ORIGINAL PAPER

The Impact of Mindfulness on Supportive CommunicationSkills: Three Exploratory Studies

Susanne M. Jones & Wesley Hansen

# Springer Science+Business Media New York 2014

Abstract Supportive communication, which conveys care,empathy, and encouragement, plays a crucial role in how wellpeople are able to cope with difficult emotions and aversivesituations. But supportive communication can be conveyedmore or less skilled. One possible mechanism that may linknonverbally and verbally conveyed emotional support andimproved affective outcomes is mindfulness, conceived asenhanced nonreactive attention to and awareness of currentinternal and external stimuli.We present a theoretical model ofmindful supportive communication and report the results ofthree exploratory studies that test the relationship betweenmindfulness and three factors that influence the supportivecommunication process, namely social skills, communicativecoping, and reappraisals. Study 1 detected relationships be-tween mindfulness facets and social skills. Studies 2 and 3examine the impact of brief mindful interventions on socialskills, communicative coping skills, and reappraisals.

Keywords Comforting . Emotional support . Mindfulness .

Mindful coping . Positive reappraisal . Social support .

Supportive communication

Introduction

A recent meta-analysis by Holt-Lunstad, Smith, and Layton(2010) found that interpersonal relationships and particularlythe social support people receive from these relationshipssignificantly predicted risk of mortality. One type of socialsupport, the provision of emotional support, is particularly

crucial for our well-being, because it helps us cope withdifficult emotional experiences (Goldsmith 2004). Emotionalsupport facilitates the coping process by generating a safediscursive environment within which upsetting events anddifficult emotions, as well as potential coping options, canbe explored (Burleson and Goldsmith 1998; Jones and Wirtz2006). However, how exactly the provision of emotionalsupport contributes to our well-being is still a poorly under-stood process (Thoits 2011). For instance, neither the actualemotional support nor the mere presence of a helpful support-er is necessarily conducive to well-being (Maisel and Gable,2009; Uchino et al. 2010). In addition, received support (i.e.,the support people report having received over a period oftime; Barrera et al. 1981) and perceived support (i.e., whatpeople evaluate as supportive; Lakey and Orehek 2011) areeither not at all or negatively correlated with one another(Lakey and Orehek 2011; Reinhardt et al. 2006; Ross et al.1999; Uchino et al. 2010). Perceived support is also muchmore strongly associated with beneficial outcomes than re-ceived support (Lakey and Orehek 2011).

Perceived support is rooted in interpersonal relationshipsand is to some degree a result of past supportive communica-tion—the things people say and do to facilitate emotionalimprovement (e.g., advice, troubles talk, daily conversations;Goldsmith 2004; Lakey 2013; MacGeorge et al. 2013). Ifperceived support is a function of past supportive interactionsyet is not positively related with received support, then theremust be an underlying process that influences the supportivecommunication process. In other words, the relationship be-tween perceived and received support must be indirect andmust be mediated by a third mechanism. One suchmechanismthat may explain the connection between perceived and re-ceived support might be mindfulness, defined as a person’spresent-centered awareness and attention to internal and ex-ternal experiences in a nonreactive and nonjudgmental way(Baer et al. 2006; Brown and Ryan 2003).

S. M. Jones (*) :W. HansenDepartment of Communication Studies, University of Minnesota,Twin Cities, 225 Ford Hall, 224 Church Str. SE, Minneapolis,MN 55455, USAe-mail: jones344@umn.edu

MindfulnessDOI 10.1007/s12671-014-0362-7

Conceptually, mindfulness comprises two core processes,namely (a) the regulation of attention to present experiences(observing, describing) and (b) approaching these experiencesin nonjudging and nonreactive ways regardless their valenceand desirability (Brown and Ryan 2003; Ciarrochi andKashdan 2013; Hölzel et al. 2011). Operational definitionsof mindfulness conceive of it as a multifaceted construct thatis frequently assessed with the Five-Facet MindfulnessQuestionnaire (FFMQ; Baer et al. 2006). Powerful empiricalevidence documents the benefits of both mindfulness andemotional support on people’s emotional states, as well astheir interpersonal relationships and coping abilities (Bodieand Burleson 2008; Wachs and Cordova 2007; Weinsteinet al. 2009). But is mindfulness salubrious to supportivecommunication? This question strikes us as important; ifsupportive communication is skilled behavior, then a mindfulmode might increase a putative supporter’s abilities to enactcaring and compassionate emotional support.

Supportive communication and mindfulness are concep-tually guided by emotional regulation processes, particular-ly coping theory. A fundamental goal of mindfulness-basedpractices is to promote the use of effective emotion regula-tion strategies (Garland et al. 2009), whereas emotionalsupport functions explicitly to assist a friend or close otherin regulating (i.e., coping with) negative emotional experi-ences (Goldsmith 2004). Coping is a specific kind of emo-tion regulation process and involves two appraisal process-es that serve different functions (Lazarus 1991): Primaryappraisals involve an assessment of what stimuli mean to usand usually culminate in an emotional response. If a stimu-lus has been appraised as harmful, people usually engage insecondary appraisals, which involve assessments ofproblem- and emotion-focused coping resources (Lazarusand Folkman 1984). Problem-focused coping resources in-clude tangible resources people use to remediate whatevercaused the upset and include communicative strategies(e.g., seeking support; Burleson 2003; Lazarus andFolkman 1984; Thoits 1995). Emotion-focused coping re-sources target emotion regulation and one strategy thatseems to accomplish that is a person’s ability to positivelyreappraise interpretations of what led to the harmful emo-tions in the first place (Ben-Artzi and Mikulincer 1996;Lazarus and Folkman 1984). Positive reappraisal reframesthe meaning of a stressful event so that it can culminate inless aversive and perhaps even positive emotional experi-ences, and one way to increase positively reappraisal abil-ities is to cultivate mindfulness. Several emotion regulationmodels have now integrated mindfulness at the level of aperson’s initial attention to a stimulus (e.g., Farb et al.2014).

