Individual Mindfulness Research Articles

The salutary role of collective and individual mindfulness in Lean management

The salutary role of collective and individual mindfulness in Lean management

Assessing the Psychometric Properties of the Comprehensive Inventory of Mindfulness Experiences (CHIME) Using Rasch Analysis

Abstract. Mindfulness-based interventions are found beneficial to improving well-being and alleviating symptoms of psychological distress, although accurate measurement of the psychological construct of mindfulness remains a challenge. Theoretical work has highlighted characteristics of mindfulness, which can be assessed comprehensively by the recently developed eight-factor Comprehensive Inventory of Mindfulness Experiences (CHIME). While the instrument has demonstrated acceptable psychometric properties, its ability to discriminate precisely across individual mindfulness levels has not been rigorously investigated. The current study subjected responses of 443 participants to Rasch analysis to investigate and enhance the psychometric properties of the CHIME. The best fit to the Rasch model was achieved for every individual subscale with only minor modifications that involved combining some locally dependent items into a testlet. The total scale was then fitted to the Rasch model with individual subscales treated as testlets, and the best model fit was attained after two correlated subscales were treated as a single testlet, χ2(63) = 70.76, p = .23. Therefore, it was possible to generate ordinal-to-interval conversion tables for individual subscales and the total scale scores, which increase the instrument’s precision. The results support internal construct validity and enhance psychometric properties of the CHIME.

Acceptability and perceived helpfulness of single session mindfulness and cognitive restructuring strategies in individuals with social anxiety disorder: A pilot study.

Acceptability and perceived helpfulness of single session mindfulness and cognitive restructuring strategies in individuals with social anxiety disorder: A pilot study.

The role of sexual mindfulness in sexual wellbeing, Relational wellbeing, and self-esteem

In this study we examine the role of sexual mindfulness in individuals’ sexual satisfaction, relational satisfaction, and self-esteem. Midlife U.S. men and women (N = 194 married, heterosexual individuals; 50.7% female; 94% Caucasian, age range 35–60 years) completed an online survey. More sexually mindful individuals tended to have better self-esteem, be more satisfied with their relationships and, particularly for women, be more satisfied with their sex lives. Some of these associations occurred even after controlling for trait mindfulness. These findings may also allow researchers and therapists to better address an individual’s sexual wellbeing, relational wellbeing, and self-esteem by teaching sexual mindfulness skills.

Advancing environmental productivity: Organizational mindfulness and strategies

AbstractThis study investigates the importance of mindfulness‐based organization systems and policies on the organization's continuous efforts to become a greener company. The study is devised as a pooled cross‐sectional time series analysis of productivity in energy consumption, water utilization, and waste generation and recycling of U.S. companies. The data set taken from U.S. Newsweek 500 recorded 600 companies dispersed into 63 industries during the period of 2012–2014 and provided 1,498 company–industry–year observations. The study found that systems and policies (e.g., deployment of third‐party auditors for its environmental metrics report; linkage of the remuneration of company's senior executive team with the achievement of environmental performance targets; and establishment of a committee at the Board of Directors' level whose mandate includes sustainability of the company in environment‐ and resource‐related matters) connect the company's mindfulness to its effort in improving the environmental quality through the company's productivity in energy consumption, water utilization, and waste generation and recycling. The relationships are positive and significant. Also, systems and policies serve as a motivator for the firm to continue to improve upon the current achievements. The study emphasizes the importance of translating organizational and individual mindfulness into organization policies and systems in order to motivate the organization to continuously improve its productivity in energy consumption, water utilization, and waste generation and recycling leading to improvements in environmental quality.

