Clinical Handbook of Mindfulness (23 page)

of mindfulness to examine its short-term effects on the regulation of men-

tal health-relevant behavior, particularly affect. Most induction research has

used guided instruction designed to bring attention to, and deepen aware-

ness of, moment-to-moment physical, emotional, and cognitive experiences.

The induction exercises used to date, usually 5–10 minutes in duration, are

designed to facilitate close observation of current events and experiences so

that present realities can be seen clearly and without cognitive interference.

A variant of this induction strategy is the use of very brief instructions (2–3

sentences) that simply cue individuals to enter an experiential state of pres-

ence akin to mindfulness. This induction approach permits investigation of

the manifestations and effects of experiential processing in real time.

Mindfulness and Emotional Experience

Emotional experience and its regulation is, of course, central to mental health

and intimately bound up with mental health-relevant cognition and behavior.

Thus, research addressing how mindful traits and states explain variance in

emotion and emotion regulation can contribute to our understanding of how

mindfulness may foster mental health more broadly.

Elements of Emotional Experience

Emotion can be understood in terms of both its content – what is felt – and its

underlying neurobiological processes or causes (Barrett, Mesquita, Ochsner,

& Gross,
2007).
At its core, emotional content concerns subjective feelings of pleasure or displeasure. This is termed
core affect
. There is now considerable evidence that people represent emotions in these terms (e.g., Pos-

ner, Russell, & Peterson,
2005; Russell, 1980).
But as
Barrett et al. (2007)

note, the experience of emotion is typically
about
something, as well; that

is, it is an intentional state that is dependent on level of arousal, relational

meaning, and situational meaning that all help to create psychologically

distinct experiences of joy, calm, fear, sadness, anger, and many others. It

is in the meaning assigned to situations (i.e., cognitive appraisals) through

4 We refer to “mindfulness practice skills” as the variety of practice-based supports

for the expression of mindful attention, including an attitude of acceptance toward

experience, discursive description of subjective experiences as they arise (e.g., label-

ing), and so on.

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Kirk Warren Brown and Shari Cordon

which the study of emotional content and emotion regulation has been com-

monly conducted.

Barrett et al.
(2007)
note that most influential theories of emotion assume that experiences of emotion – like other mental events – are rooted in

(though not necessarily reducible to) neurological processes. In its current

state, neuroscience cannot pinpoint particular brain regions or types of

neural activity that instantiate specific emotional contents, but it has been

able to show what parts of the brain are active during core affective experi-

ences of pleasant and unpleasant emotion and in the experience of particular

emotions. Neuroscience research has also begun to hone in on those brain

regions that appear important to the regulation of core affect, particularly

unpleasant emotion.

Why Should Mindfulness Be Associated with Emotional Well-Being?

From the foregoing discussion of the subjective or phenomenological nature

of mindfulness, there are several reasons to propose that this quality should

have distinctive emotional content and regulatory correlates, all of which

center on the experiential nature of this manner of processing. First, because

mindfulness involves a disengagement from habitually evaluative conceptual

processing, it should conduce to more balanced states of core affect. That

is, it should be related to less unpleasant affect and perhaps less pleasant

affect as well, although a freshness and immediacy of contact with expe-

rience may, in some circumstances, add a pleasant affective overlay to it

(as in the
Varela & Depraz (2003)
example given earlier; see also Brown

& Ryan,
2003;
Csikszentmihalyi, 1990; Deci & Ryan, 1985).
Second, with the clearer objective perception that mindfulness is thought to afford, potentially challenging events and experiences are less likely to be distorted by

cognitive biases or misinterpretations that can generate unpleasant emo-

tional responses. So, for example, mild breathlessness can simply be “seen”

as is, rather than anxiously construed as a panic attack. A selfish or lustful

thought is observed as it is – a thought – rather than taken as depressing

evidence of personal unworthiness
(Claxton, 1999).
Thus, this movement

of the “cursor of consciousness”
(Claxton, 1999)
back to a more immedi-

ate, less elaborated state should not only help to diminish core, unpleasant

affective experience but also inhibit emotional reactivity to challenging stim-

uli. Third, the quality of attention is known to influence emotion regulatory

outcomes (e.g.,
Gross & Thompson, 2007),
and because mindfulness concerns a sustained, open attentiveness to internal and external phenomena

as they are, it should discourage maladaptive emotion regulatory tendencies

like rumination and thought suppression that involve cognitive entanglement

and also encourage voluntary exposure to unpleasant or challenging events

and experiences that has been shown to promote adaptive emotion regula-

tion (e.g.,
Felder, Zvolensky, Eifert, & Spira, 2003;
Levitt, Brown, Orsillo, & Barlow,
2004;
Sloan, 2004).

Research has begun to show that both trait and state mindfulness are

related to emotional content, particularly core affect, and emotion reg-

ulation. The empirical evidence on mindfulness and emotional content

comes from the use of cross-sectional, experience sampling, induction-based,

and intervention methods. A fundamental question for such research has

Chapter 4 Phenomenology and Emotional Correlates of Mindfulness

69

been: Is mindfulness associated with a more balanced or positive affective

tone (less unpleasant and more pleasant affect)? Cross-sectional and expe-

rience sampling methods have primarily been used to address the role of

trait mindfulness in the experience of core affect. Both cross-sectional and

induction-based research has also begun to disclose how both mindful traits

and states alter the primary appraisal and regulation of emotionally laden

events and experiences. Finally, mindfulness-based intervention research has

begun to show whether core affective experience and its regulation can

be changed. Research addressing affective processes is still incipient, but

studies of both mindful traits and states have begun to uncover neural sub-

strates for both the subjective experience and the regulation of emotion that

may accrue with mindfulness. We review research on each of these areas

in turn.

