Riding the tide of emotions with mindfulness: Mindfulness, affect dynamics, and the mediating role of coping.

Abstract

Little research has examined ways in which mindfulness is associated with affect dynamics, referring to patterns of affect fluctuations in daily life. Using ecological momentary assessment (EMA), the present study examined the associations between trait mindfulness and several types of affect dynamics, namely affect variability, affect inertia, affect switch, and affect instability. Three hundred ninety undergraduate students from Singapore reported their current emotions and coping styles up to 19 times per day across 2 days. Results showed that trait mindfulness correlated negatively with variability, instability, and inertia of negative affect and positively with negative-to-positive affect switch. These relationships were independent of openness, habitual reappraisal, habitual suppression, depression, and self-esteem. Importantly, lower maladaptive coping was found to mediate these relationships. The study suggests that trait mindfulness independently promotes adaptive patterns of affective experiences in daily life by inhibiting maladaptive coping styles. (PsycINFO Database Record

Affect lability predicts occurrence of suicidal ideation in bipolar patients: a two‐year prospective study

“…Interestingly, it has been shown that training in mindfulness weakens the association between depressive symptoms and suicidal ideation in depressed patients , through decrease in cognitive reactivity and ruminations . Besides, trait mindfulness has been negatively correlated to lability of negative affects, independently of depression and mediated by lower maladaptive coping. This suggests that trait mindfulness independently promotes adaptive patterns of affective experiences in daily life by inhibiting maladaptive coping styles.…”

The Relationship Between Mindfulness and Life Stress in Student-Athletes: The Mediating Role of Coping Effectiveness and Decision Rumination

“…Lazarus and Folkman (1984) proposed that coping strategies are not inherently effective or ineffective, a particular coping strategy or a combination of strategies may be effective in one situation and not in another. Hence, although much of the literature suggests that mindfulness improves well-being through enhancing the use of effective coping and decreasing the use of ineffective coping (Bishop et al, 2004;Keng & Tong, 2016;Palmer & Rodger, 2009;Weinstein et al 2009), empirical research is still required to test this assumption. Moreover, research has yet to determine which facets of mindfulness are associated with coping effectiveness and whether coping effectiveness mediates the mindfulness -stress relationship.…”

“…Particularly, the five facets of dispositional mindfulness have shown to play discrete roles on stress and psychological well-being (e.g., Baer et al, 2008;Bergin & Pakenham, 2016;Zimmaro et al, 2016). Accordingly, researchers have recommended that studies should use multifaceted measures of mindfulness to capture both attentional and attitudinal aspects of the concept (e.g., Keng & Tong, 2016). For instance, some studies have shown that four of the facets, namely describe, act with awareness, non-judge and nonreactivity, were positively associated with psychological well-being in psychology students and highly educated individuals (Baer et al, 2008) as well as negatively associated with perceived stress, depression and anxiety in law students (Bergin & Pakenham, 2016).…”

Perceived stress mediates the relationship between mindfulness and negative affect variability: A randomized controlled trial among middle‐aged to older adults

“…When faced with stressors throughout the day, however, people's NA may fluctuate, and this daily fluctuation of NA may not be well-captured in mean-based estimates. NA variability (NAV) refers to within person variation or the standard deviation of NA over time (Eid & Diener, 1999) and contains unique information relevant to well-being, beyond that provided by mean-level measurements (Keng & Tong, 2016). NAV has been directly linked to most mood disorders (Aldao, Nolen-Hoeksema, & Schweizer, 2010;Brown, Chorpita, & Barlow, 1998;Kirkegaard Thomsen, 2006;Young & Dietrich, 2015) and is positively correlated with elevated stress levels (Dua, 1993).…”