Date of Award

12-2015

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Psychology

First Advisor

Jane Stafford

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of a mindfulness induction on participants’ verbal distress disclosure (as measured by the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count and State Disclosure Questionnaire). Participants were 86 undergraduate students enrolled in an Introduction to Psychology course and were randomly assigned to one of two conditions: a mindfulness condition or a control condition. Participants in the mindfulness condition engaged in a 15-minute mindfulness induction prior to disclosing about a stressful experience, while participants in the control condition listened to a neutrally valenced audio excerpt from a podcast about emotions before speaking about a stressful experience. Participants in the mindfulness condition demonstrated greater increases in overall state mindfulness from pre- to postintervention on the Toronto Mindfulness Scale. It was predicted that participants in the mindfulness condition would use more emotion and cognitive processing words and would also rate themselves as disclosing more in their interview, in comparison to the participants in the control condition. However, significant differences in word usage and subjective disclosure scores were not observed between conditions. Thus, results of the present study indicated that the mindfulness induction did not increase distress disclosure. Contrary to predictions, trait distress disclosure was not found to be positively correlated with trait mindfulness. Furthermore, two facets of trait mindfulness (e.g., acting with awareness, non-reactivity) were found to be negatively related to trait distress disclosure, suggesting that trait distress disclosure, as measured in the present study, may be related to impulsive, as opposed to thoughtful, disclosure. Additionally, individuals with varying levels of trait mindfulness may disclose differentially as a result of the way in which they relate to stressful situations.

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