Mindful, Neurotic, or Both: Efficacy of Online Single-session Mindfulness
Abstract
With the popularity of online websites and apps that use mindfulness audio recording to teach mindfulness practice, it piqued our interest to examine how online mindfulness practice like Headspace can be helpful to the non-clinical population. In response to the limitations outlined in previous studies, we also examine the moderation effect of two individual differences (i.e., neuroticism and dispositional mindfulness). The current study aimed to investigate the efficacy of brief (15 min) single-session mindfulness on attention regulation (as measured by word-colour Stoop task) and to assess the moderation effect of individual differences. This experimental design randomly assigned the participants into either the experimental (Headspace) or control group (audiobook recording). Their level of neuroticism and dispositional mindfulness were measured by using the IPIP-NEO-120 and MAAS scale respectively. Results indicate that, in the experiment group, participants’ attention regulation on different levels of neuroticism varied across different level of dispositional mindfulness. However, the patterns of the results were not as expected. This study has shown that in general a single-session mindfulness might not be efficacious in enhancing attention regulation. However, there are specific groups of personality traits that benefitted from it.
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