Relationships Among Self-Concealment, Mindfulness and Negative Psychological Outcomes in Asian American and European American College Students

Abstract

Research on Asian Americans and their psychological adjustment is limited. Consisting of two cross-sectional studies, the present investigation examined the relationships among self-concealment, mindfulness, emotional distress in stressful interpersonal situations, and general psychological ill-health in Asian American college students, and in comparison with European American counterparts. In the Asian Americans, selfconcealment was found to be positively related to general psychological ill-health and negatively related to mindfulness. In both ethnic groups, mindfulness was found to be negatively related to general psychological ill-health. Findings suggest that, as seen with European American counterparts, both self-concealment and mindfulness may be important concepts in understanding the psychological adjustments of Asian American college students.

Relations Among Self-concealment, Mindfulness, and Internalizing Problems

“…Furthermore, preliminary findings suggest that self-concealment and mindfulness are related, but distinct behavioral patterns associated with a range of internalizing problems (Brown et al, 2007;Larson & Chastain, 1990;Masuda, Anderson, & Sheehan, 2009;Masuda et al, 2010;Wismeijer et al, 2009). For example, a negative association between self-concealment and mindfulness was found in Asian American and European American college students (Masuda et al, 2010) as well as in African American college students (Masuda et al, 2009).…”

“…These inverse associations are somewhat expected as self-concealment is a maladaptive regulation pattern of restricting expressions of distress and other unfavorable personal information, while mindfulness is viewed as adaptive regulation pattern enhancing attention to distress and other personal experiences. Furthermore, these studies revealed that both mindfulness and self-concealment were uniquely and separately related to general psychological distress in these student groups (Masuda et al, 2009;Masuda et al, 2010).…”

“…Conceptually, while considered an adaptive behavioral tendency in some sociocultural contexts (O'Neil, Helms, Gable, David, & Wrightsman, 1986;Wallace & Constantine, 2005), self-concealment may serve as a maladaptive control-and avoidance-focused emotion/behavior regulation strategy in other contexts (Masuda, Anderson, et al, 2011;Masuda, Boone, & Timko, 2011). Research has shown that self-concealment is positively associated with global psychological symptoms (Cramer, 1999), depression (DiBartolo, Li, & Frost, 2008), anxiety (Larson & Chastain, 1990;Potoczniak, Aldea, & DeBlaere, 2007), and various forms of somatic complaints (Larson & Chastain, 1990).…”

“…Recently the teaching and practice of mindfulness has been actively incorporated into psychotherapy (Baer, 2006;Hayes, Villatte, Levin, & Hildebrandt, 2011) due to its salutary effects found across a range of clinical contexts (Brown, Ryan, & Creswell, 2007). Mindfulness, when defined in this way, is found to be positively associated with psychological well-being (Howell, Digdon, & Buro, 2010;Howell, Digdon, Buro, & Sheptycki, 2008) and negatively associated with a broad array of internalizing problems (Brown & Ryan, 2003;Brown et al, 2007), including depression (Christopher & Gilbert, 2010;Masuda & Tully, 2012), anxiety (Brown & Ryan, 2003;Roemer et al, 2009), somatization (Masuda & Tully, 2012), and general distress (Masuda & Tully, 2012;Masuda, Wendell, Chou, & Feinstein, 2010).…”

“…For example, a negative association between self-concealment and mindfulness was found in Asian American and European American college students (Masuda et al, 2010) as well as in African American college students (Masuda et al, 2009). These inverse associations are somewhat expected as self-concealment is a maladaptive regulation pattern of restricting expressions of distress and other unfavorable personal information, while mindfulness is viewed as adaptive regulation pattern enhancing attention to distress and other personal experiences.…”