A new self-report questionnaire measuring four mindfulness skills—observing, describing, acting with awareness, and accepting without judgment—shows good reliability and a clear factor structure. These skills relate differently to personality and mental health: they are linked to neuroticism, psychological symptoms, emotional intelligence, alexithymia, experiential avoidance, dissociation, and absorption. The findings suggest mindfulness is not a single trait but a set of distinct abilities with unique connections to well-being.
Both mindfulness and self-compassion appear to contribute independently to psychological wellbeing, and together they fully explain the link between meditation experience and wellbeing. In a cross-sectional comparison of 77 experienced meditators and 75 matched nonmeditators, most mindfulness and self-compassion scores correlated significantly with meditation experience and wellbeing. The relationship between meditation experience and wellbeing was entirely accounted for by combined mindfulness and self-compassion scores, suggesting that these skills may be key mechanisms through which mindfulness training improves wellbeing. Longitudinal studies are needed to confirm these findings.