Garland et al.’s (2009, 2011, 2013) Mindful Coping Model(MCM) is of particular interest to mindful supportive commu-nication because it, too, is dynamic and self-regulatory. The

MCM begins with a stressful stimulus that has been appraisedas harmful (Garland et al. 2011; Garland et al. 2013; Gerzinaand Porfeli 2012; Hanley et al. 2014; Reber et al. 2013). Butbefore the event can be positively reappraised, the distraughtperson must cognitively detach or decenter from the event andthe experienced emotions. Research is emerging that docu-ments connections between decentering and reappraisal(Hayes-Skelton and Graham 2013). Decentering is based onthe idea that human understanding is a function of the rela-tionship between a person’s verbal scripts and the idiosyncrat-ic context within which the person operates. Decenteringallows people to contextualize emotional experiences and tobroaden attention by actively shifting perspectives. Once peo-ple shift perspectives, positive reappraisals of previouslyinterpreted difficult events become possible. The result isemotional improvement. Beneficial emotional support influ-ences the decentering process by helping the distressed personidentify different vantage points from which difficult emo-tions can be understood (Cannava and Bodie 2014; Liehr et al.2010; North et al. 2013). However, in order to assist upsetpeople in decentering emotions, providers must be skilled inencoding and decoding emotional states of the upset person inthe first place.

Enacting emotional support is considered skilled behaviorwhich requires effectively sensing and interpreting emotionalexpressions of others (Guerrero and Jones 2003; Jones 2004;Riggio et al. 1993). Riggio’s Social Skills Inventory is afrequently used measure that tabs social skills (SSI; Riggio1986, 1992; Riggio and Carney 2003; Riggio and Riggio2005). The SSI measures three skill dimensions (encoding/sensitivity, decoding/expressivity, regulating/control) withinemotional (i.e., nonverbal) and social (i.e., verbal) domains.Crossing the three dimensions with the two domains generatessix social skills: Nonverbal expressivity refers to a person’snonverbal ability to effectively convey felt emotions, whereasnonverbal sensitivity tabs a person’s ability to accuratelyobserve and interpret nonverbal expressions of other people.Nonverbal control refers to a person’s nonverbal ability toregulate affect by appearing indifferent, by masking a feltemotion with a different (perhaps more appropriate) emotion,or by deintensifying emotion. Verbal expressivity is a person’sverbal expression and fluency, whereas verbal sensitivity re-fers to a person’s ability to receive and accurately interpretverbal messages. Lastly, verbal control includes a person’sverbal self-presentation skills and refers to the regulation ofverbal performance, including the ability to manage impres-sions, assume different social roles, and take leadershippositions.

High levels of any one skill do not necessarily indicatemore effective performance in that skill, which suggests thatthese skills are context-dependent. For example, social sensi-tivity, as measured by the SSI (e.g., “I’m very sensitive tocriticism”; “Sometimes I think I take things that other people

Mindfulness

say to me too personally”), focuses on one’s motivation tomake positive impressions on others, and an overabundanceof this skill may actually reflect oversensitivity to what othersthink (Guerrero and Reiter 1998). These skills also operatewithin a constellation. Thus for instance, people high in socialand emotional control, and low in expressivity and sensitivitymay be viewed as socially adaptive, yet perhaps not quitegenuine and able to develop close emotional ties with others(for a review see Riggio 1992).

One theory that integrates these skills withmindfulness andemotional support is Sensitive Interaction Systems Theory(SIST; Barbee and Cunningham 1995). SIST stipulates thatself-presentational concerns and ambivalences are observablein nonverbal and verbal behavior, which may repel peoplefrom providing or seeking emotional support. In addition,because enacted support, like all interpersonal communica-tion, is a socially shared enterprise, people coordinate behav-iors, though not always necessarily for the better. Thus forinstance, people may use indirect nonverbal support activationbehaviors, such as sulking or sighing, because they feelashamed and awkward, find it socially inappropriate to ex-press negative emotions or do not want to burden the potentialhelper. However, such indirect activation cues tend to bereciprocated by the putative provider with equally avoidantor even insensitive support, such as distractions or minimiza-tions (Yankeelov et al. 1995). Awareness of these deleteriousactivation cues could potentially lead to more effective andbeneficial support provisions.

Two studies testing relationships between social skills andsocial support further corroborate SIST findings. In the firststudy, Riggio and colleagues (1989) reported positive corre-lations for the SSI composite and empathy, suggesting that asa set, these skills seem to also encourage people to share,understand, and affectively respond more effectively to theemotional states of others. In the second study, Riggio (1992)found that people’s ability to accurately convey emotionalneeds (i.e., emotional sensitivity) was associated with per-ceived levels of emotional support. People who are good atexpressing their own emotional states tended to also report anincreased sense of support in their lives, perhaps becauseemotional sensitivity permitted these people to more effec-tively activate their support system.

Interestingly, in the study, Riggio (1992) also reportednegative associations between emotional control and per-ceived informational support (e.g., asking for advice andguidance), as well as the reported use of supportive copingstrategies (e.g., seeking help from others). Riggio speculatedthat people with increased levels of emotional control are quiteselective and thus perhaps judicious in their use of support.Another explanation might be that people high in emotionalcontrol skills closely monitor and control their emotions.Research on self-monitoring and deception suggests that highself-monitors tend to be good nonverbal “actors”who are able

to mask what they genuinely feel (Friedman and Miller-Herringer 1991; Riggio and Friedman 1981; Tucker andRiggio 1988). Genuinely felt emotions may get stifled, suchthat what is truly felt does not get expressed; emotion controlmay thus become laborious and stressful (Grandey 2003).Applied to social support, high self-monitors may think thatrequesting emotional support impacts how they are perceivedby others, puts demands on others, and is thus best avoided alltogether. Coupled with increased levels of emotional and/orsocial sensitivity, high self-monitors might also be particularlyperceptive to others’ nonverbal microcues that express trepi-dations to offer help (e.g., a momentary eye brow flash,response latency; Ambady and Rosenthal 1992; Riggio 1992).

In three studies, we sought to explore whether mindfulnessis related to communicative components that influence thesupportive communication process, namely social encodingand decoding skills and communicative coping skills. In study1, we examined the relationship between mindfulness facetsand Riggio’s social skills. In studies 2 and 3, we examinedwhether brief mindfulness training would influence people’ssocial skills and communicative coping abilities, respectively.

Study 1: Dispositional Mindfulness and Support Skills

Being able to skillfully engage in sending, receiving, andmonitoring nonverbal and verbal messages requires that onenotice and attend to sensory information (i.e., cognitiveindexing; Wyer and Adaval 2003). In addition, mindful de-scribing, the tendency to be able to express what is felt, isclosely related to how a person sends, receives, and monitorsnonverbal cues and verbal messages. Mindful observing, de-scribing, and social skill associations are also beneficial forboth recipient and provider. Therefore, we predicted thatmindful observing and describing would be positively corre-lated with the six social skills, because these two mindfulnessfacets in particular seem to emphasize these skills (H1).

