The Relationship between Mindfulness and Subjective Well-Being: Examining the Indirect Effects of Self-Connection and Meaning in Life

Over the past decade, support for the relationship between mindfulness and happiness has increased dramatically. The consensus is that people who are mindful also experience greater happiness. However, little is still known about how and why greater mindfulness leads one to be happier. The current research calls on recent theorizing to help understand the process by which this occurs. In particular, we studied the indirect effects of both self-connection and meaning in life on the relationship between mindfulness and subjective well-being. To this end, we compiled data collected in our lab over the past 3 years. A total of 2,929 participants provided cross-sectional data while 465 participated in longitudinal studies. Across both samples, the data supported our proposed model. Self-connection and meaning in life combined to mediate the relationship between mindfulness and the various aspects of subjective well-being. In all, it is clear that, although mindfulness is important, self-connection and meaning in life play key roles in one’s subjective well-being. This suggests that more research and interventions should focus on ways to increase self-connection and meaning in life as ways to help people experience greater happiness.

     

A test of motor skill-specific action embodiment in ice-hockey players

To further our understanding of the role of the motor system in comprehending action-related sentences, we compared action experts (athletes) to visual experts (fans) and novices when responding with an action-specific effector (either hand or foot). These conditions allowed inferences about the degree and specificity of embodiment in language comprehension. Ice hockey players, fans and novices made speeded judgments regarding the congruence between an auditorily presented sentence and a subsequently presented picture. Picture stimuli consisted of either hockey or everyday items. Half of these pictures ‘matched’ the action implied in the preceding sentence. Further, the action in these images involved either primarily the hand or the foot. For everyday items, action-matched items were responded to faster than action-mismatched items. However, only the players and fans showed the action-match effect for hockey items. There were no consistent effector-stimuli compatibility effects, nor skill-based interactions with compatibility, suggesting that the action-match effect was not based on motor ability per se, but rather a construction of the action based on knowledge or visual experience with the hockey related sentences.     

Western scrub-jays allocate longer observation time to more valuable information

When humans mentally reconstruct past events and imagine future scenarios, their subjective experience of mentally time travelling is accompanied by the awareness of doing so. Despite recent popularity of studying episodic memory in animals, such phenomenological consciousness has been extremely difficult to demonstrate without agreed behavioural markers of consciousness in non-linguistic subjects. We presented western scrub-jays (Aphelocoma californica) with a task requiring them to allocate observing time between two peepholes to see food being hidden in either of two compartments, one where observing the hiding location was necessary to later relocate the food, and another where food could easily be found without watching. Jays first separately experienced these consequences of possessing information in each compartment and subsequently, once given a choice, made more looks and spent more time looking into the compartment where information was necessary than into the compartment where it was unnecessary. Thus, the jays can collect information to solve a future problem. Moreover, they can differentiate sources of information according to their potential value and modify behaviour to efficiently collect important, usable information. This is the first evidence of metacognition in a species that passes the behavioural criteria for both retrospective and prospective mental time travel.     

The broaden and build process: Positive affect,ratio of positive to negative affect and general self-efficacy

Previous research indicates that increases in positive affect enhance personal resources and bring about improvements in various realms of life. The present study examined the role of general self-efficacy as a mediator between increases in positive affect and change in work and relationship satisfaction and mental health. Participants randomly assigned to a three-week intervention intended to increase positive affect showed significantly greater change in positive affect, ratio of positive to negative affect, self-efficacy, work satisfaction and mental health than participants in a control condition. Changes in affect were associated with changes in self-efficacy, work satisfaction, relationship satisfaction and mental health. Changes in self-efficacy were associated with increases in work satisfaction and mental health. The findings incorporate the concept of general self-efficacy into the broaden and build model and provide information regarding the utility of ratio of positive to negative affect indices.     

A qualitative study of client experiences of working with novice counsellors

Aims: This paper reports on a qualitative analysis of written accounts by clients who participated in a counselling relationship with beginning-level trainees. The purpose of the study was to explore how clients experience the process of counselling with novice practitioners. Method: Consensual qualitative research was used for data analysis. Findings: Three general thematic categories were identified – client perceptions of self in counselling; client perceptions of the counsellor; and client perception of the counselling process. Conclusions: Overall, the findings suggest that these clients saw the interpersonal qualities and skills of the counsellor as major contributors to their experience. Implications: Clinical training of novices should start by developing the interpersonal and collaborative skills of trainees.     

Work Craving: A Conceptualization and Measurement

Obsessive-compulsive models of workaholism do not allow diagnosing it as an addiction. We introduce an empirical evidence for conceptualization and measurement of work addiction as work craving. The Work Craving Scale (WCS) comprises: (a) obsessive-compulsive desire for work, (b) anticipation of self-worth compensation, (c) anticipation of reduction of negative affect or withdrawal symptoms resulting from working, and (d) neurotic perfectionism. Results (N = 1,459) confirmed the four-factorial structure of the WCS and indicated its good validity and reliability. The conceptualization of work craving significantly contributes to understanding of workaholism as an addiction, and should stimulate future research on work craving.     

The effect of meaningfulness and integrative processing in expressive writing on positive and negative affect and life satisfaction

Meaningfulness and integrative processing of expressive writing may influence the effect of expressive writing. Participants completed measures of positive affect, negative affect and life satisfaction before and after an expressive writing intervention. Participants were randomly assigned to one of four expressive writing instruction conditions, which combined higher and lower levels of meaning and integrative processing instructions. Meaningfulness and integrative processing instructions had significant effects in increasing positive affect and there was a significant interaction between meaningfulness instructions and integrative processing instructions; participants in the high meaningfulness and high integrative processing instruction condition showed the greatest increase in positive affect. Meaningfulness had a significant effect in decreasing negative affect. The intervention did not influence life satisfaction. Both meaningfulness and integrative processing instructions led to more self-reported personal meaningfulness of the writing and more cognitive, emotional, behavioural and situational changes. More self-reported meaningfulness of the writing and more cognitive, emotional, behavioural and situational changes made as a result of the writing were in turn associated with greater increases in positive affect. The results of the study affirm the importance of meaningfulness and processing in expressive writing and potentially provide information regarding how to increase the effectiveness of expressive writing.     

Intact emotion–cognition interaction in schizophrenia patients and first-degree relatives: Evidence from an emotional antisaccade task

Schizophrenia patients have deficits in cognitive control as well as in a number of emotional domains. The antisaccade task is a measure of cognitive control that requires the inhibition of a reflex-like eye movement to a peripheral stimulus. Antisaccade performance has been shown to be modulated by the emotional content of the peripheral stimuli, with emotional stimuli leading to higher error rates than neutral stimuli, reflecting an implicit emotion processing effect. The aim of the present study was to investigate the impact on antisaccade performance of threat-related emotional facial stimuli in schizophrenia patients, first-degree relatives of schizophrenia patients and healthy controls. Fifteen patients, 22 relatives and 26 controls, matched for gender, age and verbal intelligence, carried out an antisaccade task with pictures of faces displaying disgusted, fearful and neutral expressions as peripheral stimuli. We observed higher antisaccade error rates in schizophrenia patients compared to first-degree relatives and controls. Relatives and controls did not differ significantly from each other. Antisaccade error rate was influenced by the emotional nature of the stimuli: participants had higher antisaccade error rates in response to fearful faces compared to neutral and disgusted faces. As this emotional influence on cognitive control did not differ between groups we conclude that implicit processing of emotional faces is intact in patients with schizophrenia and those at risk for the illness.