Emotion
October 1, 2008
Cendri A. Hutcherson, Emma M. Seppala, James J. Gross
748 citations
A brief loving-kindness meditation exercise, lasting only a few minutes, increased feelings of social connection and positivity toward strangers, as measured by both explicit and implicit measures, compared to a closely matched control task. The findings suggest that this simple technique may help reduce social isolation and increase positive social emotions.
Emotion
February 1, 2010
Richard J. Davidson
370 citations
Mindfulness practice primarily targets emotion, with transformation in trait affect being a key goal across contemplative traditions. The term "mindfulness" is used in multiple ways—referring to states, traits, and experimentally manipulated variables—so it is essential to specify how it is operationalized in each context. Methodological issues include the duration of training and how it should be measured, as well as the nature of control and comparison groups in studies of mindfulness-based interventions. The commentary also considers which targets within emotion processing are likely to be impacted by mindfulness, highlighting substantial progress in the empirical study of the field.
Emotion
January 1, 2010
Jocelyn A. Sze, Anett Gyurak, Joyce W. Yuan et al.
241 citations
People who train in practices that increase body awareness show greater moment-to-moment alignment between their subjective emotional feelings and their heart period. Experienced Vipassana meditators, who attend to visceral sensations, had the highest coherence, followed by dancers, who attend to somatic sensations, with controls having the lowest coherence. The findings suggest that specialized training in body awareness enhances the coherence between subjective and physiological aspects of emotion.
Emotion
January 1, 2010
D. Perlman, Tim V. Salomons, Richard J. Davidson et al.
203 citations
Pain can be regulated through different cognitive mechanisms. Two meditation practices were compared during noxious heat: Focused Attention, which may regulate negative affect via sensory gating, and Open Monitoring, which may regulate negative affect through nonjudgmental awareness. Long-term meditators, compared to novices, reported significantly less unpleasantness, but not intensity, of pain while practicing Open Monitoring. No significant effects were found for Focused Attention. This finding highlights a possible regulatory mechanism underlying meditation-based clinical interventions such as Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction.