Top

Mindfulness

Tip

Swipe om te navigeren naar een ander artikel

Gepubliceerd in:

23-05-2017 | ORIGINAL PAPER

Emotional Understanding: Examining Alexithymia as a Mediator of the Relationship Between Mindfulness and Empathy

Auteurs: Helen Z. MacDonald, Jennifer L. Price

Gepubliceerd in: Mindfulness | Uitgave 6/2017

Abstract

The positive mental health correlates of mindfulness have become increasingly well-established. Recent literature has documented an association between the present-moment awareness and attention that is characteristic of mindfulness, and the capacity to adopt the emotions, cognitions, and perspectives of another individual, as displayed in empathy. The mechanisms underlying this relationship, however, are still poorly understood. This study aimed to examine alexithymia—or the difficulty identifying, labeling, understanding, and processing one’s own emotions—as a mediator of the relationship between five facets of dispositional mindfulness (i.e., observing, describing, acting with awareness, nonjudging, and nonreacting) and empathy in a sample of 616 undergraduate college students. Results revealed that alexithymia mediated the relationships between the describing and acting with awareness domains of mindfulness and cognitive empathy, while accounting for the effects of the other mindfulness subscales and participant sex. These findings suggest that the relationship between specific mindfulness skills and greater understanding of another individual’s emotional and cognitive experiences may be explained in part by one’s emotional self-awareness.

vorige artikel Testing the Relationship Between Social Anxiety Schemas, Mindfulness Facets, and State and Trait Social Anxiety Symptoms

volgende artikel A Qualitative Study with Healthcare Staff Exploring the Facilitators and Barriers to Engaging in a Self-Help Mindfulness-Based Intervention

Baer, R. A., Smith, G. T., Hopkins, J., Krietemeyer, J., & Toney, L. (2006). Using self-report assessment methods to explore facets of mindfulness. Assessment, 13, 27–45. doi: 10.1177/1073191105283504. CrossRefPubMed

Baer, R. A., Smith, G. T., Lykins, E., Button, D., Krietemeyer, J., Sauer, S., et al. (2008). Construct validity of the Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire in meditating and nonmeditating samples. Assessment, 15(3), 329–342. doi: 10.1177/1073191107313003. CrossRefPubMed

Bagby, R. M., Taylor, G. J., & Parker, J. D. A. (1994). The twenty item Toronto Alexithymia Scale-II: convergent, discriminant, and concurrent validity. Journal of Psychosomatic Research, 38, 33–40. doi: 10.1016/0022-3999(94)90006-X. CrossRefPubMed

Beddoe, A. E., & Murphy, S. O. (2004). Does mindfulness decrease stress and foster empathy among nursing students? Journal of Nursing Education, 43, 305–312. doi: 10.3928/01484834-20040701-07. PubMed

Beitel, M., Ferrer, E., & Cecero, J. J. (2005). Psychological mindedness and awareness of self and others. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 61(6), 739–750. doi: 10.1002/jclp.20095. CrossRefPubMed

Bird, G., Silani, G., Brindley, R., White, S., Frith, U., & Singer, T. (2010). Empathic brain responses in insula are modulated by levels of alexithymia but not autism. Brain: A Journal of Neurology, 133(5), 1515–1525. doi: 10.1093/brain/awq060. CrossRef

Birnie, K., Speca, M., & Carlson, L. E. (2010). Exploring self-compassion and empathy in the context of mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR). Stress and Health: Journal of the International Society for the Investigation of Stress, 26(5), 359–371. doi: 10.1002/smi.1305. CrossRef

Block-Lerner, J., Adair, C., Plumb, J. C., Rhatigan, D. L., & Orsillo, S. M. (2007). The case for mindfulness-based approaches in the cultivation of empathy: does nonjudgmental, present-moment awareness increase capacity for perspective-taking and empathic concern? Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 33(4), 501–516. doi: 10.1111/j.1752-0606.2007.00034.x. CrossRefPubMed

Brown, K. W., & Ryan, R. M. (2003). The benefits of being present: mindfulness and its role in psychological well-being. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84, 822–848. doi: 10.1037/0022-3514.84.4.822. CrossRefPubMed

