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Are affective states influencing state mindfulness and can this explain the link between personality and mindfulness? Mindfulness is commonly thought to decrease negative affect, but a number of studies have reported reductions in mindfulness in negative affect situations. This highlights a potential mechanism explaining previously observed negative relationships between individual differences such as Neuroticism and mindfulness, via their shared relationship with negative affect.In an experiment, 331 participants were exposed to a negative affect stimulus to investigate whether previously established relationships between Neuroticism, Behavioral Inhibition, and Mindfulness are due to differences in negative affect reactivity. It was expected that participants high on Neuroticism and Behavioral Inhibition to show greater negative affect reactivity which in turn would reduce their state Non-Judgmental Acceptance and Acting with Awareness.While change in negative affect was related to lower Non-Judgmental Acceptance and Acting with Awareness, negative affect reactivity did not mediate the relationship between Neuroticism/BIS and these state mindfulness facets. Importantly, only Non-Judgmental Acceptance and Acting with Awareness facets of mindfulness were affected by negative affect change, but not Attention. This indicates that greater negative affect might require allocation of cognitive resources to stress-related processes such as threat monitoring, reducing mindful emotion processing but not attention.The current study found that situational mindfulness might be influenced by state affect highlighting the need to more strongly consider the environmental factors which can shape affect in mindfulness interventions.Open Science Framework (https://osf.io/kmyh2).

Objectives We present a bibliometric review of research on trait mindfulness published from 2003 until 2021 to determine the current state of the field and identify research trajectories. Methods A search conducted on Aug 25, 2021, using the search terms “trait mindfulness” OR “dispositional mindfulness” in the Web of Science Core Collection identified 1405 documents. Results Using keyword-based network analyses, the various clusters suggested two major approaches in the field, one focusing on cognitive attentional processes, and a second approach that encompasses a wider field of well-being and clinical research topics. We also documented increasing consolidation of research fields over time, with research on wider individual differences such as personality being subsumed into clinically and well-being-oriented research topics. More recently, a distinct theme focused on the validity of measurement of mindfulness emerged. In addition to general patterns in the field, we examined the global distribution of trait mindfulness research. Research output was substantially skewed towards North American-based researchers with less international collaborations. Chinese researchers nevertheless also produced research at significant rates. Comparing the difference in research topics between China and the US-based researchers, we found substantial differences with US research emphasizing meditation and substance abuse issues, whereas researchers from China focused on methodological questions and concerns around phone addiction. Conclusions Overall, our review indicates that research on trait mindfulness might profit from conceptual and cultural realignment, with greater focus on individual differences research as well as stronger focus on cross-cultural and comparative studies to complement the strong clinical and cognitive focus in the current literature.

This study aimed to explore the potential buffering effect of trait mindful acceptance and the exacerbating effect of trait mindful attention monitoring on the relationship between organizational injustice and burnout. A cross-sectional survey was conducted with 139 employees who completed measures of burnout, organizational injustice, and trait mindfulness. A moderated regression analysis was used to examine the relationships between burnout (DV), organizational injustice (IV), trait mindful acceptance and trait mindful attention monitoring (moderators). The results revealed a significant positive association between organizational injustice and burnout (β = .51, standardized 95% CI [.35, .67], p < 0.001) with an R2 = .26. However, trait mindful acceptance did not significantly buffer the relationship between organizational injustice and burnout (β = -.05, standardized 95% CI [-.21, .1], p = .49), while mindful attention monitoring did not significantly exacerbate impact organizational injustice on burnout (β = -.03, standardized 95% CI [-.17, .11], p = .65) with the adjusted R2 = .57. The results, while not significant, suggest that trait mindful acceptance may not buffer against the impact of organizational injustice on burnout, though trait mindful attention monitoring may indeed exacerbate this relationship. Alongside contributing to psychological theory such as Monitoring and Acceptance theory, the current study provides a unique framework for combating the negative impact of organizational injustice on burnout in the workplace. Keywords: Trait Mindfulness, organizational injustice, burnout

Prominent theories of nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI) propose that the behaviour is characterised by amplified emotional responses, primarily because people who self-injure report elevated global emotion dysregulation. However, little is known about how people who self-injure respond during emotional challenge. In a preregistered study, we measured subjective and physiological responding (heart rate, heart rate variability, and electrodermal responding) among young adults with past-year NSSI (n = 51) and those with no lifetime NSSI (n = 50) during a resting baseline, a stress induction, and a post-test resting phase. Although the NSSI group reported considerably greater emotion dysregulation than Controls, both groups showed similar subjective and psychological reactivity to, and recovery from, emotional challenge. These dissociations between global self-reports and real-time emotional responding demonstrate that the role of emotion dysregulation in NSSI is more complex than prominent theories can account for, raising substantial questions regarding the nature of emotion dysregulation in NSSI.