The positive relationship might not hold for all six socialskills and the three remaining mindfulness facets, namelyacting with awareness in a nonjudging and nonreactive man-ner for both provider and support recipient. Both MCM andSIST stipulate that the putative mindful provider must beespecially sensitive to the emotional state of the distressedperson, which includes emotional and social sensitivity skills.In addition, the mindful provider must also sensibly andcompassionately respond to the emotional needs of the recip-ient by using expressions of care and concern which tabemotional and social expressivity skills. Mindful acting withawareness certainly facilitates the use of these four skills, asdoes one’s tendency to not judge the recipient. This led us topredict positive associations between acting with awareness ina nonjudging and nonreactive manner and social/emotionalsensitivity as well as expressivity skills (H2).

Mindfulness

Social and emotional control skills, as assessed by the SSI,assist people in adjusting felt emotions to situational expecta-tions. Control skills, in particular, require people to react andevaluate. But the mindful mode posits the exact opposite: thatone openly and genuinely attend to what is felt in a noneval-uative manner, that one not become attached to thoughts andemotions, and that one let go of these emotions all together.Thus, we predicted that people who report increased levels ofmindful acting with awareness, nonjudging, and nonreactingwould also report decreased levels of social and emotionalregulatory skills (H3). This would suggest that these skills areperhaps not as important when mindfully supporting anotherperson, primarily because regulatory skills encourage the pro-vider to focus on his or her own behaviors to the detriment ofattending to the putative recipient.

Method

Participants and Procedures

A total of 215 students from undergraduate communicationcourses at a Midwestern university completed an online sur-vey in exchange for extra credit. The average age of theparticipants was 21.3 years (SD=3.42; range=18 to 51 years).The majority of the sample consisted of white Americans (n=142), followed by Asians/Asian-Americans (n=49), African-Americans (n=11), and Hispanics (n=5). Eight participantsbelonged to other ethnic groups.

Measures

Mindfulness was assessed with the 39-item Five-FacetMindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ; Baer et al. 2006). Allitems were assessed with Likert scales that ranged from 1(strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree). The five FFMQdimensions include nonreactivity (e.g., “I perceive my feel-ings and emotions without having to react to them”),observing (e.g., “When I’m walking I deliberately notice thesensations of my body moving”), acting with awareness(actaware; e.g., “I find it difficult to stay focused on what’shappening in the present,” reverse coded), describing (e.g.,“I’m good at finding the words to describe my feelings”), andnonjudging (e.g., ”I tell myself I shouldn’t be feelings the wayI’m feeling” reverse coded). The overall confirmatory struc-ture of the FFMQ has beenwell established (see de Bruin et al.2012; Williams et al. 2014).

High scores for the acting with awareness and nonjudgingscales reflect low levels of these two mindfulness characteris-tics. Therefore, we reverse coded these two subscales suchthat high scores reflected high levels of acting with awarenessand nonjudging. High scores on the other three scales reflect

high levels of that particular mindfulness facet. Table 1 fea-tures relevant descriptive information for the FFMQ.

Social skills were assessed with an abbreviated 39-itemversion of Riggio’s (1986) six-dimensional Social SkillsInventory. Items were assessed with Likert scales that rangedfrom 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree). Three of theskills tap nonverbal skills: emotional control (e.g., “It is veryhard for me to control my emotions,” reverse coded), emo-tional sensitivity (e.g., “I am often told that I am a sensitive,understanding person”), and emotional expressivity (e.g., “Ioften laugh out loud”). The reliabilities for the last subscalewere unsatisfactory; we therefore eliminated this scale fromfurther analyzes. The reliabilities for both the emotional con-trol and emotional sensitivity scales were somewhat low (.60and .62, respectively) and likely weakened our results.However, we considered these reliabilities marginally accept-able and therefore left these two scales in our analyses. Thethree verbal skills include social control (e.g., “When indiscussion I find myself doing a larger share of the talking”),social sensitivity (e.g., “I’moften concerned about what othersthink of me”), and social expressivity (e.g., “I could talk forhours on just about any subject”). High scores on all SSIsubscales indicated a high level of that particular skill.Table 1 features relevant descriptive information for the SSI.

Results and Discussion

Table 1 features correlations among study 1 variables. Severalinteresting patterns emerged. H1 predicted that mindful ob-serving and describing would be positively correlated withnonverbal and verbal encoding, decoding, and regulatingabilities. Results suggest that mindful observing and describ-ing were only positively correlated with three of the six socialskills (i.e., social control, social expressivity, emotional sensi-tivity). Therefore, H1 was only marginally supported. Peoplehigh in social control tend to be able to monitor their ownbehaviors in line with what is considered appropriate andnormative for any given situation. In addition, people whoare able to express their own sensations and who are able toput these sensations into words (i.e., social expressivity) seemto then also be better able to adjust thoughts, feelings, andbehaviors to social situations. Lastly, mindful observing anddescribing one’s own sensory stimuli were positively associ-ated with emotional sensitivity, one’s ability to interpret theemotional cues of others. This skill might be particularlyimportant in the emotional support context, where the helperneeds to attend to the nonverbal cues of the upset person:Attending to one’s own emotional state and being able to labelthat state might contribute to one’s ability to attend to theemotional experiences and expressions of the upset person.Mindful observing and describing may be fundamental to

Mindfulness

managing social discourse and may serve to connect individ-ual sensations with the unique demands of the social interac-tion, in this case, the social support context. However, we noteonce more that our results may have been biased by thesomewhat low scale reliabilities for emotional sensitivity.

H2 predicted that acting with awareness (i.e., not being onautopilot), taking a nonevaluative stance toward one’s emo-tions, and not reacting to these emotions would all be posi-tively correlated with nonverbal/verbal sensitivity and expres-sivity. Correlations confirmed these predictions only for actingwith awareness and emotional sensitivity, one’s ability toattend to the emotional expressions of others. Thus, H2 wasalso only marginally supported. In addition, an unpredictedpattern emerged for social sensitivity: People who scored highon social sensitivity tended to also be less able to act withawareness and to engage in mindful nonjudging. Upon in-spection of the social sensitivity items used in the SSI, theseresults may make sense. Social sensitivity was assessed withitems such as “It’s very important to me that other people likeme” or “I’m usually concerned about the impression I ammaking on other people.” It seems that concern for how oneappears to others might tab an intense preoccupation withone’s own thoughts and feelings (Guerrero and Reiter 1998),rather than dispassionately attending to moment-by-momentthoughts without judging. Ultimately, we might have to re-conceptualize social sensitivity such that it becomes commen-surate in meaning with its nonverbal counterpart. That way,we may be better able to assess how well people encodepartner messages without concern for self.

