Mindfulness Broadens Awareness and Builds Eudaimonic Meaning: A Process Model of Mindful Positive Emotion Regulation

By Eric L. Garland, N. Farb, Philippe R. Goldin, Barbara L. Fredrickson. Psychological Inquiry, 2015

672 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Contemporary scholarship on mindfulness casts it as a form of purely nonevaluative engagement with experience. Yet, traditionally mindfulness was not intended to operate in a vacuum of dispassionate observation, but was seen as facilitative of eudaimonic mental states. In spite of this historical context, modern psychological research has neglected to ask the question of how the practice of mindfulness affects downstream emotion regulatory processes to impact the sense of meaning in life. To fill this lacuna, here we describe the mindfulness-to-meaning theory, from which we derive a novel process model of mindful positive emotion regulation informed by affective science, in which mindfulness is proposed to introduce flexibility in the generation of cognitive appraisals by enhancing interoceptive attention, thereby expanding the scope of cognition to facilitate reappraisal of adversity and savoring of positive experience. This process is proposed to culminate in a deepened capacity for meaning-making and greater engagement with life.

Subfields: Clinical Psychology, Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/557bc73aa8857ab41a9a2804888c22dbf5e5037d

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Citations in the corpus

Mechanisms of Mindfulness Training: Monitor and Acceptance Theory (MAT) (2016, background): “…and acceptance in fostering psychological well-being: acceptance appears to be essential for reducing symptoms (and the grasping of positive experiences), while noticing experiences is crucial for appreciating them and building positive states (Garland et al., 2015; Lindsay & Creswell, 2015).”
The Way Forward in Mindfulness and Sustainability: a Critical Review and Research Agenda (2020, background): “…applies an eudemonic view on personal well-being, therefore communicating with those who see mindfulness as a way to engage with life in a more meaningful way and to satisfy basic psychological needs (Ryan and Deci 2008; Ryan et al. 2008; Garland et al. 2015; Kasser 2017; Hunecke and Richter 2019).”
Mind The Hype: A Critical Evaluation and Prescriptive Agenda for Research on Mindfulness and Meditation (2017, neutral): “No one theoretical model (e.g., Garland, Farb, Goldin, & Fredrickson, 2015; Grabovac et al., 2011; Hölzel et al., 2011; S. L. Shapiro et al., 2006; Vago & Silbersweig, 2012) can possibly describe, explain, and predict all of the phenomena stemming from the panoply of facets that “mindfulness,”…”
Mindfulness Can Make You Happy-and-Productive: A Mindfulness Controlled Trial and Its Effects on Happiness, Work Engagement and Performance (2018, background): “Thus, mindfulness practice was originally intended to strengthen mental capacities in order to disrupt negative states and cultivate positive psychological processes, rather than sustaining an affective ly neutral state (Garland et al., 2015).”
Integrating Mindfulness into Positive Psychology: a Randomised Controlled Trial of an Online Positive Mindfulness Program (2016, background): “A concern to be tackled is that the positive mindfulness cycle might generate an attachment to pleasant or positive experiences, leading to potential suffering when the experience unavoidably disappears (Garland et al. 2015).”