The Role of Mindfulness in Cognitive Emotion Regulation and Thought Suppression

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Torsa Chattoraj1 and Arushi Srivastava2 (Department of Psychology, Christ (Deemed to be) University, Bangalore, Karnataka)

Mindfulness is a conscious state of awareness shown to be effective in emotion regulation and thought suppression in stressful circumstances. Yet little research has evaluated the effects of mindfulness on cognitive-emotion regulation and thought suppression. The present study aims to understand the association between mindfulness, cognitive emotion regulation, and thought suppression. We have utilized three standardized measures: the Mindfulness Attention Awareness Scale, the Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire, and the White Bear Suppression Index. 133 (aged 20-60) participants from 16 countries were recruited using snowball sampling. We hypothesized that 1) mindfulness would negatively correlate with thought suppression, 2) mindfulness would negatively correlate with “negative cognitive emotion regulation techniques,” and positively with “positive cognitive emotion regulation techniques.” And 3) thought suppression would negatively correlate with “positive cognitive emotion regulation techniques” and positively with “negative cognitive emotion regulation techniques.” Our results revealed that mindfulness positively correlates with thought suppression. Secondly, mindfulness positively correlated with only one positive cognitive emotion regulation technique, whereas it is negatively correlated with all the negative cognitive emotion regulation techniques. Lastly, thought suppression is negatively correlated with positive cognitive emotion regulation techniques and positively correlated with negative cognitive emotion regulation techniques. The results suggest that the state of mindfulness could help understand the regulation of emotions adaptively and the tendency to suppress thoughts. Although this is a correlation study and provides associations between the variables, it helps us gain insight into the possible benefits of mindfulness, which can be further explored through future studies.