H3 predicted that acting with awareness, as well asnonjudging and nonreacting, would be negatively correlatedwith verbal and nonverbal regulating skills, one’s abilities tocontrol one’s own emotional and verbal expressions. H3 wasalso only partially supported, such that acting with awarenessin a nonjudging and nonreactive manner was negatively cor-related with emotional control, but not with social control.

People who scored high on emotional control reported oper-ating more on automatic pilot (vis à vis acting with awareness)and being more reactive and judgmental toward felt emotions.Notably, the somewhat low reliabilities for the emotionalcontrol scale might have biased our results. We conductedsupplemental analyses to further explore these findings byexamining associations with the mindfulness composite (seeTable 1). As can be seen, mindfulness was also negativelyassociated with emotional control, which further corroboratethe partial results for H3 (r=−.34, p>001; see Table 1).Contrary to our predictions for H3, results for social controlonly revealed a positive correlation with nonjudging: Peoplewho reported increased abilities to manage their impressionsin talk also reported being less judgmental of their ownemotional states. Perhaps this reflects previous findings thathigh self-monitors are usually quite confident (Riggio et al.1990) and might therefore be more inclined to not judge whatthey feel.

Taken together, study 1 findings suggest that mindfulnessplays a complex role in the supportive communication be-tween provider and recipient. Consider first the mindfulnessfacets: Acting with awareness captures a person’s tendency toavoid automatic behaviors (e.g., “I tend to spill things,” “I findmyself doing things without paying attention,” reverse coded),whereas nonreactivity is a person’s ability to merely let diffi-cult felt emotions “pass by” (e.g., “Usually, when I havedistressing thoughts or images, I just notice them and let themgo”). Lastly, high nonjudgment scores indicated a person’sability to accept internal stimuli as they present themselves(e.g., “I tell myself that I shouldn’t be feeling what I’mfeeling,” reverse coded). Next, consider emotional controlwhich concerns the extent to which people are able to self-monitor nonverbal expressions in social interactions (Riggioand Friedman 1981). Applied to the support context, supportproviders may control emotions by choosing to mask theirdistressing feelings and by appearing poised or even pleasant

Table 1 Reliabilities, means, standard deviations, and correlational coefficients for variables in study 1

α M SD 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

1. Mindfulness .75 4.32 .61 – – – – – – – – – – –

2. Observing .81 4.90 .96 .28** – – – – – – – – – –

3. Describing .89 4.61 1.17 .68** .20** – – – – – – – – –

4. Awareness .87 4.07 1.13 .65** −.03 .39** – – – – – – – –

5. Nonjudging .91 3.78 1.30 .61** −.15* .18** .27** – – – – – – –

6. Nonreactivity .81 4.22 1.05 .45** −.08 .07 .09 .22** – – – – – –

7. Social control .86 4.61 1.30 .36** .22** .36** .12 .17* .10 – – – – –

8. Social sensitivity .82 4.83 1.10 −.15* .06 −.07 −.13* −.23** .01 −.05 – – – –

9. Social expressivity .82 4.97 1.03 .26** .29** .23** .043 .01 .18* .54** .08 – – –

10. Emotional control .60 3.53 1.21 −.34** .11 −.13 −.28** −.29** −.30** −.02 .26** .03 – –

11. Emotional sensitivity .62 5.11 .85 .38** .44** .32** .14* .08 .09 .35** .17** .36** −.06 –

N=215; *p<.05; **p<.001

Mindfulness

when offering help, a dynamic that may backfire because feltemotions may “leak out” and thus be noticed by the recipient.In addition, masking emotions tends to be stressful (Grandey2003).

In an attempt to glean support availability and readinessfrom potential helpers, support seekers might be perhapsoverly sensitive to the nonverbal and verbal cues of others.Emotional control was also positively correlated with socialsensitivity, a finding that might illustrate the constellationalnature of these skills. Perhaps increased levels of these twoskills lead people to be overly involved with what others thinkof them; all of which are visible in people’s reduced levels ofmindful awareness and nonjudgment. Perhaps most funda-mentally, study 1 results suggest that some mindfulness fea-tures (e.g., nonjudging, describing) may impact verbal mes-sages and nonverbal cues in different ways in the supportprocess.

Study 2: Mindfulness Interventions and Support Skills

The purpose of study 2 was to follow up on our findings fromstudy 1 that people who scored high on nonverbal regulation(i.e., emotional control) skills and verbal sensitivity tended tobe relatively judgmental and reactive toward their own emo-tional experiences. These people also reported being moreinclined to operate on automatic pilot. In study 2, we testedwhether brief mindfulness exercises would ameliorate theseeffects (H1). Our conjectures were based on empirical evi-dence documenting positive mindfulness effects on relationalfunctioning and empathic responding (Block-Lerner et al.2004). We also sought to replicate a well-established findingthat mindfulness interventions would indeed improve people’smindfulness (H2).

Method

Participants

Ninety-two students (nMindfulness=44; nComparison=48) fromcommunication classes at a large university in the Upper-Midwest of the USA participated in study 2 in exchange forminor extra credit. Instructors were approached initially withthe request to have students participate in the study. We usedintact classes, such that three classes completed the mindful-ness regimen, whereas two other classes served as the com-parison group. We began the study for all five classes at thesame time (second semester week) and also ended it at thesame time (fourth semester week). All five classes were upper-division courses for junior and senior communication studiesmajors. None of the classes contained lecture information onmindfulness, meditation, or emotional support. We did not

collect data about class membership. Therefore, there mightbe a systematic difference between comparison and mindful-ness groups as a function of the nature of the upper-divisioncourses.

The average age of the participants across both groups was22.5 years (range=19 to 39 years). Groups differed somewhatwith respect to age (MMindfulness=21.7, SDMindfulness=3.62;MComparison=23.27, SDComparison=3.83) and sex (e.g.,Mindfulness nfemale=18; 40.9 %; Comparison nfemale=32,66.7 %). The majority of the sample consisted of white/European Americans (n=64), followed by Asian or Asian-Americans (n=14), and African-Americans (n=6). Nine par-ticipants belonged to other ethnic groups.