Cash, M., & Whittingham, K. (2010). What facets of mindfulness contribute to psychological well-being and depressive, anxious, and stress-related symptomatology? Mindfulness, 1(3), 177–182. doi: 10.1007/s12671-010-0023-4. CrossRef

Coffey, K. A., Hartman, M., & Fredrickson, B. L. (2010). Deconstructing mindfulness and constructing mental health: understanding mindfulness and its mechanisms of action. Mindfulness, 1(4), 235–253. doi: 10.1007/s12671-010-0033-2. CrossRef

Davis, M. H. (1986). Measuring individual differences in empathy: evidence for a multidimensional approach. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 44(1), 113–126. doi: 10.1037/0022-3514.44.1.113. CrossRef

Davis, M. H. (1996). Empathy: A Social Psychological Approach. Boulder: Westview Press.

de Bruin, E. I., Topper, M., Muskens, J. G., Bögels, S. M., & Kamphuis, J. H. (2012). Psychometric properties of the Five Facets Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ) in a meditating and a non-meditating sample. Assessment, 19(2), 187–197. doi: 10.1177/1073191112446654. CrossRefPubMed

Decety, J., Jackson, P. L., Sommerville, J. A., Chaminade, T., & Meltzoff, A. N. (2004). The neural bases of cooperation and competition: an fMRI investigation. NeuroImage, 23(2), 744–751. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2004.05.025. CrossRefPubMedPubMedCentral

Desrosiers, A., Vine, V., Klemanski, D. H., & Nolen-Hoeksema, S. (2013). Mindfulness and emotion regulation in depression and anxiety: common and distinct mechanisms of action. Depression and Anxiety, 30(7), 654–661. doi: 10.1002/da.22124. CrossRefPubMedPubMedCentral

Eberth, J., & Sedlmeier, P. (2012). The effects of mindfulness meditation: a meta-analysis. Mindfulness, 3, 174–189. doi: 10.1007/s12671-012-0101-x. CrossRef

Feldmanhall, O., Dalgleish, T., & Mobbs, D. (2013). Alexithymia decreases altruism in real social decisions. Cortex: A Journal Devoted to the Study of the Nervous System and Behavior, 49(3), 899–904. doi: 10.1016/j.cortex.2012.10.015. CrossRef

Fritz, M.S., & MacKinnon, D.P. (2007). Required sample size to detect the mediated effect. Psychological Science 18(3), 233–239. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9280.2007.01882.x

Fulton, C. L., & Cashwell, C. S. (2015). Mindfulness-based awareness and compassion: predictors of counselor empathy and anxiety. Counselor Education and Supervision, 54(2), 122–133. doi: 10.1002/ceas.12009. CrossRef

Galantino, M. L., Baime, M., Maguire, M., Szapary, P. O., & Farrar, J. T. (2005). Association of psychological and physiological measures of stress in health-care professionals during an 8-week mindfulness meditation program: mindfulness in practice. Stress and Health, 21, 255–261. doi: 10.1002/smi.1062. CrossRef

Gallese, V. (2003). The roots of empathy: the shared manifold hypothesis and the neural basis of intersubjectivity. Psychopathology, 36(4), 171–180. doi: 10.1159/000072786. CrossRefPubMed

Gallup, G. J., & Platek, S. M. (2002). Cognitive empathy presupposes self-awareness: evidence from phylogeny, ontogeny, neuropsychology, and mental illness. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 25(1), 36–37. doi: 10.1017/S0140525X02380014.

Garland, E. L., Fredrickson, B., Kring, A. M., Johnson, D. P., Meyer, P. S., & Penn, D. L. (2010). Upward spirals of positive emotions counter downward spirals of negativity: Insights from the broaden-and-build theory and affective neuroscience on the treatment of emotion dysfunctions and deficits in psychopathology. Clinical Psychology Review, 30, 849–864. doi: 10.1016/j.cpr.2010.03.002. CrossRefPubMedPubMedCentral

Gilbert, P., McEwan, K., Gibbons, L., Chotai, S., Duarte, J., & Matos, M. (2012). Fears of compassion and happiness in relation to alexithymia, mindfulness, and self-criticism. Psychology and Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice, 85(4), 374–390. doi: 10.1111/j.2044-8341.2011.02046.x. CrossRef

Goerlich-Dobre, K. S., Lamm, C., Pripfl, J., Habel, U., & Votinov, M. (2015). The left amygdala: a shared substrate of alexithymia and empathy. Neuroimage, 12220–32. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2015.08.014.

