Mindfulness: Theoretical Foundations and Evidence for its Salutary Effects

Abstract

4.Burton P, Gurrin L, Sly P. Extending the simple linear regression model to account for correlated responses: an introduction to generalized estimating equations and multi-level mixed modelling. Stat Med. 1998;17(11):1261-1291 In Reply: Drs Wang and Gao assert that social desirability is a response bias that can confound relationships among the variables of interest. This claim is nonspecific and belied by the evidence. First, a wide body of psychometric data suggests that the putative social desirability response bias is not a response bias at all, but a misnomer for a personality trait related to conventionality.1 Second, even if social desirability resulted in a response bias, there is no psychometric consensus on how it should be measured. Third, even if its measurement were attempted, including the results of this measurement in models may reduce rather than enhance the validity of associations.2,3 For instance, in the legally perilous and financially high-stakes world of personnel selection, meta-analytic evidence weighs heavily against the claims that social desirability is a response bias and confounds associations of interest; efforts to measure and adjust for it are discouraged. Fourth, even if a social desirability bias exists, measurement is endeavored, and adjustment attempted, social desirability responsiveness could bias treatment effect estimates only if it were associated with both the outcome and treatment.Even if all of the preceding conditions prevailed, data on the effects of mindfulness suggest that this putative bias would likely work in the opposite direction of the study's findings. The magnitude of the treatment effect would be underestimated because mindfulness treatments reduce, rather than increase, the reactivity to social norms and closemindedness characteristic of the social desirability bias. 4 Therefore, social desirability responding would operate prior to treatment, inflating pretreatment reports of adjustment. Because treatment reduces attributes giving rise to this putative response bias, posttreatment reports of adjustment would not benefit from the same inflation as pretreatment reports, thereby spuriously reducing the difference between pretreatment and posttreatment scores.Wang and Gao also raise concerns regarding the possible organizational effects among individuals, suggesting that the group effect should also be disaggregated and that modeling of both within-and between-individual effects can be used. First, we note that there were no other group effects to be disaggregated. Second, the linear mixed models used already model between-and within-individual effects. Third, even if clustering on a variable is observed, specification of a random effect is only appropriate if the clustering can be traced to the data generating process.5 A nonzero intraclass correlation is necessary but not sufficient evidence of such a data generating process. The sufficient condition is that measurements are random variables arising from a probability space in which their expected probabi...

Internet-based instructor-led mindfulness for work-related rumination, fatigue, and sleep: Assessing facets of mindfulness as mechanisms of change. A randomized waitlist control trial.

“…(Brown et al, 2007). Relatively few studies have assessed the mechanisms by which mindfulness-based interventions exert their positive effects (Gu, Strauss, Bond, & Cavanagh, 2015), and there are several reasons why establishing the mechanisms of these types of interventions is crucial.…”

‘I can’t accept that feeling’: Relationships between interoceptive awareness, mindfulness and eating disorder symptoms in females with, and at-risk of an eating disorder

“…Considerable attention has been directed towards emotion regulation as a mediator of the putative benefits of mindfulness based therapies (MBTs) (Chambers, Gullone, & Allen, 2009;Chiesa, Anselmi, & Serretti, 2014;Chiesa, Serretti, & Jakobsen, 2013) whereby MBTs may affect symptom outcome by promoting more effective emotion regulation and greater flexibility responding to mental and external events (Brown, Ryan, & Creswell, 2007;Moore & Malinowski, 2009;Roemer, Williston, & Rollins, 2015). Evidence is accumulating regarding the specific nature of emotion regulation difficulties in eating disorders (Brockmeyer et al, 2014;Butryn et al, 2013;Garner, 2004;Haynos & Fruzzetti, 2011;Lavender et al, 2014;Merwin, 2011;Racine & Wildes, 2013) and the potential therapeutic benefits of MBTs for eating related disorders has received increased empirical support (DeSole, 2013;Godsey, 2013;Katterman, Kleinman, Hood, Nackers, & Corsica, 2014;Kristeller & Epel, 2014;O'Reilly, Cook, Spruijt-Metz, & Black, 2014;Wanden-Berghe, Sanz-Valero, & Wanden-Berghe, 2011).…”

Self-related awareness and emotion regulation

“…However, it was of course not representative for mindfulness in general. Mindfulness was closely associated with well-being (Brown et al, 2007;Kabat-Zinn, 1990;Shapiro et al, 2006;Tang et al, 2007) and represents the basis for psychotherapeutic concepts such as mindfulness based cognitive therapy for depression (MBCT, Teasdale et al, 1999) or mindfulness based stress reduction (Grossman et al, 2004), which are increasingly applied in psychotherapeutic and psychiatric practice (Allen et al, 2006). Mindfulness has been defined as a receptive attention to and awareness of present experience (Brown and Ryan, 2003).…”

“…Our revealed inverse relation of the mindfulness scores (FMI and MAAS) with the depressiveness scores (SDS), indicating less depressiveness with a higher trait of mindfulness, which supports a relation between mindfulness and well-being. Apart from being long practiced within Buddhist meditation (Brown and Ryan, 2003), the potential impact of mindfulness for daily-life well-being and for treatment of affective disorders and stress symptoms has gained increasing attention in the last years (Brown et al, 2007). …”