Week 9 lecture

Week 9: Mindfulness

Learning goals
 What is mindfulness (and what is it not)?
o A psychological state characterized by wide attention breadth, present
temporal focus and decentering.
 How do you measure mindfulness?
o With selfreport questionnaires or with observations
 What are personal and workplace outcomes of mindfulness?
o Several positive outcomes for well-being and task performance
 Why does mindfulness lead to these outcomes?
o Through the mechanism of attention and/or emotional processing
 How do you train mindfulness?
o MBCT & MBSR or a combination of mindfulness exercises

Common believes about mindfulness
Most people think about meditation. Mindfulness and meditation are correlated, but they aren't the
same thing. In his TEDtalk, Andy Puddicombe gives a comprehensive view about why mindfulness has
become an interesting subject for many people: we are absent minded because the world is always
busy. This causes stress and negative emotions. Mindfulness is said to remedy all those things.

Concept mindfulness
 Here and now / present moment
o All researchers focus on being in the here in and now when they talk
about mindfulness
 Awareness
o you have done something, but you don't realize how you did it. For
example (not) locking the door, when you left the house but you're not
sure whether or not you locked the door because you didn't do it with
awareness.
 Decentering = reperceiving
o The idea of this is that you could be fully absorped in a thought/emotion
that you have, but you can also take a step back and look at the
emotions without being sucked into them.
 Attention / focus / concentration
 Meditation
o This is a tool people use to become mindful, but you don't necessarily
need it
 Accept without judgment
o We pair things we see with an opinion we have (automatically), but
accepting without judgment is disconnecting your opinion about the
things you see
 Automaticity  self regulation
o Doing things automatically, without being aware. Decreasing
automaticity leads to self regulation
 Trait / state
o In personality psychology we talk about traits being very stable
personality characteristics. Whereas states are more a state that you're
in, so it's less definite than a trait you have. Mindfulness could be seen as
a character trait, but also as a state. So some people are naturally more

, mindful, but people who aren't mindful by nature, can be in a minful
state.
Scientific approach
 Ample scientific evidence
 Psychological state
 Consensus on 3 elements:
o Present-focused conscientiousness (temporal orientation)
o Paying close attention to both internal and external phenomena
(attentional breadth)
o Paying attention to stimuli in an open and accepting way (decentering)
 Contextual v.s. experiental processing
 Experiental: looking without reacting
(decentering)
 Contextual: being drawn into an emotion
and thought and working through it and
reacting to it

A definition of mindfulness from the video is: "Mindfulness is the ability to know what's happening in
your head at any given moment without getting carried away by it."

What mindfulness is not




The concepts of flow and absorption are different from mindfulness when it comes to attentional
breadth. Mindfulness is about a wide attentional breadth, while flow and absorption are about
narrow attentional breadth. So, to be in a flow, you have to focus your attention very narrow, you
focus on one task/stimulus instead of a wide focus.

Counterfactual thinking: thinking about what could have been, what things may have looked like if
you had done things differently. So, you're looking back into the past and you are not in the present
moment.

Prospection/fantasy: this is looking ahead, into the future (or looking back on the past). So also not in
the present.

Mind wandering: (mindlessnes) might have a wide attentional breadth, but is also not in the present.