State and Trait Mindfulness as Predictors of Skin Conductance Response to Stress
- PDF / 716,150 Bytes
- 8 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 0 Downloads / 197 Views
State and Trait Mindfulness as Predictors of Skin Conductance Response to Stress Antonette Scavone1 · Marta J. Kadziolka1 · Carlin J. Miller1
© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Mindfulness is typically understood as non-judgmental, focused attention on the present moment, although it may be conceptualized as a state, a trait, and an outcome of intervention. There is a limited understanding of the physiological effects of state and trait mindfulness, and it has been a challenge to the research community to measure these effects. This study examined whether state and trait mindfulness are associated with reduced stress response activation in healthy young adults. Fifty-four undergraduate participants completed self-ratings of state and trait mindfulness, and continuous measures of psychophysiological reactivity (i.e., skin conductance response) before, during, and after an interview about a recurrent stressor. Results indicated that individuals with greater self-reported state mindfulness had lower sympathetic psychophysiological activation than those with lower state mindfulness. Moreover, those with greater self-reported state mindfulness experienced greater drops in psychophysiological activation following a stressful task. However, differences in psychophysiological activation were not evident when comparing those with higher and lower self-reported trait mindfulness. The findings suggest that state mindfulness, or “being in the moment”, rather than trait mindfulness results in less engagement of metabolically costly psychophysiological activation in response to stress. Thus, intentional mindfulness during a stressful event may be important for decreasing sympathetic activation, resulting in lower bodily stress. Keywords Mindfulness · Psychophysiological activation · Stress
Introduction Mindfulness, which continues to receive significant research attention, comes from the Buddhist meditation tradition (Kabat-Zinn 2013) but has been widely co-opted in clinical and research settings. It is often defined as by Jon KabatZinn as “an openhearted, moment-to-moment, non-judgmental awareness” (Kabat-Zinn 2005, p. 24). Yet, as noted by Cosme and Wiens (2015), the construct of mindfulness does not always refer to a unified construct. In some research studies, the term mindfulness refers to a changeable state of being. In other studies, mindfulness is trait and is assumed to be a stable quality with a fairly normal distribution across the population. And, mindfulness is also an element in interventions, including Kabat-Zinn’s Mindfulness-based Stress
* Carlin J. Miller [email protected] 1
Department of Psychology, University of Windsor, Ottawa, ON, Canada
Reduction (MBSR) and the many interventions that follow from it. One issue that is often raised in mindfulness research is the limited understanding of mechanisms of effect (e.g., Bishop et al. 2004). Some studies have posited that changes in functioning follow from increases in trait mindfulness that follow from mind
Data Loading...
