceptance as a passive endorsement of experience, undermining engaged problem-solving. To evaluate this criticism, we traced the contemporary semantic meaning of mindfulness in three of the most extensive linguistic corpora of English language and found that general public's depictions of mindfulness highlight engagement-related processes. We further analyzed the nomological network of mindfulness. While mindfulness theories suggest a general convergence of facets representing awareness and acceptance, in a meta-analysis (k = 145; N = 41,966) of the Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire only expert- and clinical samples reported convergence, whereas lay people showed absent or even antagonistic associations. Further, contrary to the synergistic model of awareness and acceptance contributing to greater engagement, empirical probes of two lay samples (Ntotal = 406) show that acceptance is either unrelated or inversely related to markers of engagement. To overcome resulting conceptual and methodological challenges, we highlight the need for a contextualized mindfulness framework whereby acceptance enables the process of engaging with life's challenges rather than avoiding them.

Exploring daily affective changes in university students with a mindful positive reappraisal intervention: A daily diary randomized controlled trial.

Brief and cost-effective interventions focused on emotion regulation techniques can buffer against stress and foster positive functioning. Mindfulness and positive reappraisal are two techniques that can mutually enhance one another to promote well-being. However, research testing the effectiveness of interventions combining mindfulness and reappraisal is lacking. The current pilot examined the effect of a combined mindful-reappraisal intervention on daily affect in a 5-day diary study with 106 university students. Participants were randomized to a mindful-reappraisal intervention (n = 36), a reappraisal-only intervention (n = 34), or an active control activity (n = 36). All participants described a negative event each day but only reappraised the event in the intervention conditions. Using multilevel growth modelling, results indicated that negative affect in both interventions declined over 5 days compared to the control; however, there were no differences in the growth of positive affect. Compared to reappraisal-only, the mindful-reappraisal group reported overall lower daily negative affect and marginally higher daily positive affect over the 5-day intervention. These findings suggest that brief daily practice combining mindfulness and positive reappraisal can be trained as a self-regulatory resource to promote positive affect and buffer negative affect above and beyond reappraisal practice alone.

Using Peer Communicated Norms About Safety to Reduce Injury-Risk Behaviors by Children.

Objective: This study examined whether exposure to a safety norm could counteract the increase in risk taking children show when in an elevated positive mood state. Methods: Risk taking (intentions, behaviors) was measured in a neutral and positive (induced experimentally) mood state. Before completing the tasks in a positive mood, 120 children 7-10 years were exposed to either a safety norm or a control audio. Results: The control audio had no effect: children showed an increase in risk taking and intentions when in a positive mood compared with a neutral mood, replicating past research. In contrast, exposure to the safety norm counteracted this effect: children showed a decrease in risk taking and intentions when in a positive mood compared with a neutral mood. Conclusion: Manipulating children's exposure to social norms can be an effective strategy for reducing injury-risk behaviors even when they are in an elevated positive mood state.

Training Older Siblings to be Better Supervisors: An RCT Evaluating the "Safe Sibs" Program.

OBJECTIVE: This study evaluated a new online training program, Safe Sibs, aimed at improving supervision knowledge and behaviors of sibling supervisors. METHOD: Participants included older children (7-11 years) and their younger siblings (2-5 years). A randomized controlled trial design was used, with older siblings randomly assigned to either an intervention or wait-list control group. Before and after either the intervention or wait-list period, older siblings completed measures of supervision knowledge and their supervision behaviors were unobtrusively observed when with their younger sibling. RESULTS: Compared with the control group, the intervention group showed significant improvements in supervision knowledge (child development, knowledge of effective supervision practices, injury beliefs, intervention-specific knowledge) and in some aspects of supervision behavior (frequency of proactive safety behaviors to prevent supervisee access to injury hazards). CONCLUSIONS: Although adult supervision is ideal, this new program can support older children to become more knowledgeable and improved supervisors of younger ones.

Exploring relations between positive mood state and school-age children's risk taking.

OBJECTIVE: To examine whether children engage in greater risk taking when in a positive versus neutral mood state, and whether positive urgency trait relates to risk taking. METHODS: Positive mood in 7-10-year-old children was induced experimentally, and children's risk-taking intentions and actual behaviors were measured when the child was in a positive and neutral mood state. RESULTS: Within-person comparisons revealed that children showed greater risk-taking intentions and actual risk behaviors when in a positive mood state compared with a neutral one. Positive urgency was associated with greater risk taking when in a positive mood state, and this effect was stronger in the actual risk taking than intentions to risk take task. CONCLUSIONS: Mood state affects children's risk taking. Positive mood is associated with greater risk taking in elementary-school children, and those high in positive urgency are especially likely to show this effect. Implications for injury prevention are discussed.