Exploring the Role of Meditation and Dispositional Mindfulness on Social Cognition Domains: A Controlled Study

Research suggests that mindfulness can induce changes in the social domain, such as enhancing emotional connection to others, prosocial behavior, and empathy. However, despite growing interest in mindfulness in social psychology, very little is known about the effects of mindfulness on social cognit...

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Autores principales: Campos, Daniel, Modrego-Alarcón, Marta, López-del-Hoyo, Yolanda, González-Panzano, Manuel, Van Gordon, William, Shonin, Edo, Navarro-Gil, Mayte, García-Campayo, Javier
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2019
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Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6470267/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31031678
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00809
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author Campos, Daniel
Modrego-Alarcón, Marta
López-del-Hoyo, Yolanda
González-Panzano, Manuel
Van Gordon, William
Shonin, Edo
Navarro-Gil, Mayte
García-Campayo, Javier
author_facet Campos, Daniel
Modrego-Alarcón, Marta
López-del-Hoyo, Yolanda
González-Panzano, Manuel
Van Gordon, William
Shonin, Edo
Navarro-Gil, Mayte
García-Campayo, Javier
author_sort Campos, Daniel
collection PubMed
description Research suggests that mindfulness can induce changes in the social domain, such as enhancing emotional connection to others, prosocial behavior, and empathy. However, despite growing interest in mindfulness in social psychology, very little is known about the effects of mindfulness on social cognition. Consequently, the aim of this study was to explore the relationship between mindfulness and social cognition by comparing meditators with non-meditators on several social cognition measures. A total of 60 participants (meditators, n = 30; non-meditators, n = 30) were matched on sex, age, and ethnic group, and then asked to complete the following assessment measures: Mindful Awareness Attention Scale (MAAS), Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire Short Form (FFMQ-SF), Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI), Revised Eyes Test, Hinting Task, Ambiguous Intentions and Hostility Questionnaire (AIHQ), Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS), and Screening for Cognitive Impairment in Psychiatry (SCIP). The results showed that meditators reported higher empathy (except for the personal distress subscale), higher emotional recognition, higher theory of mind (ToM), and lower hostile attributional style/bias. The findings also demonstrated that dispositional mindfulness (both total score assessed with MAAS and mindfulness facets using the FFMQ) was associated with social cognition, although it was not equally correlated with all social cognition outcomes, and correlation patterns differ when analyses were conducted separately for meditators and non-meditators. In addition, results showed potential predictors for each social cognition variable, highlighting non-reactivity to inner experience as a key component of mindfulness in order to explain social cognition performance. In summary, the findings indicated that the meditator sample performed better on certain qualities (i.e., empathy, emotional recognition, ToM, hostile attributional style/bias) in comparison to non-meditators and, furthermore, support the notion that mindfulness is related to social cognition, which may have implications for the design of mindfulness-based approaches for use in clinical and non-clinical settings.
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spelling pubmed-64702672019-04-26 Exploring the Role of Meditation and Dispositional Mindfulness on Social Cognition Domains: A Controlled Study Campos, Daniel Modrego-Alarcón, Marta López-del-Hoyo, Yolanda González-Panzano, Manuel Van Gordon, William Shonin, Edo Navarro-Gil, Mayte García-Campayo, Javier Front Psychol Psychology Research suggests that mindfulness can induce changes in the social domain, such as enhancing emotional connection to others, prosocial behavior, and empathy. However, despite growing interest in mindfulness in social psychology, very little is known about the effects of mindfulness on social cognition. Consequently, the aim of this study was to explore the relationship between mindfulness and social cognition by comparing meditators with non-meditators on several social cognition measures. A total of 60 participants (meditators, n = 30; non-meditators, n = 30) were matched on sex, age, and ethnic group, and then asked to complete the following assessment measures: Mindful Awareness Attention Scale (MAAS), Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire Short Form (FFMQ-SF), Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI), Revised Eyes Test, Hinting Task, Ambiguous Intentions and Hostility Questionnaire (AIHQ), Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS), and Screening for Cognitive Impairment in Psychiatry (SCIP). The results showed that meditators reported higher empathy (except for the personal distress subscale), higher emotional recognition, higher theory of mind (ToM), and lower hostile attributional style/bias. The findings also demonstrated that dispositional mindfulness (both total score assessed with MAAS and mindfulness facets using the FFMQ) was associated with social cognition, although it was not equally correlated with all social cognition outcomes, and correlation patterns differ when analyses were conducted separately for meditators and non-meditators. In addition, results showed potential predictors for each social cognition variable, highlighting non-reactivity to inner experience as a key component of mindfulness in order to explain social cognition performance. In summary, the findings indicated that the meditator sample performed better on certain qualities (i.e., empathy, emotional recognition, ToM, hostile attributional style/bias) in comparison to non-meditators and, furthermore, support the notion that mindfulness is related to social cognition, which may have implications for the design of mindfulness-based approaches for use in clinical and non-clinical settings. Frontiers Media S.A. 2019-04-11 /pmc/articles/PMC6470267/ /pubmed/31031678 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00809 Text en Copyright © 2019 Campos, Modrego-Alarcón, López-del-Hoyo, González-Panzano, Van Gordon, Shonin, Navarro-Gil and García-Campayo. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Psychology
Campos, Daniel
Modrego-Alarcón, Marta
López-del-Hoyo, Yolanda
González-Panzano, Manuel
Van Gordon, William
Shonin, Edo
Navarro-Gil, Mayte
García-Campayo, Javier
Exploring the Role of Meditation and Dispositional Mindfulness on Social Cognition Domains: A Controlled Study
title Exploring the Role of Meditation and Dispositional Mindfulness on Social Cognition Domains: A Controlled Study
title_full Exploring the Role of Meditation and Dispositional Mindfulness on Social Cognition Domains: A Controlled Study
title_fullStr Exploring the Role of Meditation and Dispositional Mindfulness on Social Cognition Domains: A Controlled Study
title_full_unstemmed Exploring the Role of Meditation and Dispositional Mindfulness on Social Cognition Domains: A Controlled Study
title_short Exploring the Role of Meditation and Dispositional Mindfulness on Social Cognition Domains: A Controlled Study
title_sort exploring the role of meditation and dispositional mindfulness on social cognition domains: a controlled study
topic Psychology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6470267/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31031678
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00809
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