Design and Evaluation of the Interactive Mindfulness Program and Virtual Evaluation (IMProVE) Game

This paper evaluated a novel digital game for mindfulness training and assessment. The Interactive Mindfulness Program and Virtual Evaluation (IMProVE) was built as part of a systematic research-based process that investigated how technology can be used to cultivate mindfulness. Developed as an infinite runner game, IMProVE targets eight mindfulness factors, as defined by the Comprehensive Inventory of Mindfulness Experiences, by means of embedded game design elements. Embedded metrics measure the player’s objective level of mindfulness as deduced by play style and performance. Ninety-four participants tested IMProVE for its efficacy on state mindfulness and user experience. Mixed results were obtained, with a significant learning effect on state mindfulness on one of the two instruments only, which did not correspond with the embedded metrics. Effects on individual mindfulness factors reached significance in two cases. IMProVE’s user experience was rated overall as very positive, supporting its potential for mindfulness training and assessment. The limitations of the game and its evaluation study are discussed in detail.

Designing and Evaluating Games for Mindfulness

This research investigates the relationship between mindfulness and digital games, by identifying which aspects of mindfulness can be trained by digital games and which game elements influence factors of mindfulness. Games and interactive approaches with research evidence for their efficacy are presented for each individual mindfulness factor, as defined by the CHIME eight-factor model of mindfulness. Two experiments were conducted to validate whether games can improve mindfulness. First, an expert review was conducted, where domain experts rated the fit of games to their associated mindfulness factor. Second, a laboratory study tested the effect of games on mindfulness, revealing positive significant effects on state mindfulness. Elaborating on the research findings from all studies, a framework is proposed to inform the design of digital games for improving mindfulness, and implications plus limitations are discussed.

Does mindfulness help people adapt to the experience of hearing voices?

Mindfulness-based interventions show promise in the treatment of psychotic symptoms. From a theoretical perspective, there may be several benefits of mindfulness for individuals who experience hearing voices. Related cross-sectional findings suggest mindfulness may protect against distress, disruption, negative beliefs, dysfunctional relational style and responding, and mood symptoms for individuals who hear voices. To extend on previous findings, this study aimed to identify whether mindful relating to voices predicted voice-related negative impacts (distress, disruption and resistance), when the influence of voice-topography and mood symptoms were controlled for. Overall, 62 participants with a psychotic disorder who had experienced hearing voices in the previous week were given the Southampton Mindfulness of Voices Questionnaire, Psychotic Symptom Rating Scales, Beliefs About Voices Questionnaire, Beck Depression Inventory-II, and Beck Anxiety Inventory. As predicted, greater mindfulness of voices predicted less voice-related distress and lower resistance to voices. Regression analyses revealed that when associated voice topography and mood symptoms were controlled for, mindful relating to voices explained a significant proportion of variance in voice-related distress and resistance. Conversely, mindfulness of voices did not significantly predict voice-related disruption. In the context of existing literature, these findings suggest further mindfulness-based protocols for persistent voices should be developed and trialled.

Individual Mindfulness and Team Mindfulness: The Role of Team Member Interaction Frequency

Mindfulness at multiple levels has attracted much academic and practical attention in recent years. However, the relationship between individual mindfulness and team mindfulness remains unclear. Drawing on minority influence theory and the mindfulness literature, we investigate when and why maximum individual mindfulness within a team influences team mindfulness. We collected three-wave field data to test our hypotheses. The results showed that maximum individual mindfulness was negatively related to team relational stress when team member interaction frequency was high rather than low. Team relational stress was negatively related to team mindfulness. Further, team relational stress served as a mediator to transmit the interactive effect of maximum individual mindfulness and team member interaction frequency on team mindfulness. Our findings thus resolve an important unanswered question relating to the relationship between individual mindfulness and team mindfulness. Limitations and directions for future...