Mindfulness, Affect, and Emotional Content

Core affect
. Trait measures of mindfulness have been shown to corre-

late with a variety of affective (and cognitive) indicators of mental health

and well-being in college student, community adult, and clinical samples.

For example, the various extant measures of mindfulness and mindful-

ness practice skills have been associated with higher pleasant affect, lower

unpleasant affect, and lower levels of emotional disturbance (e.g., depressive

symptoms, anxiety, and stress), along with other, related mental health indi-

cators including satisfaction with life and eudaimonic well-being (e.g., vital-

ity, self-actualization) (e.g.,
Baer, Smith, Hopkins, Krietemeyer, & Toney,

2006;
Beitel, Ferrer. & Cecero, 2004; Brown & Ryan, 2003;
Cardaciotto, Herbert, Forman, Moitra, & Farrow, 2008;
Carlson & Brown, 2005;

Feldman, Hayes, Kumar, Greeson, & Laurenceau, 2007;
Frewen, Evans, Maraj, Dozois, & Partridge, in press; McKee, Zvolensky, Solomon, Bernstein, & Leen-Feldner,
2007; Walach, Buchheld, Buttenmuller, Kleinknecht, & Schmidt,

2006).
There is indication that relations between dispositional mindfulness (as measured by the mindful attention awareness scale [MAAS; Brown &

Ryan,
2003])
and various emotional and other mental health indicators cannot be explained away by social desirability biases or by shared variance with

global personality traits that have known impacts on emotional well-being,

such as neuroticism and extroversion
(Brown & Ryan, 2003;
Wupperman, Neumann, & Axelrod, in press).

This correlational research is suggestive in revealing a possible wide range

of influence that dispositional mindfulness may have on emotional experi-

ence, but there are known limitations to global self-reports, including their

retrospective nature, which introduces room for memory biases and other

errors in reporting subjective experience (e.g.,
Brown & Moskowitz, 1998;

Stone & Shiffman, 1994).
Self-reports also tend to engage semantic knowledge or beliefs about thoughts, emotions, and other subjective experiences,

so it is not clear whether they accurately reflect the actual content of those

experiences in real time
(Barrett et al.,
2007;
Barrett, 1997;
Robinson & Clore,
2002).

Such real-time or lived experiences can be assessed through experience

sampling and related ecological momentary assessment techniques designed

to capture subjective and overt behavioral experience as it occurs, typically

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Kirk Warren Brown and Shari Cordon

in individuals’ natural environments and over periods of days or weeks. Two

studies have shown that MAAS-assessed trait mindfulness predicts core affec-

tive experience
(Brown & Ryan, 2003).
A 3-week-long experience sampling study with community adults, in which participants were asked to record

the presence and intensity of their affective experience several times a day

on a quasi-random schedule when a pager signal was received, found that

trait MAAS predicted lower day-to-day unpleasant affect (but not pleasant

affect). Parallel results were found in a 2-week-long experience sampling

study with college students. This latter study also found that being in a mind-

ful state (as assessed by the state MAAS) was associated with higher pleasant

affect and lower unpleasant affect after controlling for variance attributable

to the trait MAAS. These effects were independent, suggesting that the ben-

efits of mindfulness may not be limited to those with a general disposition

toward mindfulness. However, this research also found that those higher in

trait mindfulness were more likely to report higher states of mindfulness on

a day-to-day basis.

Experimental research exploring the effect of a mindful state on core

affective experience has also been conducted. In a study contrasting the

effects of mindful, distracted, and no-instruction control states on reading

task-related subjective experience and performance,
Brown and Ryan (2007)

found that those randomly assigned to the induced mindfulness condition

reported greater interest and enjoyment of the task relative to those in both

the distraction and the no-induction conditions, after controlling for interest

and enjoyment in a baseline (pre-induction) reading task.

Emotion regulation
. While emotions, both pleasant and unpleasant, can

serve a number of adaptive purposes, they do not always do so, and optimal

emotional responding often requires regulation of the experience or expres-

sion of emotion
(Barrett & Gross, 2001).
This is most frequently the case for unpleasant emotions, and the regulation of negative emotional states is

important to mental health
(Barrett, Gross, Christensen, & Benvenuto, 2001;

Gross & Munoz, 1995;
Ryan, 2005).
Barrett and Gross (2001)
argue that effective emotion regulation requires two major skills: accurately tracking ongo-

ing emotional states and knowing when and how to intervene to alter those

states as needed. There are considerable inter-individual differences in such

skills, and such differences have consequences for adaptive psychological

and social functioning.

There is some evidence that mindfulness may promote the effective use of

both of these skills. For example, trait mindfulness has been positively asso-

ciated with measures tapping clarity about emotional experience (e.g., Baer

et al.,
2006;
Brown & Ryan, 2003).
Research has also found that mindfulness may be related to greater emotional self-awareness, as measured

by indicators of implicit and explicit emotional self-concept. Implicit emo-

tional self-concept refers to (typically) nonconscious emotional dispositions

that develop through repeated learning experiences. There is considerable

debate about whether and how individuals can be aware of implicit emo-

tions and other processes
(Wilson, Lindsey, & Schooler, 2000),
one manifestation of which may be represented by concordance between implicit