Mindfulness Broadens Awareness and Builds Eudaimonic Meaning: A Process Model of Mindful Positive Emotion Regulation

TLDR

Mindfulness has been framed as purely non‑evaluative engagement, yet historically it was intended to foster eudaimonic states, but modern research has overlooked how it influences emotion regulation and meaning in life. The study proposes the Mindfulness‑to‑Meaning Theory, a novel process model of mindful positive emotion regulation that posits mindfulness enhances interoceptive attention to increase cognitive flexibility for reappraisal and savoring. The model posits that mindfulness increases interoceptive attention, which expands cognitive scope and enables flexible appraisal of adversity and savoring of positive experiences. The model predicts that this process leads to deeper meaning‑making and heightened life engagement.

Abstract

Contemporary scholarship on mindfulness casts it as a form of purely non-evaluative engagement with experience. Yet, traditionally mindfulness was not intended to operate in a vacuum of dispassionate observation, but was seen as facilitative of eudaimonic mental states. In spite of this historical context, modern psychological research has neglected to ask the question of how the practice of mindfulness affects downstream emotion regulatory processes to impact the sense of meaning in life. To fill this lacuna, here we describe the Mindfulness-to-Meaning Theory, from which we derive a novel process model of mindful positive emotion regulation informed by affective science, in which mindfulness is proposed to introduce flexibility in the generation of cognitive appraisals by enhancing interoceptive attention, thereby expanding the scope of cognition to facilitate reappraisal of adversity and savoring of positive experience. This process is proposed to culminate in a deepened capacity for meaning-making and greater engagement with life.