| Mindfulness has been defined as being comprised by 1) present moment attention and awareness, and 2) a stance of non-judgment towards experience. To date, scant basic research has been conducted to test whether this second aspect, non-judgment, is indeed related to mindfulness at automatic levels of consciousness. Theoretical work has posited that as a non-judgmental stance, mindfulness allows for stimuli to be viewed more objectively, or "empirically." Thus, we hypothesized that individuals high in state and trait mindfulness would exhibit a reduction in automatic judgments. Three studies were conducted to assess the role of mindfulness across a variety of measures of judgment (i.e., personally motivated perception, implicit and explicit attitudes, and affective reactivity to various photographs as measured by facial EMG). Across these studies we found evidence that mindfulness is related to attenuated bias in judgments and behaviors, however mindfulness also appears related to greater positive affective reactivity. |