Do mindful individuals organize mindfully? Consequences for team problem-solving

The literature on mindfulness in organizations has largely proceeded along one of two streams. The first stream emphasizes individual-level psychological states, focusing on how people attend to information and interpret it. The second stream emphasizes team-level interactions, focusing on how social interaction partners share information and adjust collective interpretations. Although these streams have historically proceeded separately, there is an increasing call for their integration in organizational mindfulness research. The present paper answers this call by hypothesizing two pathways by which individual-level mindfulness components and team-level mindful organizing may relate. The first pathway is emergent, in which the average levels and dispersion of individual mindfulness in teams influence mindful organizing as mediated by team conflict. The second pathway is contextual, in which levels of mindful organizing in teams can increase the mindfulness of its members. Across a cross-sectional field study and a longitudinal laboratory study, we found strong support for the contextual pathway, but mixed support for the emergent pathway. As such, mindful organizing was not only associated with effective problem solving, but it also predicted individual mindfulness, which was associated with greater satisfaction with team membership.

Effect of mud pack to eyes on psychological variables in healthy volunteers: a pilot randomized controlled trial.

Background Mud pack is one of the fundamental therapeutic procedures used in naturopathy to treat various diseases. There is a lack of scientific evidence for the use of mud-pack application in psychological variables. The present study aims at evaluating the effect of mud pack to eyes on psychological variables in healthy volunteers. Materials and methods Sixty healthy individuals with the age varied from 18 to 21 years were recruited and randomly divided into either mud-pack group (n=30) or wet-pack group (n=30). Mud-pack group received mud pack to eyes and wet-pack group received wet pack to eyes for a duration of 30 min/session (a total of 15 sessions). Psychological assessments like Mindful Attention Awareness Scale (MAAS), Perservative Thinking Questionnaire (PTQ) and Positive and Negative Affect Scale (PANAS) were taken before and after the intervention. Statistical analysis was performed using statistical package for the social sciences, version 16. Results Result of this study showed a significant reduction in PTQ score and PANAS negative score in both mud-pack and wet-pack groups. But, a significant increase in MAAS score was observed only in the mud-pack group, unlike wet-pack group. However, there was no significant difference found in between group analysis. Conclusions Result suggests that though both mud pack and wet pack to eyes reduced the scores of PTQ and negative affects, only mud pack to eyes increased the state of mindfulness in healthy individuals.

Relationship between effortful control and facets of mindfulness in meditators, non-meditators and individuals with borderline personality disorder.

As dimensions of effortful control (EC), activation control, attentional control, and inhibitory control could mediate the relationship between mindfulness meditation practice and the facets of mindfulness (i.e., observing, describing, acting with awareness, non-judging and non-reacting to inner experience). In this study, we tested whether participant status: meditators (n=330), healthy non-meditators (n=254) and individuals with borderline personality disorder (BPD) diagnosis (n=46) predicted the facets of mindfulness and if these potential effects were mediated through the three effortful control (EC) dimensions (activation, attentional and inhibitory control). Meditators scored higher than non-meditators on attentional and inhibitory control and on the facets of mindfulness with attentional and inhibitory control partially mediating this relationship between meditation status and mindfulness facets. Participants with BPD showed lower scores on EC along with lower scores on the facets of mindfulness compared with healthy non-meditators. All three aspects of EC partially mediated the relationship between BPD and mindfulness facets. Copyright © 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The impact of trainings for individual mindfulness and how they could be more effective

Im vorliegenden Artikel der Zeitschrift Gruppe. Interaktion. Organisation (GIO) beschaftigen wir uns theoriegeleitet mit der Frage, ob und wie individuelle Achtsamkeitstrainings fur Organisationen wirksam werden konnen. Wir kombinieren dafur Theorien um high reliability organizations mit Denkfiguren der neueren soziologischen Systemtheorie. In einem ersten Schritt beschaftigen wir uns mit dem recht schillernden Phanomen der Achtsamkeit und unterscheiden mit individueller und kollektiver Achtsamkeit zwei verschiedene Qualitaten. Anhand eines Beispiels aus dem Bankensektor diskutieren wir, welche Herausforderungen es bei der Steigerung der Achtsamkeit in Organisationen gibt und welche Ansatzpunkte wir dafur sehen. Dabei hilft uns die Unterscheidung zwischen den drei Systemtypen Psyche, Interaktion und Organisation, um die strukturellen Kopplungen bzw. Nahtstellen zwischen den verschiedenen Systemtypen besser in den Blick zu nehmen: Wie mussen Interventionen gestaltet werden, die fur alle Ebenen erfolgsversprechend sind?

