Mindfulness and Psychological Flexibility

• Main Authors: Jen-Ho Chang, 張仁和
• Other Authors: Yi-Cheng Lin
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2013
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/38575663493398028529

博士 === 國立臺灣大學 === 心理學研究所 === 101 === The present studies aimed to investigate the relationship between mindfulness and psychological flexibility. Firstly, we proposed a social cognitive approach for understanding psychological flexibility and then operationalized psychological flexibility at three levels including: “attention and cognitive control”, “coping and emotion regulation”, and “motivation and self” dimensions. Furthermore, to enhance the convergent validity, two tasks were applied at each level. Thus, there were task switching, AX continuous performance task, coping flexibility, emotion regulation choices, psychological needs fulfillment and balance, and incremental self-theory in correspondence. Therefore, six studies investigated the relationship between mindfulness and these psychological flexibility measurements. Then, we investigated the moderating effect of mindfulness on the relationship between compassionated goal with intrapersonal happiness and interpersonal zero-sum belief. Finally, the last study manipulated mindfulness and then investigated its effect on psychological flexibility and the moderating effect on compassionate goal with zero-sum effect. The results revealed that, compared with low mindfulness group, high mindfulness group had less task switching cost (study 1), more balance in using proactive and reactive cognitive control (study 2), better coping flexibility (study 3), better emotion regulation choices flexibility (study 4), better psychological needs fulfillment and balance (study 5), and higher incremental self-theory on intelligence (study 6). In addition, compared with low mindfulness individuals, high mindfulness individuals’ compassionate goal positively correlated with subjective well-being and peace of mind (study 7), and negatively correlated with zero-sum belief (study 8). Furthermore, compared with the other two controlled groups, the group with brief mindfulness manipulation revealed better cognitive flexibility and their compassionate goal negatively correlated with zero-sum belief (study 9). Potential theoretical and practical applications were discussed.