Objectives To provide cross-cultural insight into the relationship between mindfulness, alexithymia, and stoic ideology.Methods Using samples from New Zealand (N = 330) and Norway (N = 326) we estimated the facet-level network relationship of our target constructs, as well as the invariance of the estimated networks across cultural contexts.Results Across cultural contexts, we found a consistent pattern of relationships in which both stoic ideology and alexithymia were negatively related to mindfulness. Negative relationships were especially pronounced between alexithymia and the mindfulness facets of Describing, Non-Judgement, and Acting with Awareness . This indicates that individual differences in these mindfulness facets might be more firmly rooted in difficulties identifying and describing emotions compared to emotional beliefs aimed at suppression captured by stoic ideology. While the mindfulness facets showed overall expected patterns of relationships with both alexithymia and stoic ideology, Non-Reacting showed a divergent pattern. Non-Reacting was positively related to a tendency of General External Oriented Thought, as well as with Death-Acceptance, in both countries. Thus, this facet might not only capture non-reactance in a mindfulness sense, but could also potentially capture aspects of emotional avoidance.Conclusions Overall, the study highlights that mindfulness could be influenced by both individual differences in emotion processing and cognitive beliefs about emotion processing. This accentuates the importance of examining both individual differences and cognitive beliefs about emotion regulation in subsequent research regarding mindfulness.

There have been long-standing debates on the relationships between values as important motivational goals and well-being. We used a longitudinal network perspective to examine how value states and well-being are related over time, separating within-person lagged, within-person contemporaneous, and between-person perspectives. A total of 227 young adults (1,007 observation points) participated in the study and rated their values states and well-being over a 6-day period. Value-well-being linkages varied across levels of analysis for participants who reported at least three times (

We contribute to recent discussions about the role of invariance testing in cultural, multi-group and longitudinal research by highlighting that these debates obscure two different questions. Most researchers are interested in the quality of a first mapping process of concepts onto numerals, that is the quality of measurement. Due to a lack of independent data, researchers typically resort to a second mapping, focusing on the differential item functioning of items relative to each other. This second mapping links items to proposed constructs and the question is about symmetry of observational patterns across measurement occasions. Importantly, additional theoretical assumptions are invoked during this process, which can be queried through invariance testing. Using multiple items to index a shared construct is quite a different question compared to what researchers typically want to know, namely, whether the measurement process itself is free of bias. We argue that invariance testing is a theory-testing process rather than a pure methodological tool. We use three examples to highlight that a) the two mapping processes are distinct and b) that paying attention to invariance as the second mapping process is of theoretical (and not just methodological) interest for researchers interested in culture, over and above a concern with the first mapping. We also briefly discuss a third mapping process, which has been suggested as an alternative to invariance testing. We highlight shortcomings of these recent recommendations. Our plea is that researchers pay more attention to invariance testing as a theory-guided process.

There have been long-standing debates on the relationships between values as important motivational goals and wellbeing. We used a longitudinal network perspective to examine how value states and wellbeing are related over time, separating within-person lagged, within-person contemporaneous and between-person perspectives. A total of 227 young adults (1007 observation points) participated in the study and rated their values states and wellbeing over a six-day period. Value-wellbeing linkages varied across levels of analysis for participants who reported at least three times (N = 187). Momentary self-transcendence values predicted both simultaneous and subsequent wellbeing. The motivationally opposing self-enhancement values negatively related to wellbeing contemporaneously within person. This supports clinical research emphasising that pursuing other-focused values increases wellbeing and highlights the importance of values for wellbeing. At the same time, individual differences in self-transcendence values were negatively related to wellbeing, supporting previous value models. In line with self-determination theory, openness-to-change values were related to wellbeing at both the within- and between-person level. These patterns unify diverging theoretical positions, and suggest that different dynamics operate across levels (within-person lagged or contemporaneous vs between-person). We also provide new insights into value dynamics by describing how distributions of value states may give rise to more stable value differences between individuals. Overall, within- and between-person associations differed suggesting greater attention to person-level processes is needed.

Assessing evolution of cognitive structures across historical periods has remained challenging in the absence of direct access to humans from the past. Overcoming some of these challenges, we examined shifts in the implicit cognitive structures in the Epic of Gilgamesh, which is one of the earliest surviving pieces of literature, circulating in various versions over a period of approx. 2,000 years in ancient Mesopotamia. Using a canonical English translation, we applied Natural Language Processing (NLP) and human coding to extract low-dimensional representations of the implicit personality structure in three different historical epochs. We found systematic shifts over time with increasing complexity and increasing resemblance of contemporary personality models in later periods. We discuss how lexical analyses of ancient texts using trait cooccurrence analyses can provide novel insights on the evolution of human behaviour of relevance for contemporary social and behavioural science and the study of ancient societies.

We report systematic variability in the psychometric properties of a brief personality inventory during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing upon recent discussions about the universality vs cultural relativism of personality measures, we review and comparatively test theories predicting systematic variability in personality measurement across cultures using an established brief personality measure applied to population samples in 16 nations during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic (N=35,052). We found systematic variation in factor replicability and effective dimensionality. In line with previous theorizing, factors replicated better in contexts with greater niche diversity. Examining possible drivers underlying this association, investigation of the individual components suggested that life expectancy and to a lesser degree economic complexity are associated with greater personality structure differentiation. Population-level indicators of acute threat due to COVID-19 did not show credible effects. These patterns suggest that a) investigation of personality structure in population samples can provide useful insights into personality dynamics and b) socioecological factors have a systematic impact on survey responses.