Goldman, A. I. (2006). Simulating Minds: The Philosophy, Psychology, and Neuroscience of Mindreading. New York: Oxford University Press. CrossRef

Greason, P. B., & Cashwell, C. S. (2009). Mindfulness and counseling self-efficacy: the mediating role of attention and empathy. Counselor Education and Supervision, 49(1), 2–19. doi: 10.1002/j.1556-6978.2009.tb00083.x. CrossRef

Grynberg, D., Luminet, O., Corneille, O., Grèzes, J., & Berthoz, S. (2010). Alexithymia in the interpersonal domain: a general deficit of empathy? Personality and Individual Differences, 49(8), 845–850. doi: 10.1016/j.paid.2010.07.013. CrossRef

Guttman, H., & Laporte, L. (2002). Alexithymia, empathy, and psychological symptoms in a family context. Comprehensive Psychiatry, 43(6), 448–455. doi: 10.1053/comp.2002.35905. CrossRefPubMed

Hölzel, B. K., Lazar, S. W., Gard, T., Schuman-Olivier, Z., Vago, D. R., & Ott, U. (2011). How does mindfulness meditation work? Proposing mechanisms of action from a conceptual and neural perspective. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 6(6), 537–559. doi: 10.1177/1745691611419671. CrossRefPubMed

Jonason, P. K., & Krause, L. (2013). The emotional deficits associated with the Dark Triad traits: cognitive empathy, affective empathy, and alexithymia. Personality and Individual Differences, 55(5), 532–537. doi: 10.1016/j.paid.2013.04.027. CrossRef

Kooiman, C. G., Spinhoven, P., & Trijsburg, R. W. (2002). The assessment of alexithymia. A critical review of the literature and a psychometric study of the Toronto Alexithymia Scale-20. Journal of Psychosomatic Research, 53, 1083–1090. doi: 10.1016/S0022-3999(02)00348-3. CrossRefPubMed

Lau, M. A., Bishop, Z. V., Segal, T., Buis, N. D., Anderson, L., Carlson, L., et al. (2006). The Toronto Mindfulness Scale: development and validation. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 62(12), 1445–1467. doi: 10.1002/jclp.20326. CrossRefPubMed

Luberto, C. M., Cotton, S., McLeish, A. C., Mingione, C. J., & O’Bryan, E. M. (2013). Mindfulness skills and emotion regulation: the mediating role of coping self-efficacy. Mindfulness, 5, 373–380. doi: 10.1007/s12671-012-0190-6. CrossRef

Lutz, A., Slagter, H. A., Dunne, J. D., & Davidson, R. J. (2008). Attention regulation and monitoring in meditation. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 12(4), 163–169. doi: 10.1016/j.tics.2008.01.005. CrossRefPubMedPubMedCentral

Lyvers, M., Makin, C., Toms, E., Thorberg, F. A., & Samios, C. (2014). Trait mindfulness in relation to emotional self-regulation and executive function. Mindfulness, 5, 619–625. doi: 10.1007/s12671-013-0213-y. CrossRef

McDonald, H. M., Sherman, K. A., Petocz, P., Kangas, M., Grant, K., & Kasparian, N. A. (2016). Mindfulness and the experience of psychological distress: the mediating effects of emotion regulation and attachment anxiety. Mindfulness, 7(4), 799–808. doi: 10.1007/s12671-016-0517-9. CrossRef

New, A. S., Rot, M. H., Ripoll, L. H., Perez-Rodriguez, M. M., Lazarus, S., Zipursky, E., et al. (2012). Empathy and alexithymia in borderline personality disorder: clinical and laboratory measures. Journal of Personality Disorders, 26(5), 660–675. doi: 10.1521/pedi.2012.26.5.660. CrossRefPubMed

