The Role of Mindfulness in Positive Reappraisal

By Eric L. Garland, S. Gaylord, J. Park. Explore, 2009

615 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Mindfulness meditation is increasingly well known for therapeutic efficacy in a variety of illnesses and conditions, but its mechanism of action is still under debate in scientific circles. In this paper we propose a hypothetical causal model that argues for the role of mindfulness in positive reappraisal coping. Positive reappraisal is a critical component of meaning-based coping that enables individuals to adapt successfully to stressful life events. Mindfulness, as a metacognitive form of awareness, involves the process of decentering, a shifting of cognitive sets that enables alternate appraisals of life events. We review the concept of positive reappraisal in transactional stress and coping theory; then describe research and traditional literature related to mindfulness and cognitive reappraisal, and detail the central role of mindfulness in the reappraisal process. With this understanding, we present a causal model explicating the proposed mechanism. The discussion has implications for clinical practice, suggesting how mindfulness-based integrative medicine interventions can be designed to support adaptive coping processes.

Subfields: Clinical Psychology, Experimental and Cognitive Psychology, Psychiatry and Mental health

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/387cb17d74610c4b7fc481d160d4299a139aa195

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In Clinical Psychology

In Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

In Psychiatry and Mental health

Citations in the corpus

One-Session Mindfulness Meditation: A Randomized Controlled Study of Effects on Cognition and Mood (2015, background): “Decentering, which can be understood as disengaging from negative appraisals, is likely instrumental in the beneficial aspects of MM practice (Garland et al. 2009; Garland et al. 2011).”
Mechanisms of Mindfulness: A Buddhist Psychological Model (2011, background): “The mindful coping model (Garland et al. 2009) proposes that events that are perceived as negative can be responded to by the deliberate initiation of a decentered mode of broadened awareness and increased attentional flexibility, from which the given event is reappraised in a positive manner by att”
Character Strengths and Intellectual and Developmental Disability: A Strengths-Based Approach from Positive Psychology (2017, positive): “Each of the 24 character strengths can serve as tools for reframing or what some scientists refer to as positive reappraisal (Garland, Gaylord, & Park, 2009).”
Mindfulness, coping self-efficacy and foreign language anxiety: a mediation analysis (2017, background): “Overall, the findings showed that EFL learners’ mindfulness was significantly associated with both CSE and FLA. CSE also could predict FLA.”
The Mindfulness-to-Meaning Theory: Extensions, Applications, and Challenges at the Attention–Appraisal–Emotion Interface (2015, background): “…hypotheses that have been refined over the past 8 years (e.g., Garland, 2007; Garland et al., this issue; Garland, Fredrickson, et al., 2010; Garland et al., 2009) and will undoubtedly continue to evolve in the coming decades, as more empirical research is devoted to testing, unpacking,…”
Deconstructing Mindfulness and Constructing Mental Health: Understanding Mindfulness and its Mechanisms of Action (2010, background): “Future studies might investigate other possible mechanisms of action in this relationship, such as exposure and desensitization to unpleasant emotional experiences (Baer 2003; Brown et al. 2007; Shapiro et al. 2006), decentering (also called reperceiving or deautomatization; Baer 2003; Brown et al. ”
A randomized controlled trial of compassion cultivation training: Effects on mindfulness, affect, and emotion regulation (2013, positive): “This study found an increase in mindfulness; other studies have found that mindfulness meditation training may enhance higher order cognitive capacities such as emotion regulation (e.g., Garland et al. 2009; Goldin and Gross 2010).”
A Conservation of Resources Perspective on Negative Affect and Innovative Work Behaviour: the Role of Affect Activation and Mindfulness (2016, positive): “In this regard, researchers have suggested several theoretical accounts of how mindfulness may exert its benefits to the individual’s functioning (Dane 2011; Garland et al. 2009; Glomb et al. 2011; Good et al. 2016; Shapiro et al. 2006).”
Positive Reappraisal Mediates the Stress-Reductive Effects of Mindfulness: An Upward Spiral Process (2011, methodology): “1 a The mindful coping model: cross-sectional view (Garland et al. 2009).”
Intrapsychic Correlates of Professional Quality of Life: Mindfulness, Empathy, and Emotional Separation (2010, background): “…of reality that demand a response, but as transient mental events that can be appraised from a de-centered, distanced perspective, which allows for more reflective, intentional action and less impulsive, automatic reactivity (Chiesa & Serretti, 2009; Garland et al., 2009; Segal et al., 2002).”