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

Abstract

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.

Mindful Emotion Regulation, Savouring and Proactive Behaviour: The Role of Supervisor Justice

“…Mindfulness is used in conjunction with emotion regulation as a mindful state of consciousness that facilitates the awareness and observation of emotions without judgement (Brown, Ryan, & Creswell, ; Glomb, Duffy, Bono, & Yang, ; Reb, Narayanan, & Ho, ). Past research has demonstrated a relationship between mindfulness and emotion regulation in workplace settings (Hülsheger, Alberts, Feinholdt, & Lang, ) and a mindful emotion regulation intervention decreased negative affect in university students (Pogrebtsova, Craig, Chris, O'Shea, & González‐Morales, ).…”

“…Mindfulness is used in conjunction with emotion regulation as a mindful state of consciousness that facilitates the awareness and observation of emotions without judgement (Brown, Ryan, & Creswell, 2007;Glomb, Duffy, Bono, & Yang, 2011;Reb, Narayanan, & Ho, 2013). Past research has demonstrated a relationship between mindfulness and emotion regulation in workplace settings (Hülsheger, Alberts, Feinholdt, & Lang, 2013) and a mindful emotion regulation intervention decreased negative affect in university students (Pogrebtsova, Craig, Chris, O'Shea, & González-Morales, 2018). Chambers et al's (2009) model of mindful emotion regulation (MER) suggests that it involves a systematic retraining of awareness and non-reactivity, allowing the individual to consciously choose the thoughts and emotions they want to identify with, rather than habitually reacting to them.…”

Mindfulness and positive activities at work: Intervention effects on motivation‐related constructs, sleep quality, and fatigue

“…We therefore posit that exercises which combine mindfulness and positive activities can lead to openness for experiences, positive emotions, and thereby can broaden thought‐action repertoires, as hypothesized in broaden‐and‐build theory (Fredrickson, 2001). In line with this, a study by Pogrebtsova, Craig, Chris, O’Shea, and González‐Morales (2018) found that a mindfulness intervention or combined mindfulness with emotion reappraisal intervention in students led to growth in positive affect and decline in negative affect over the course of 5 days.…”

“…One aspect that is examined in positive psychology is how happiness can be pursued and increased (Seligman et al, 2005). Emerging research has provided preliminary support for combining mindfulness and positive activities (Molina & O’Shea, 2020; Pogrebtsova et al, 2018). As research on PPAs in organizations moves forward, we need to know both why a specific activity works (e.g.…”

“…As research on PPAs in organizations moves forward, we need to know both why a specific activity works (e.g. Pogrebtsova et al 2018; Steidle, Hoppe, Gonzales‐Morales, Michel, & O’Shea, 2017), as well as whether entire intervention programmes (which are a more realistic method through which organizations actually deliver such interventions) are effective. In this research, we adopt the latter approach as we were interested in the overall impact of the intervention programme.…”