A total of 46 % of the participants (n=57) reported havinghad meditation experience. Of those, 31 people were in themindfulness group. In terms of length of meditation experi-ence, only 15 out of 91 participants reported having practicedmeditation for at least a month (nmindfulness=1); 8 out of 15participants reported meditation experiences in excess of7 months (nmindfulness=4). In terms of meditation routine, ofthe 15 meditation practitioners, only two reported practicingmeditation every day, and both people were in the comparisongroup. It seems that the comparison group contained peoplewith more meditation experience than the mindfulness group.We examined whether (a) length of meditation experience and(b) meditation routine impacted our outcomes by enteringboth of these measures as covariates in our repeated measuresanalyses of variance (ANOVAs). However, neither meditationmeasure generated significant interaction effects.We thereforeeliminated these two covariates from future analyses.

Procedures

The research design reflected a pretest/posttest nonequivalent,quasi-experimental design. Mindfulness participants wereasked to engage in daily exercises over the course of 2 weeksand to keep a diary of their experiences. On the first day ofweek 1, we handed out workbooks and spent one 55-min classperiod discussing the meaning of mindfulness, the overallstructure of the 2-week exercise regimen, and the daily exer-cises for week 1. After the first week, we introduced theexercises to be completed during week 2. All instructionswere provided in class. Over the course of the 2-week period,we regularly reminded students during class to complete thedaily exercises. Students practiced the mindfulness exerciseson their own time outside of class. After the 2-week period,students in both mindfulness and comparison groups complet-ed the posttest consisting of the same scales used in the pretest.Scales were presented in random order across both pretest andposttests.

Students in the comparison group received no lecture onmindfulness, and no exercises or assignments. They merelycompleted the pretest and posttest after the 2-week interval.

Mindfulness

All surveys were completed in class and during class time. Tofurther encourage adherence to the mindfulness regimen, wecollected all workbooks at the end of week 2. We checkedstudent workbooks whether diary worksheets had been com-pleted. Virtually all students completed at least someworksheets per week.

Mindfulness Stimuli

The mindfulness practices were adapted in consultation with apsychiatric rehabilitation practitioner certified for acceptanceand commitment therapy (ACT; Hayes et al. 2011) and dia-lectical behavioral therapy (DBT; Linehan 1993). In week 1,participants practiced one of four structured 5-min mindful-ness exercises. The four mindfulness exercises included oneexercise that used imagery (i.e., conveyor belt exercise) andthree observational exercises (i.e., mindful routine, breathing,and attunement). Participants were instructed to practice theseskills daily for 2 weeks.

Participants recorded their experiences on a diary sheet thatwas included in the workbook. The sheet consisted of a tablewith seven columns (one column for each day) and five rowsso that participants could record (a) the exercise they complet-ed, (b) what sensations they experienced, (c) what they felt, (d)what they thought, and (e) what was difficult during theexercise. Twenty-seven students reported having completedthe mindfulness exercises every day. An additional sevenstudents stated that they had completed these exercises at leastfive times per week. By far the most favorite exercise was themindful routine exercise (n=16), followed by the mindfulbreathing exercise (n=16) and the conveyor belt exercise(n=4). About half of the participants also indicated that it islikely that they will continue with these exercises.

For week 2, participants practiced emotion regulation skills inaddition to the mindfulness exercise (see Linehan 1993).Participants completed a daily appraisal analysis for the strongestemotion they had experienced that day. Participants labeled theemotion and rated the intensity of the emotion on a scale rangingfrom 0 to 100. For the appraisal analysis, participants indicated(a) the prompting event for the emotion (e.g., what started theemotion?), (b) interpretations (e.g., beliefs, assumptions, ap-praisals), (c) body changes (e.g., what was felt in the body?),(d) body language (e.g., what were facial expressions, gestures,and/or posture?), (e) action urges (e.g., what did the participantfeel like doing or saying?), (f) what was actually said or done,and (g) after effects (e.g., any other emotions, or thoughts?).Using Likert scales that ranged from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5(strongly agree), participants were asked whether they enjoyedthe emotion regulation exercise and whether they thought theexercise was useful. Views with respect to both issues seemedsplit (Ms=2.82 for both items; SDs=.93; 1.08; respectively).

Measures

Mindfulness was assessed once more with the 39-item Five-Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ; Baer et al. 2006).All items were assessed with Likert scales that ranged from 1(strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree), and scale informa-tion is provided in Table 2. We reverse coded items formindful acting with awareness and nonjudging again. Highscores for both mindfulness facets reflect high levels of thesetwo mindfulness facets.

Social skills were once more assessed with an abbreviated39-item version of Riggio’s (1986) six-dimensional SocialSkills Inventory (SSI; Riggio and Carney 2003). Items wereassessed with Likert scales that ranged from 1 (strongly

Table 2 Scale reliabilities formeasurements in study 2 Mindfulness group (n=44) Comparison group (n=48)

Pretest Posttest Pretest Posttest

Mindfulness

Nonreacting .77 .81 .79 .81

Observing .63 .84 .81 .89

Acting with awareness .83 .85 .86 .87

Nonjudging .90 .71 .90 .92

Describing .87 .90 .83 .89

Social skills

Emotional expressivity .73 .71 .76 .87

Emotional control .79 .79 .60 .78

Social sensitivity .87 .81 .75 .80

Social expressivity .88 .84 .81 .86

Emotional sensitivity .80 .77 .73 .73

Mindfulness

disagree) to 7 (strongly agree). Table 2 features relevantdescriptive information for the SSI. The social control sub-scale was accidentally omitted.

Results and Discussion

We used repeated measures ANOVAs to examine the data.Power (with α=.05 and r=.40 among repeated measures) wasin excess of .99 for large effect sizes (f=.40) and .80 for mediumeffect sizes (f=.25). We conducted ten 2 (group: mindfulness,comparison)×2 (time: pretest, posttests) repeated measures anal-yses of variance (ANOVAs) with each of the five mindfulnessfacets and each of the four social skills as dependent measures.

H1 predicted that mindfulness interventions would amelio-rate skill deficits that emerged in study 1, such that peoplewould report reduced levels of social sensitivity and emotionalcontrol. Significant group×time interactions emerged for so-cial sensitivity only [F(1,90) 7.44 p<.01, partial η2=.76].Recall that study 1 showed negative correlations for socialsensitivity and acting with awareness in a nonjudgmentalmanner. People who are socially sensitive may, at times, beoverly attentive to their own self-presentational behaviors asmeasured by the SSI (e.g., “I can instantly tell how others feelabout me”). Specifically, we predicted that mindfulness exer-cises would permit people to engage in moderate levels (butnot excessively low levels) of social sensitivity. Results sug-gest that mindfulness participants reported significantly lowersocial sensitivity levels after the 2-week exercises, thussupporting H1 with respect to one social skill (see Table 3).