Mindsets for Sustainability: Exploring the Link Between Mindfulness and Sustainable Climate Adaptation

Growing globalisation and climate change are challenging the sustainability of our societies. It is now clear that climate change and its devastating impacts cannot be resolved by new technology or governance alone. They require a broader, cultural shift. As a result, the role of human beings' ‘inner dimensions’ and related transformations is attracting increased attention from researchers. Recent advances in neuroscience suggest for instance that mindfulness can open new pathways towards sustainability. However, the role of mindfulness in climate adaptation has been largely ignored. This paper is the first exploratory empirical investigation into linking individuals' intrinsic mindfulness (as opposed to outside mindfulness interventions) to pro- and reactive climate adaptation. Based on a survey of citizens at risk from severe climate events, we explore if, and how individual mindfulness is correlated with climate adaptation at different scales. The results show that individual mindfulness coincides with higher motivation to take climate adaptation actions or to support them, especially actions that are ‘other-focused’ or support pro-environmental behaviour. Mindfulness may also corroborate the acknowledgement of climate change and associated risk perception, and it may steer people away from fatalistic attitudes. We conclude with a call for more research into the relationship between human beings' inner dimensions and climate adaptation in the wider public domain.

(How) Do Therapists Use Mindfulness in Their Clinical Work? A Study on the Implementation of Mindfulness Interventions

Mindfulness-based and mindfulness-informed programs such as mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR), mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT), or dialectic behavior therapy (DBT) have gained widespread attention over the past few decades. One way of bringing mindfulness programs into clinical practice is via a planned implementation process where empirically validated interventions are disseminated and implemented on a large scale. However, besides this planned process, it can be observed that mindfulness has diffused into current society as well as into psychotherapy practice in an unsystematic way. To date, however, little is known about the proliferation of mindfulness in clinical practice. We investigated a randomly drawn sample of German psychological psychotherapists with regard to their use of mindfulness in clinical practice using a web survey. Additionally, the psychotherapists’ personal mindfulness practice was assessed. The overwhelming majority (82%) of psychotherapists reported using mindfulness practices at least sometimes with their patients. Programs such as MBSR and MBCT are rarely applied. Rather, therapists use individual mindfulness practices in an eclectic way. Our results show that in addition to investigating the implementation of empirically underpinned mindfulness-based programs, mindfulness researchers should also investigate the ways in which mindfulness-based practices have diffused into clinical work with individuals. Guidelines on best practice for this work will support the future integrity of mindfulness programs.

Mindfulness in Information Technology Use: Definitions, Distinctions, and a New Measure

Mindfulness is an important emerging topic. Individual mindfulness in IT use has not been studied systematically. Through three programmatic empirical studies, this paper develops a scale for IT mindfulness and tests its utility in the post-adoption sys

Mind the gap: The role of mindfulness in adapting to increasing risk and climate change

It is becoming clear that increasingly complex global challenges cannot simply be solved by new technology or governments alone. We also need to develop new social practices and encourage a broader cultural shift towards sustainability. Against this background, this paper explores the role of mindfulness in adapting to increasing risk and climate change. Based on a literature review, it assesses current research on ‘mindful climate adaptation’, and explores how individual mindfulness is linked to climate adaptation. While in practice mindfulness-based approaches to climate adaptation have gained widespread recognition (e.g., by the United Nations), the results show that related research is scarce and fragmented. There is almost no research into the role of mindfulness in climate adaptation. At the same time, new scientific domains are opening up in cognate fields that illuminate the mindfulness–adaptation nexus from certain perspectives. These fields include: (1) disaster management; (2) individual well-being; (3) organisational management; (4) environmental behaviour; (5) social justice; and (6) knowledge production. As new concepts and approaches emerge, they require critical construct validation and empirical testing. The importance of further investigation is supported by a complementary empirical study, which shows that individual mindfulness disposition coincides with increased motivation to take (or support) climate adaptation actions. The paper concludes that mindfulness has the potential to facilitate adaptation at all scales (through cognitive, managerial, structural, ontological, and epistemological change processes) and should, therefore, become a core element in climate and associated sustainability research. Finally, it sketches the conceptual trajectories of the mindfulness–adaptation nexus and presents a pioneering, comprehensive framework for ‘mindful climate adaptation’.

