Positive psychological states in the arc from mindfulness to self-transcendence: extensions of the Mindfulness-to-Meaning Theory and applications to addiction and chronic pain treatment.
Study Goal
The researchers aimed to review and extend the Mindfulness-to-Meaning Theory (MMT) to explain how mindfulness fosters self-transcendence and positive emotion regulation, potentially restructuring reward processing to address addictive behavior and chronic pain.
Results Summary
The study suggests mindfulness promotes health and resilience through mechanisms like decentering, attentional broadening, reappraisal, and savoring, potentially restructuring reward processing to benefit addictive behavior (e.g., opioid misuse) and chronic pain.
Population
Not specified (general or clinical populations with addictive behavior/chronic pain implied).
Effective Dosage
Not specified
Duration
Not specified
Interactions
None mentioned
| Intervention | Direction | Endpoint | Population | Dosage | Impact | Claim # |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
mindfulness | increase | health and resilience | - | - | promotes | #1 |
mindfulness | increase | self-transcendence | - | - | fosters | #2 |
savoring | increase | absorptive experiences of oneness between subject and object | - | - | inducing | #3 |
savoring | increase | the salience of the object | - | - | amplifying | #4 |
savoring | increase | the sensory-perceptual field with affective meaning | - | - | imbuing | #5 |
mindfulness-based interventions | increase | self-transcendent positive emotions and nondual states of awareness | - | - | inducing | #6 |
mindfulness-based interventions | neutral | reward processing | - | - | restructure | #7 |
mindfulness-based interventions | decrease | addictive behavior (e.g. opioid misuse) | - | - | produce therapeutic effects on | #8 |
mindfulness-based interventions | decrease | chronic pain syndromes | - | - | produce therapeutic effects on | #9 |
The Mindfulness-to-Meaning Theory (MMT) is a temporally dynamic process model of mindful positive emotion regulation that elucidates downstream cognitive-affective mechanisms by which mindfulness promotes health and resilience. Here we review and extend the MMT to explicate how mindfulness fosters self-transcendence by evoking upward spirals of decentering, attentional broadening, reappraisal, and savoring. Savoring is highlighted as a key, potential means of inducing absorptive experiences of oneness between subject and object, amplifying the salience of the object while imbuing the sensory-perceptual field with affective meaning. Finally, this article provides new evidence that inducing self-transcendent positive emotions and nondual states of awareness through mindfulness-based interventions may restructure reward processing and thereby produce therapeutic effects on addictive behavior (e.g. opioid misuse) and chronic pain syndromes.