Notable means still hovered above the midpoint, suggestingthat, in general, people are moderately attentive to their ownand the behavior of others. Nevertheless, our results providecursory evidence that mindfulness exercises lead people awayfrom increased or excessive self-consciousness toward a morebalanced awareness of their surroundings, which is subse-quently reflected in increased levels of verbal encoding skills.While certainly modest in nature, this is a first finding whichdemonstrates a meaningful connection between mindfulnessand one important communication skill that is implicated inthe supportive communication process.

H2 predicted that people would report increased levels ofmindfulness after the 2-week intervention. Significant group×time interactions emerged for mindful nonreacting [F(1,90)5.00, p=.028, partial η2=.05], mindful observing [F(1,90)5.01, p=.028, partial η2=.05], acting with awareness[F(1,90) 13.56, p<.001, partial η2=.13], and describing[F(1,90) 7.16, p<.01, partial η2=.07]. Table 3 shows thatparticipants reported improved acting with awareness, observ-ing, nonreacting, and describing abilities, whereas levels forobserving actually decreased among comparison group par-ticipants. Effects were rather modest but in predicted direc-tions. Strongest effects emerged for acting with awareness;participants who completed the mindfulness exercises report-ed being less on automatic pilot and more attentive to presentactivities, thoughts, and feelings, whereas comparison groupparticipants reported an increase in automatic and inattentivebehaviors. These results are entirely in line with extensiveresearch using the FFMQ (Bohlmeijer et al. 2011;Christopher et al. 2012).

Table 3 Mean pretest and posttest changes in mindfulness facets and social skills for study 2

Mindfulness group (n=44) Comparison group (n=48)

Pretest Posttest Pretest Posttest

Mindfulness

Nonreacting 2.52 (.50) 2.70 (.46) 2.76 (.76) 2.65 (.41)*

Observing 2.78 (.42) 2.95 (.52) 2.88 (.51) 2.84 (.58)*

Acting with awareness 2.34 (.52) 2.43 (.53) 2.65 (.55) 2.41 (.54)***

Nonjudging 2.60 (.68) 2.76 (.88) 2.68 (.67) 2.65 (.70)

Describing 3.80 (.59) 3.92 (.65) 4.02 (.48) 3.94 (.53)**

Social skills

Emotional expressivity 3.67 (.18) 3.77 (.19) 3.85 (.17) 3.96 (.18)

Emotional control 4.25 (.16) 4.41 (.17) 4.42 (.16) 4.56 (.16)

Social sensitivity 4.96 (.14) 4.55 (.14) 5.12 (10) 5.14 (13)**

Social expressivity 5.12 (.15) 5.13 (.16) 5.00 (.15) 4.98 (.15)

Emotional sensitivity 4.89 (.13) 4.76 (.13) 4.80 (.13) 4.80 (.12)

For each scale, means are presented with standard deviations in parentheses

*p<.05; **p<.01; ***p<.001

Mindfulness

Study 3: Mindfulness and Communication CopingStrategies

In study 3, we tested whether mindfulness interventionsmeaningfully impact people’s communicative coping abil-ities. Theoretically, study 3 was anchored in the MCM,which assumes that mindfulness plays a crucial role inhow people cope with difficult emotional experiences(Garland et al. 2009, 2011). Communicative copingstrategies are the actual interactive attempts people useto manage stressful emotions and can be executed (a)more or less skillfully and (b) discursively and in socialinteraction, and (c) across a set of diverse interpersonalrelationships (Bodenmann 2005). Beneficial communica-tive coping strategies include talking to others about one’semotions, asking for help, or asserting one’s views.Dysfunctional communicative coping strategies includeblaming others, expressing anger and aggression, oravoiding talk with others all together. In addition, weexplored positive and negative reappraisals because theyseem to play a particularly crucial role in the copingprocess (Garland et al. 2009, 2011; Neacsiu et al. 2010).

We adapted the mindfulness intervention for study 3from Linehan’s (1993) dialectical behavioral therapy(DBT), which is organized around four skill modules,namely core mindfulness skills, interpersonal effective-ness skills, emotion regulation, and distress toleranceskil ls . DBT has been designed part icularly fornonmeditation clients and has been effectively used intreating depression, anxiety, and eating disorders(Neacsiu et al. 2010). We drew on core mindfulness andemotion regulation modules only because these modulesfocus on skills that play an important role in the supportprocess. We predicted that the mindfulness interventionwould result in increased levels of communicative copingresources and positive reappraisals (H1). We also predict-ed that mindfulness training would encourage people touse fewer dysfunctional communicative coping resourcesand negative reappraisals (H2).

Method

Participants

A total of 123 students (nMindfulness=51; nComparison=72)from upper-division communication classes at a largeuniversity in the Midwestern USA participated in study3 as part of a course assignment. We assigned studentsfrom two classes to the mindfulness group, whereas stu-dents in three other classes served as the comparisongroup. Two students were excluded from the analyses

because they indicated that they were in DBT at the timeof the experiment. The average age of the participantsacross both groups was 21.7 years (range=18 to 49 years).The mindfulness and comparison groups differed some-what with respect to age (MMindfulness=22.6, SDMindfulness=4.47; MComparison=23.7, SDComparison=6.86) and sex (e.g.,Mindfulness nfemale=32; 62.7 %; Comparison nfemale=44,61.1 %). The majority of the sample consisted of white/European Americans (n=87), Asian or Asian-Americans,(n=17), and African-Americans (n=12). Seven partici-pants belonged to other ethnic groups.

Procedures

The research design for study 3 was once more a pretest/posttest quasi-experimental design. To assess equivalenceacross the mindfulness and comparison groups, partici-pants completed anxiety, anger, and depression scales;all of which have been found to be correlated with mind-fulness (Bohlmeijer et al. 2011) and coping (Field et al.2007). Items for these scales were assessed on Likertscales, ranging from 1 (not at all) to 4 (very much).Anxiety was measured with 20 items (e.g., “I feel calm”)from the state anxiety subscale of the State-Trait AnxietyInventory (STAI; Spielberger 1980). Anger was measuredwith nine items (e.g., “I feel irritated”) from the stateanger subscale of the State-Trait Anger ExpressionInventory (STAXI; Spielberger 1988). Participants wereinstructed to evaluate anxiety and anger items with respectto how they felt at the moment. Lastly, we measureddepression with 20 items (e.g., “I felt that everything Idid was an effort”) from the Center for EpidemiologyStudies Depression scale (CES-D; Radloff 1977).Participants evaluated each item with respect to how oftenthey felt this way during the past week. Scale informationis featured in Table 4. No significant group differencesemerged as a function of these three measures. Becausethese three measures served solely to assess group equiv-alence, they are not further examined.