Park, T., Reilly-Spong, M., & Gross, C. R. (2013). Mindfulness: a systematic review of instruments to measure an emergent patient-reported outcome (PRO). Quality of Life Research: An International Journal of Quality of Life Aspects of Treatment, Care & Rehabilitation, 22(10), 2639–2659. doi: 10.1007/s11136-013-0395-8. CrossRef

Pepping, C. A., Davis, P. J., & O’Donovan, A. (2013). Individual differences in attachment and dispositional mindfulness: the mediating role of emotion regulation. Personality and Individual Differences, 54(3), 453–456. doi: 10.1016/j.paid.2012.10.006. CrossRef

Preacher, K. J., & Hayes, A. F. (2004). SPSS and SAS procedures for estimating indirect effects in simple mediation models. Behavior Research Methods, Instruments and Computers, 36(4), 717–731. doi: 10.3758/BF03206553. CrossRef

Reniers, R. P., Corcoran, R., Drake, R., Shryane, N. M., & Völlm, B. A. (2011). The QCAE: a questionnaire of cognitive and affective empathy. Journal of Personality Assessment, 93(1), 84–95. doi: 10.1080/00223891.2010.528484. CrossRefPubMed

Santarnecchi, E., D’Arista, S., Egiziano, E., Gardi, C., Petrosino, R., Vatti, G., et al. (2014). Interaction between neuroanatomical and psychological changes after mindfulness-based training. PloS One, 9(10), e108359. CrossRefPubMedPubMedCentral

Shapiro, S. L., Brown, K. W., Thoresen, C., & Plante, T. G. (2011). The moderation of mindfulness-based stress reduction effects by trait mindfulness: results from a randomized controlled trial. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 67(3), 267–277. doi: 10.1002/jclp.20761. CrossRefPubMed

Sifneos, P. E. (1973). The prevalence of ‘alexithymic’ characteristics in psychosomatic patients. Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, 22(2–6), 255–262. doi: 10.1159/000286529. CrossRefPubMed

Tabachnick, B. G., & Fidell, L. S. (2007). Using Multivariate Statistics. Boston: Allyn & Bacon/Pearson Education.

Teixeira, R. J., & Pereira, M. G. (2015). Examining mindfulness and its relation to self-differentiation and alexithymia. Mindfulness, 6(1), 79–87. doi: 10.1007/s12671-013-0233-7. CrossRef

Tran, U. S., Glück, T. M., & Nader, I. W. (2013). Investigating the Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ): Construction of a short form and evidence of a two-factor higher order structure of mindfulness. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 69(9), 951–965. doi: 10.1002/jclp.21996. CrossRefPubMed

Trent, N. L., Park, C., Bercovitz, K., & Chapman, I. M. (2016). Trait socio-cognitive mindfulness is related to affective and cognitive empathy. Journal of Adult Development, 23(1), 62–67. doi: 10.1007/s10804-015-9225-2. CrossRef

Titel: Emotional Understanding: Examining Alexithymia as a Mediator of the Relationship Between Mindfulness and Empathy
Auteurs: Helen Z. MacDonald
Jennifer L. Price
Publicatiedatum: 23-05-2017
Uitgeverij: Springer US
Gepubliceerd in: Mindfulness / Uitgave 6/2017
Print ISSN: 1868-8527
Elektronisch ISSN: 1868-8535
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12671-017-0739-5

Bohn Stafleu van Loghum

Tip

Swipe om te navigeren naar een ander artikel

Deel dit onderdeel of sectie (kopieer de link)

Abstract

Log in om toegang te krijgen

Andere artikelen Uitgave 6/2017

Testing the Relationship Between Social Anxiety Schemas, Mindfulness Facets, and State and Trait Social Anxiety Symptoms

Feasibility, Acceptability, and Preliminary Effectiveness of a 4-Week Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy Protocol for Hospital Employees

Mindfulness Meditation Adherence in a College Sample: Comparison of a 10-Min Versus 20-Min 2-Week Daily Practice

The Mindful Personality: a Meta-analysis from a Cybernetic Perspective

The Mandala of the Present Moment

The Role of Mindfulness in Daily Relationship Process: Examining Daily Conflicts and Relationship Mood