Mindfully missing myself: Induced mindfulness causes alienation among poor self-regulators.

Mindfulness is a popular technique that helps people to get closer to their self. However, recent findings indicate that mindfulness may not benefit everybody. In the present research, we hypothesized that mindfulness promotes alienation from the self among individuals with low abilities to self-regulate affect (state-oriented individuals) but not among individuals with high abilities to self-regulate affect (action-oriented individuals). In two studies with participants who were mostly naïve to mindfulness practices (70% indicated no experience; N1 = 126, 42 men, 84 women, 0 diverse, aged 17-86 years, Mage = 31.87; N2 = 108, 30 men, 75 women, 3 diverse, aged 17-69 years, Mage = 28.00), we tested a mindfulness group (five-minute mindfulness exercise) against a control group (five-minute text reading). We operationalized alienation as lower consistency in repeated preference judgments and a lower tendency to adopt intrinsic over extrinsic goal recommendations. Results showed that, among state-oriented participants, mindfulness led to significantly lower consistency of preference judgments (Study 1) and lower adoption of intrinsic over extrinsic goals (Study 2) compared to text reading. The alienating effect was absent among action-oriented participants. Thus, mindfulness practice may alienate psychologically vulnerable people from their self and hamper access to preferences and intrinsic goals. We discuss our findings within Personality-Systems-Interactions (PSI) theory.

Breaking the anxious cycle of self-criticism: Action orientation buffers the detrimental effects of a self-critical personality style.

BACKGROUND: A self-critical personality style has been associated with psychological symptoms such as depression and anxiety. Self-critical people also tend to strive more anxiously for basic motives such as affiliation, achievement, power, and autonomy. This anxious motive enactment mediates the relationship between self-critical style and psychological symptoms that may, in turn, reinforce self-criticism. The present study examines whether action orientation (i.e., a high self-regulatory ability) offers a way out of this anxious cycle and buffers the detrimental effects of self-criticism. METHODS: A coaching- and therapy-based sample (N = 479, age: 14-71 years) was collected by a private German institute as part of the assessment, research, and training program. Data were collected online in form of questionnaires. We performed moderated mediation analysis to test our hypothesis. RESULTS: The relationship between self-critical style and psychological symptoms was mediated by anxious motive enactment. Action orientation moderated the link between self-critical style and anxious motive enactment and buffered the effects of a self-critical style on both anxious motive enactment and psychological symptoms. LIMITATIONS: The study used cross-sectional data and should be followed-up longitudinally. Our data come only from self-report and could be extended to non-reactive measures. CONCLUSIONS: The detrimental effects of a self-critical personality style in terms of anxious motive enactment and psychological symptoms are more severe when self-regulation (action orientation) is low. The findings have practical implications for clinical work because action orientation is malleable. The ability to self-regulate affect is comparatively easier to train than to ease self-critical people's inherent affect sensitivity.