Mindfulness training modifies attentional bias to facial emotion and emotional symptoms.
Journal of psychiatric research November 1, 2023 Hui Kou, Wei Luo, Xinnan Liu et al. 11 citations
Eight weeks of mindfulness training reduced anxiety and depressive symptoms in a non-clinical sample of 80 adults, with effects lasting at least three months. The training also shifted attention: participants became more attentive to happy faces and less attentive to sad faces compared to a control group. The change in attention to sad faces partially explained the reduction in depression immediately after training, but this attentional mechanism played only a limited role in symptom improvement overall. The study suggests mindfulness improves emotional symptoms through multiple pathways, not solely by altering attention to emotional faces.