Though state mindfulness was just as effective at relieving stress, individuals with higher trait mindfulness seemed to also be more optimistic. Findings suggest that this optimism in conjunction with mindfulness seems to make it easier for one to view obstacles as challenges rather than brick walls or threats. Akin and Akin (2015) conducted a study to examine the mediating role of coping competence in the relationship between mindfulness and subjective happiness. The study outlined four hypotheses that can be summarized by stating that mindfulness and coping competence are both positively associated with subjective happiness, with coping competence mediating the connection between mindfulness and subjective happiness. “Findings demonstrated
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(2016) note that “in such a climate of positive expectation…there may be social pressures upon the individual to experience and report benefits.” However, a recent study has been conducted in order to lay these concerns to rest by testing mindfulness-based treatments against placebo treatments. Zeidan et al. (2015) randomly assigned 75 participants to one of four groups: 1) mindfulness-meditation, 2) placebo conditioning, 3) sham mindfulness-meditation, or 4) book-listening control intervention. Psychophysical assessments of pain were used to examine the efficacy of each treatment, showing that while mindfulness-meditation, placebo, and sham mindfulness-meditation all significantly alleviated pain perception (when compared to the control condition), mindfulness mediation reduced pain ratings more than both placebo and sham mindfulness-meditation. In what could be seen as the most compelling evidence in favor of mindfulness training yet, functional neuroimaging revealed activation and deactivation in different areas of the brain for all three cognitive manipulation treatments (mindfulness-meditation, placebo, and sham mindfulness-meditation) confirming that “mindfulness-related pain relief is mechanistically distinct from placebo analgesia” (Zeidan et al., …show more content…
Though it would be unethical to purposefully train individuals in a technique with the goal of causing distress, future research should be sure to take note of any instances in which mindfulness has an opposite of the expected effect and attempt to discern possible causes. The literature also often fails to distinguish between MMs and MBIs which only further increases ambiguity regarding the construct. Hanley et al. (2016) highlight the indecisiveness of the psychological community impeding a definitive description of mindfulness in the literature. There are many proposed definitions in existence that seem to either 1) describe the same construct, 2) emphasize different elements of the construct, or 3) conceptualize mindfulness as a group of multiple related constructs, which make the measurement and operationalization of mindfulness a difficult task to standardize (Hanley et al.,
(2016) note that “in such a climate of positive expectation…there may be social pressures upon the individual to experience and report benefits.” However, a recent study has been conducted in order to lay these concerns to rest by testing mindfulness-based treatments against placebo treatments. Zeidan et al. (2015) randomly assigned 75 participants to one of four groups: 1) mindfulness-meditation, 2) placebo conditioning, 3) sham mindfulness-meditation, or 4) book-listening control intervention. Psychophysical assessments of pain were used to examine the efficacy of each treatment, showing that while mindfulness-meditation, placebo, and sham mindfulness-meditation all significantly alleviated pain perception (when compared to the control condition), mindfulness mediation reduced pain ratings more than both placebo and sham mindfulness-meditation. In what could be seen as the most compelling evidence in favor of mindfulness training yet, functional neuroimaging revealed activation and deactivation in different areas of the brain for all three cognitive manipulation treatments (mindfulness-meditation, placebo, and sham mindfulness-meditation) confirming that “mindfulness-related pain relief is mechanistically distinct from placebo analgesia” (Zeidan et al., …show more content…
Though it would be unethical to purposefully train individuals in a technique with the goal of causing distress, future research should be sure to take note of any instances in which mindfulness has an opposite of the expected effect and attempt to discern possible causes. The literature also often fails to distinguish between MMs and MBIs which only further increases ambiguity regarding the construct. Hanley et al. (2016) highlight the indecisiveness of the psychological community impeding a definitive description of mindfulness in the literature. There are many proposed definitions in existence that seem to either 1) describe the same construct, 2) emphasize different elements of the construct, or 3) conceptualize mindfulness as a group of multiple related constructs, which make the measurement and operationalization of mindfulness a difficult task to standardize (Hanley et al.,