Exploring the Relationship between Mindfulness and Life Satisfaction in Adolescents: The Role of Social Competence and Self-Esteem

Abstract

Although previous research demonstrated that greater mindfulness may contribute to life satisfaction, less is unclosed about such an association and the mechanisms potentially explaining it during adolescence. The present study aimed to explore the role of self-esteem and social competence in the mindfulness-life satisfaction relationship in a sample of Turkish adolescents. The sample consisted of 406 adolescents aged 14–18 years ( M age = 16.01, SD = 1.15; 62.32% girls). We collected the data using the Mindful Attention Awareness Scale-Adolescent (MAAS-A), the Perceived Competence Scale (PCS-S), the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (RSES), and the Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS). The findings revealed significant positive correlations between mindfulness, social competence, self-esteem, and life satisfaction. Our findings support two ways of explaining this relationship: the mediating role of self-esteem (indirect effect = 0.04; 95% CI: 0.03—0.06), accounting for a total effect of 0.06 and a ratio of 66.67%, and the serial mediating role of social competence and self-esteem (indirect effect = 0.02; 95% CI: 0.01—0.03), accounting for a total effect of 0.06 and a ratio of 33.33%. In addition, the results of the multi-group analysis showed no significant difference between boys and girls in a model where mindfulness predicts life satisfaction. Overall, our study may shed light on a possible process in which mindfulness boosts life satisfaction among adolescents.

Social Appearance Anxiety, Self-Esteem, and Life Satisfaction Relationship in Individuals Who Have Undergone Aesthetic Procedures

“…27 These results appear to contradict other study results in the literature. 28 The reason for such different results may be due to the characteristics of the sample group or the effects of different variables. In future studies, there is a need to examine variables that may mediate the effect of self-esteem on life satisfaction.…”

Perceived social competencies as moderators: examining the relationship between psychological distress and aggression, hostility, and anger in Lebanese adults

“…In order to regulate negative emotions and avoid intolerable behaviors due to distress, seminal contributions have been made by researchers that proposed a novel concept which is “social competences”. Perceived social competence or social intelligence [ 15 , 16 ] has been defined as the ability of an individual to effectively engage in social interactions and communicate through many skills: (1) emotional regulation [ 17 ], which is the ability to acknowledge one’s emotions and to control them during stressful events; (2) self-awareness [ 18 ], which is defined by the capacity of someone to have reasonable judgment regarding a stressful situation; (3) self-esteem and self-confidence [ 19 ]. A meta-analysis [ 20 ] showed small to moderate decline in aggression with presence of social competences among school-aged children, and a similar study [ 21 ] concluded that aggression could be prevented by providing social-emotional competence in educational settings.…”