Procedures for study 3 were largely identical to thoseof study 2. Immediately following the entrance survey,which contained the anger, anxiety, and depression scales,both groups completed a pretest. After the pretest, mind-fulness participants received a workbook with descrip-tions of exercises and worksheets to be completed overthe course of 2 weeks. Once more, we spent one 55-minclass period discussing the study and daily exercises forweek 1. After the first week, we introduced the exercisesto be completed during week 2. Students practiced themindfulness exercises in their own time outside of class.After the 2-week period, students in both mindfulness andcomparison groups completed the posttest consisting of

Mindfulness

the same scales used in the pretest. The order of scaleswas randomized across both pretest and posttests. Allsurveys were completed in class and during class time.All instructions were provided in class. However, thistime, we neglected to collect student workbooks at theend of the 2-week session. Thus, we could not assess theextent to which students actually completed the 2-weekregimen.

Mindfulness Stimuli

Study 3 mindfulness exercises were adapted from thecore mindfulness and emotion regulation modulesoutlined by Linehan (1993). Participants practiced twocore mindfulness exercise clusters in weeks 1 and 2.For week 2, participants practiced the same emotionregulation skills used in study 2 in addition to themindfulness skill clusters.

The two mindfulness exercise clusters were unstruc-tured, such that they did not specify a certain sittingposition, time frame, or mental image. The two skillclusters tapped three “what” (i.e., what one does whenpracticing mindfulness) and three “how” skills (i.e., thequalities related to the ways these activities are done). Thethree what skills encouraged students to either (a) observe(e.g., notice bodily sensations; watch thoughts like cloudsas they come and go), (b) describe (e.g., put words onthoughts and feelings), or (c) participate (e.g., act withawareness). Students were asked to only engage in eitherone of these three what skills at a time. The three howskills encouraged students to be (a) nonjudgmental (e.g.,see but do not evaluate, acknowledge but do not judge),(b) one-mindful (e.g., do one thing at a time, let go ofdistractions), and (c) effective (e.g., focus on what works,let go of vengeance, anger, and self-righteousness).Students were encouraged to apply as many of these three

how skills as they liked at any given time and in conjunc-tion with the what skills.

Participants were asked to record their daily practice expe-riences on a diary sheet, which was included in the workbook.The sheet consisted of a table with seven columns (one col-umn for each day) and six rows (one row for eachmindfulnessskill; i.e., three what and three how skills). Participants wereencouraged to briefly recordwhich coremindfulness skill theyhad practiced and to indicate their emotional experiences andthoughts after they had practiced that skill.

Measures

Communicative coping and reappraisal strategies wereassessed with items from the multidimensional RevisedWays of Coping (RWOC) scale (Neacsiu et al. 2010). Inthe pretest, participants were asked to evaluate howoften they used the behavior or had the thought to dealwith particular stressful events over the last 1 month. Inorder to capture changes due to the mindfulness inter-vention, participants were prompted to think of the last2 weeks while completing the posttest. All items wereassessed on scales that ranged from 1 (never used) to 4(regularly used [5 to 7 times per week]). Higher scoresindicate that people use an increased amount of thatcoping strategy. The full RWOC scale consisted of 59items and features strong reliabilities (Neacsiu et al.2010). We devised four subscales, namely a beneficialcommunicative coping scale (8 items; e.g., “Talked tosomeone who could do something concrete about theproblem”), a dysfunctional communicative coping scale(7 items; e.g., “Took it out on others”), a positivereappraisal scale (18 items; e.g., “Concentrated onsomething good that could come out of the wholething”), and a negative reappraisal scale (8 items; e.g.,“Criticized or lectured myself”). Table 4 features reli-ability information for all scales.

Table 4 Scale information formeasurements in study 3 Mindfulness group (n=51) Comparison group (n=72)

M(SD) α M(SD) Α

Anxiety 1.95 (.50) .88 1.88 (.54) .91

Anger 1.21 (.38) .87 1.20 (.28) .85

Depression 1.69 (.40) .89 1.66 (.42) .76

Reliabilities (α) Pretest Posttest Pretest Posttest

Beneficial communicative coping .72 .63 .75 .62

Dysfunctional communicative coping .80 .63 .74 .72

Positive reappraisal .87 .80 .89 .84

Negative reappraisal .83 .77 .76 .73

Mindfulness

Results and Discussion

Power (with α=.05 and r=.45 among repeated measures) wasin excess of .99 for large effect sizes (f=.40) and .88 formedium effect sizes (f=.25). We conducted four 2 (Group:mindfulness, comparison)×2 (Time: pretest, posttests) repeat-ed measures ANOVAs with each of the four coping strategiesas dependent measure. Significant group×time interactionsemerged for beneficial communicative coping strategies[F(1,119) 5.63, p=.019, partial η2=.045], dysfunctional com-municative coping strategies [F(1,119) 7.45, p<.01, partial η2

=.059], and positive reappraisal [F(1,119) 11.04, p<.01, par-tial η2=.085].

Table 5 features mean pretest and posttest changes formindfulness and comparison groups. An inspection of thesemeans shows relatively modest changes across groups, yetthey were all in predicted directions. Although these changeswere small, they provide preliminary evidence that mindful-ness plays a meaningful role in the supportive communicationprocess. People in the mindfulness group reported significant-ly decreased levels for dysfunctional communicative copingskills after the 2-week mindfulness practice. In addition, themindfulness group also reported significant increases in pos-itive reappraisals after the practice, a finding that resonateswith the work by Garland and colleagues (2011, 2013; Hanleyet al. 2014). We also found group differences for beneficialcommunicative coping. However, these differences largelyoccurred in the comparison group, which actually reported adecrease in beneficial communicative coping after the 2-weekintervention. To wit, participants consisted of students, whosestress levels commonly increase as the semester progresses; itmight be that these stresses caught up with students, such thatthey led to a depletion of beneficial coping mechanisms, apoint that has been made recently by Floyd et al. (2007).