We report a longitudinal study of

Objectives Does individuals’ personality influence how mindful they are?Methods In a pre-registered experiment, we investigated whether previously established relationships between Neuroticism, Behavioral Inhibition, and Mindfulness are due to differences in negative affect reactivity. We expected participants high on Neuroticism and Behavioral Inhibition to show greater negative affect reactivity which in turn would reduce their mindful emotion regulation and self-awareness. We examined the change in mindfulness and affect of 331 participants after exposure to a negative affect stimulus and a distractor task.Results We found that while negative affect predicted lower Non-Judging and Acting with Awareness, negative affect reactivity did not mediate the relationship between Neuroticism/BIS and the mindfulness facets. Importantly, we only found effects of negative affect on mindfulness facets capturing self-awareness and emotion regulation but not general attention. This indicates that negative affect might shift cognitive resources to threat detection reducing resources available for mindful emotion processing. Conclusions Our study holds important implications for future research on individual differences in mindfulness, indicating that individual differences in mindfulness might be grounded in emotional state experiences.Compliance with Ethical Standards The authors do not have any potential conflicts of interest and informed consent was collected from all participants in the study.

We examined the effectiveness of attitudes, subjective norms and perceived behavioral control (PBC) of the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) on COVID-19 relevant behavioral intentions and behaviors. We conducted a meta-analysis of 335 effect sizes from 83 samples across 31 countries (N = 68,592). We found strongest effects for perceived behavioral control, but contrary to previous research also moderately strong effects of subjective norms. Focusing on systematic context effects: a) norm-behavior associations at individual level were strengthened if population norms were stronger, b) collectivism strengthened norm effects in line with cultural theories, but also attitude and PBC associations, suggesting that COVID-relevant behaviors show collective action properties, c) in line with cultural theory, tightness-looseness strengthened normative effects on behaviors, and d) contrary to post-modernization theory, national wealth weakened attitude and PBC associations. These analyses provide new theoretical and practical insights into behavioral dynamics during an acute public health crisis.

Ancient philosophy proposed a wide range of possible approaches to life which may enhance well-being. Stoic philosophy has influenced various therapeutic traditions. Individuals today may adopt an approach to life representing a naive Stoic Ideology, which nevertheless reflects a misinterpretation of stoic philosophy. How do these interpretations affect well-being and meaning in life? We examine the differential effects of Stoic Ideology on eudaimonic versus hedonic well-being across three cultural contexts. In this pre-registered study, across samples in New Zealand (N = 636), Norway (N = 290), and the US (N = 381) we found that a) Stoic Ideology can be measured across all three contexts and b) converging evidence that Stoic Ideology was negatively related to both hedonic well-being and eudaimonic well-being. Focusing on specific relationships, we found especially pronounced effects for Taciturnity (the desire to not express emotions) and Serenity (the desire to feel less emotions). Despite being a misinterpretation of stoic philosophy, these findings highlight the important role of individuals’ orientations to emotional processing for well-being.

We comment on the argument by Welzel, Brunkert, Kruse and Inglehart (2021) that theoretically expected associations in nomological networks should take priority over invariance tests in cross-national research. We agree that narrow application of individual tools, such as multi-group confirmatory factor analysis with data that violates the assumptions of these techniques, can be misleading. However, findings that fit expectations of nomological networks may not be free of bias. We present supporting evidence of systematic bias affecting nomological network relationships from a) previous research on intelligence and response styles, b) two simulation studies, and c) data on the choice index from the World Value Survey (WVS). Our main point is that nomological network analysis by itself is insufficient to rule out systematic bias in data. We point out how a thoughtful exploration of sources of biases in cross-national data can contribute to stronger theory development.

A central hypothesis to account for the ubiquity of rituals across cultures is their supposed anxiolytic effects: rituals being maintained because they reduce existential anxiety and uncertainty. We aimed to test the anxiolytic effects of rituals by investigating two possible underlying mechanisms for it: cognitive load and repetitive movement. In our pre-registered experiment (osf.io/rsu9x), 180 undergraduates took part in either a stress or a control condition and were subsequently assigned to either control, cognitive load, undirected movement, a combination of undirected movement and cognitive load, or a ritualistic intervention. Using both repeated self-report measures and continuous physiological indicators of anxiety, we failed to find direct support for a cognitive suppression effect of anxiety through ritualistic behavior. Nevertheless, we found that induced stress increased participants' subsequent repetitive behavior, which in turn reduced physiological arousal. This study provides novel evidence for plausible underlying effects of the proposed anxiolytic effect of rituals: repetitive behavior but not cognitive load may decrease physiological stress responses during ritual.