The Application of Mindfulness for Individuals Living with HIV in South Africa: a Hybrid Effectiveness-Implementation Pilot Study

Despite the recent growth of mindfulness research worldwide, there remains little research examining the application of mindfulness-based interventions in resource-limited, international settings. This study examined the application of Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) for HIV-infected individuals in South Africa, where rates of HIV are highest in the world. Mixed methods were used to examine the following over a three-month follow up: (1) feasibility, acceptability, and preliminary adaptation of MBSR for this new context; and (2) effects of MBSR on immune functioning, self-reported mindfulness (MAAS, FFMQ), depression, anxiety, and stress (DASS-21). Ten individuals initiated MBSR, and seven completed all eight sessions. Results indicated medium effect size improvements in immune functioning (CD4 count and t-cell count; d = .5) through the three-month follow up, though the small sample size limited power to detect a statistically significant effect. From baseline to post-treatment, improvements in "Observing" and "Non-reactivity" (FFMQ) approached statistical significance with large effect sizes (observing: d = 1.5; p = .08; non-reactivity: d = .7; p = .07). There were no statistically significant changes in depression, anxiety, or stress throughout the study period. Primary areas for adaptation of MBSR included emphasis on informal practice, ways to create "space" without much privacy, and ways to concretize the concepts and definitions of mindfulness. Feedback from participants can shape future adaptations to MBSR for this and similar populations. Findings provide preliminary evidence regarding the implementation of MBSR for individuals living with HIV in South Africa. A future randomized clinical trial with a larger sample size is warranted.

Brief Report: Feasibility and Preliminary Efficacy of Individual Mindfulness Therapy for Adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Intervention research on adults with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is sparse. Many adults with ASD experience impaired emotion regulation (ER), which is thought to contribute to higher rates of psychiatric comorbidities among adults with ASD and indirect effects upon adaptive functioning, interpersonal relationships, and vocational status. The purpose of this study was to investigate feasibility and initial efficacy of an adapted mindfulness-based individual therapy targeting ER difficulties for adults with ASD. There is evidence for feasibility based on acceptable treatment fidelity and participant satisfaction ratings. Of nine participants, seven demonstrated improvement in at least one of the following domains; impulse control, access to ER strategies, and emotional acceptance. Further research is recommended, including additional timepoints and a clinical cutoff-derived sample.

Mobile-Addiction from a Partner’s Perspective: A Resource Drain Theory Approach

While acknowledging the benefits of anytime-anywhere connectivity, recent research called for investigating the dark side of mobile technologies in blurring the line between work and non-work contexts. In this domain, mobile addiction represents an emergent and pivotal concept that may provide a better understanding of the boundaries between work and family. By relying on resource drain theory, we investigate how family-work conflict (FWC) affects individual mobile addiction and subsequent family undermining and individual mindfulness under different levels of competitive climate on the workplace. We conducted a filed study across two measurement periods involving 324 individuals along with their partners. Our results suggest that FWC affects mobile addiction, which in turn affects family undermining and individual mindfulness. Moreover, our study points out that the mediated relationship between FWC and individual outcomes through mobile addiction is moderated by competitive climate. We discuss the implications of these findings for theory and practice and outline directions for future research.