The Effect of Different Mindfulness Task on Emotion Regulation and Negative Self Evaluation

Treatment programs based on mindfulness have been proved to have significant positive effect on depressive disorders. Nonetheless, these programs often included different mindfulness practices; also, research comparing their differential effects on depressive individuals’ emotion regulation and cognition has still waited for further elucidation. Furthermore, the effects of mindfulness practice that focused more on cultivating self-compassion on depressive individuals have still been sparse. Therefore, the present study aimed to compare the interaction effects of different mindfulness task, i.e., ""pure attention"" and ""self compassion"", and depressive mood on emotion regulation and negative self evaluation, thereby to enhance the treatment of choice concerning program effects of mindfulness in the future clinical work. One hundred and sixty-two participants underwent negative mood induction task and were randomly assigned to these two mindfulness tasks, and they rated their positive/negative emotion and negative self evaluation at pre/post-mood induction and post-mindfulness task. High depressive group consisted of participants with BDI-II > 14 (n = 54), and low depressive group with BDI-II < 6 (n = 51). The dependent variables included positive emotion, negative emotion, negative self evaluation, and a 2 (high depressive group/low depressive group) × 2 (pure attention/self-compassion) × 3 (pre-mood induction/post-mood induction/post-mindfulness task) three way repeated measures ANOVA was conducted. The results showed that after the mindfulness task, compared to the pre-mood induction, the positive emotion of the participants in the pure attention group was significantly decreased, whereas the negative self evaluation has no significant difference. For the ""self-compassion"" group, at post-mindfulness task, the positive emotion was not significantly different from the pre-mood induction, whereas the negative self evaluation was significantly decreased. As to the negative emotion, after the mindfulness task, both of the pure attention group and self-compassion group are decreased compared to the post-mood induction, and to the same extent. We concluded that the self-compassion mindfulness task was better than the pure attention mindfulness task for the positive emotion regulation and the negative self evaluation regulation. The impacts of self-compassion on the psychopathology of depression are discussed. The present study established a paradigm for self-compassion induction so as to compare the effects of different mindfulness tasks. According to our findings, as self-compassion attitude may be an important element in the treatment programs for mindfulness, possible clinical interventions are henceforth proposed.