General Discussion

The presence of emotional support and the ability to mindfullyengage with difficult sensory experiences are two resources

that significantly contribute to our well-being. However, theconnection between mindfulness and supportive communica-tion has yet to be systematically explored. This project is a firstattempt in that direction and forms the beginning of a researchagenda that examines the role of mindfulness in the emotionalsupport process. Our mission was to generate initial empiricalevidence for the connection between mindfulness and severalcrucial communicative factors that implicate the emotionalsupport process, namely verbal and nonverbal expressivityand perception skills as well as communicative coping skills.

The results of our three studies paint an intricate pictureabout the connection between mindfulness and enacted emo-tional support. Briefly, study 1 suggests that people who canmindfully attend to and describe internal and external stimulialso tend to manage verbal information more effectively, bothwhen receiving it and sending it. Being aware of thoughts andfeelings is closely connected to our stream of consciousnesswhich consists to some extent of words and images (Seager2007). Being able to mindfully present thoughts and feelingsis certainly important for both provider and recipient whendiscursively managing a supportive conversation.Interestingly, skills that tended to encourage self-focused at-tention (e.g., emotional control, social sensitivity) were sig-nificantly associated with lower mindfulness, specifically re-duced levels of acting with awareness to inner experiences andreduced levels of nonjudging felt emotions. We speculatedthat mindfulness training would perhaps moderate self-focused attention in study 2. Indeed, this was so for socialsensitivity only (and not emotional control; the ability tomonitor one’s own public displays of emotions). Social sen-sitivity, the way it is conceived by Riggio (1992), assesses aperson’s ability to interpret the verbal communication ofothers. People who are socially sensitive are keenly aware ofthe appropriateness of their own actions and usually care agreat deal what others think of them. Therefore, it might bethat people who score high on this skill are somewhat self-conscious and may thus not be able to fully engage with theother person (Riggio and Carney 2003). Study 3 examineswhether mindfulness interventions influence people’s copingabilities; results suggest improvements for positive

Table 5 Mean pretest and posttest changes in coping variables for study 3

Mindfulness group (n=51) Comparison group (n=72)

Pretest M(SE) Posttest M(SE) Pretest M(SE) Posttest M(SE)

Beneficial communicative coping 2.59 (.06) 2.61 (.06) 2.75 (.05) 2.59 (.05)*

Dysfunctional communicative coping 2.22 (.07) 1.89 (.07) 2.19 (.06) 2.12 (.06)**

Positive reappraisal 2.61 (.06) 2.73 (.07) 2.66 (.05) 2.54 (.05)***

Negative reappraisal 2.37 (.08) 2.14 (.07) 2.27 (.07) 2.21 (.06)

For each scale, means are presented with standard errors in parentheses

*p<.05; **p<.01; ***p<.001

Mindfulness

reappraisal, while people also reported using less dysfunction-al communicative coping strategies.

The benefits of mindfulness on people’s coping abilities areslowly emerging. But the benefits of mindfulness conjure upan obvious question: If contemplative practice alone can im-prove a person’s coping abilities, then what role if any doessupportive communication play in people’s lives? The answerlies in social evolution: People live relational lives; seekingand emotional support is essential to how we function(Baumeister and Leary 1995). In our view, mindfulness im-proves people’s abilities to provide emotional support. Oncepracticed, mindfulness makes for more compassionate andbeneficial emotional support. Curiously, our model challengesthe traditional skills/competency perspective that permeatesinterpersonal communication, itself anchored in the rhetoricaltradition (i.e., debate and argumentation; Burleson 1981). Therhetorical approach to communication implies that emotionalsupport proficiencies can be increased by training helpers“how and when to convey helpful intentions” (Burleson2003, pp. 579).

Burleson and Goldsmith (1998) outlined a theory of con-versationally induced reappraisals. The theory underscoresthat effectively engaging a target to reframe events is notaccomplished in single, brief messages nor is there a one-fits-all tactical cluster that works for everyone. Rather, pro-viders encourage targets to articulate emotion-focused narra-tives and the continued articulation, refinement, and repetitionof this narrative that helps the recipient to make sense of whatis felt and what happened and, in so doing, to develop morefunctional (e.g., less stress-producing) reappraisals. But beforethe distressed person can be encouraged to reinterpret upset-ting events, a discursive environment needs to be establishedwithin which the person can safely and comfortably discloseaversive emotions and experiences. For example, providersmight ask “tough questions,” in such a way that they expresstentativeness, which is usually viewed as indecisive in othercommunicative functions (e.g., “It sounds like you might havefelt upset because he said to you to not go in the backyard, ornot?”). Communicative devices such as these generate thediscursive space within which the upset person can explorewhat is felt. Of course, there are also times when a person issimply not ready to process difficult emotions and encourage-ments to discuss what happened may cause more harm thanbenefit. Mindfulness assists providers in knowing when to usewhat communicative strategy

The results of our study offer some preliminary support forour speculations: What is called for when helping others is anattention to present sensory experiences, rather than a focus onhow one might appear to others. The mindful mode encour-ages providers to accept the target’s needs and to observe andnotice what these needs are. In addition, the mindful modealso allows people to detach from potential pressures that theymay feel when offering help and may ward against emotional

contagion. What is worth further testing is whether a mindfulmode can “prime” potential helpers to experience socio-affective emotions that subsequently influence message pro-duction. For instance, work by Singer (Klimecki et al. 2013;Singer and Bolz 2013) and Algoe (Algoe 2012; Algoe et al.2013; Kok et al. 2013) suggests that compassion and empathybroaden attention and facilitate social connections with others.Perhaps compassion could serve as the affective “precursor”to beneficial supportive message production because compas-sion functions to synchronize cognitive, affective, and behav-ioral mechanisms of self and other when support is provided.

Our studies have a number of limitations. First, usingquasi-experimental design for studies 2 and 3 is problematicbecause the design suffers from an unlimited number ofinternal validity threats. Randomized experimental trials arenecessary to further examine the causal mechanisms of mind-fulness in appraisal-based emotional support. Second, we didnot assess group equivalence for study 2, and two social skillsubscales used in study 1 featured somewhat low reliabilities.These issues certainly impacted our results. At the very least,the results of our studies and particularly those associated withstudy 1 need to be replicated.

Human Subjects Approval The three studies have been approved bythe Institutional Review Board at the university which is affiliated withthe first author. Participants for study 1 received a consent agreementpage. Participants for studies 2 and 3 provided informed consent.

Conflict of Interest The authors declare that they have no conflict ofinterest.

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