The Impact of Mindfulness on Empathy, Active Listening, and Perceived Provisions of Emotional Support

Abstract

Mindfulness has emerged as an important factor that assists people in regulating difficult emotions, but it is not yet known whether mindfulness plays a role in supportive communication. The current study examines whether mindfulness facets (describing, observing, nonjudging, aware acting, nonreacting) positively influence self-reported abilities to (a) discern more and less person-centered (PC) supportive messages and (b) facilitate reappraisals via two core cognitive factors, namely, empathy and active listening. College students with little or no meditation experience ( N = 183) completed an online survey. Mediation analyses showed that empathy and active listening partially mediated the relationship between two mindfulness facets (describing, observing) and the two perceptual outcome measures (PC message discriminations, facilitating reappraisals) by accounting for 33% and 62% of the variance. Additional structural equation modeling suggested that mindful observing and describing positively predicted empathy and active listening. Both mindful describing and nonjudging also positively predicted facilitating reappraisals. Interestingly, nonjudging negatively predicted empathy and active listening. The results point to mindfulness as an important factor that influences cognitive-affective processes in supportive communication.

Can clinical psychology students benefit from brief and intensive mindfulness training?

“…As such, the outcomes observed must be regarded as more distal indicators of therapy‐relevant skills. However, findings from other studies have established empirical associations between the variables included here and measures more closely related to the therapy process, such as empathy (Jones et al, ) and maintenance of therapeutic alliance (Leonard et al, ; Razzaque et al, ). It may thus be argued that it is likely that the changes observed here are relevant for the practice of psychotherapy.…”

“…According to Wampold et al (), the ability to modulate and express emotions and maintain focus on the client is a skill that is of importance for therapist effectiveness. Prior research has found facets of mindfulness to be related to therapeutic alliance (Leonard et al, ; Ryan et al, ), as well as to empathy and active listening (Jones, Bodie, & Hughes, ). The benefit of mindfulness training in enhancing various aspects of facilitative interpersonal skills is worthy of further exploration.…”

“…Of further therapeutic relevance may be the increase in ability to notice bodily sensations, sensory experience and movement, noticing how thoughts are connected with bodily sensations and feelings and how feelings affect thoughts and actions, measured by the subscale Observe. The Observe and Describe facets of the FFMQ have previously been found to positively predict empathy and active listening (Jones et al, 2016). Numerous studies have correlated ratings of therapist empathy with outcome, which have been meta-analytically summarised (Elliott et al, 2011), resulting in a moderately large effect (d = 0.63).…”

Considering mindfulness techniques in school-based anti-bullying programmes

“…This can have direct positive consequences on behaviour, especially in relation to bullying. For example, mindfulness has been linked to empathy and perspective taking (Jones, Bodie, & Hughes, 2016). Furthermore, empathy has been linked to positive bystander behavior (Barlińska, Szuster, & Winiewski, 2015) which in turn has been linked to reductions in bullying (Polanin, Espelage, & Pigoot, 2012).…”

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“…These findings support other studies which have similarly shown that higher levels of bonding and attachment between interlocutors correlate with greater interpersonal communication skills (Klaus & Kennell, 1972;Karen, 1998;Levine & Heller, 2010). Condon and Ogston (1966) with the other interlocutor and the speaker will be fully aware that the listener is in fact interested in listening to them (Jones, Bodie, & Hughes, 2016). In summary, demonstrating active listening improves not only the efficiency with which information is exchanged but also has the potential to develop the emotional aspect of the relationship between the interlocutors.…”