Wherever you go, there you become: How mindfulness arises in everyday situations

Abstract

In this article, we suggest that mindfulness is not something entirely inherent within people but is partly elicited and shaped by situations. Integrating research on metacognitive practice and self-regulation, we introduce a theoretical framework that explains how mindfulness arises based on capacity for self-regulation as well as three motivational forces: metacognitive beliefs that drive resources into self-regulation, mental fatigue that draws resources away from self-regulation, and situational appraisals that influence how much self-regulation is needed to maintain mindfulness. Across three experience sampling studies that include 558 participants and 9,390 responses, we find that: mindfulness depends less on people’s overall capacity for self-regulation than it does on the metacognitive beliefs that motivate them to allocate their resources, these metacognitive beliefs can compensate for the negative role of mental fatigue, and situations can influence mindfulness both by pulling attention toward tasks (e.g., with challenging tasks) and away from them (e.g., with organizational hindrances). In sum, this article clarifies the understudied antecedents of mindfulness through a theoretical framework and empirical findings.