Department of Psychiatry, University of California-San Francisco, 3333 California Street, San Francisco, CA 94143, USA.
Emotion. 2012 Apr;12(2):338-50. doi: 10.1037/a0026118. Epub 2011 Dec 12.
Contemplative practices are believed to alleviate psychological problems, cultivate prosocial behavior and promote self-awareness. In addition, psychological science has developed tools and models for understanding the mind and promoting well-being. Additional effort is needed to combine frameworks and techniques from these traditions to improve emotional experience and socioemotional behavior. An 8-week intensive (42 hr) meditation/emotion regulation training intervention was designed by experts in contemplative traditions and emotion science to reduce "destructive enactment of emotions" and enhance prosocial responses. Participants were 82 healthy female schoolteachers who were randomly assigned to a training group or a wait-list control group, and assessed preassessment, postassessment, and 5 months after training completion. Assessments included self-reports and experimental tasks to capture changes in emotional behavior. The training group reported reduced trait negative affect, rumination, depression, and anxiety, and increased trait positive affect and mindfulness compared to the control group. On a series of behavioral tasks, the training increased recognition of emotions in others (Micro-Expression Training Tool), protected trainees from some of the psychophysiological effects of an experimental threat to self (Trier Social Stress Test; TSST), appeared to activate cognitive networks associated with compassion (lexical decision procedure), and affected hostile behavior in the Marital Interaction Task. Most effects at postassessment that were examined at follow-up were maintained (excluding positive affect, TSST rumination, and respiratory sinus arrhythmia recovery). Findings suggest that increased awareness of mental processes can influence emotional behavior, and they support the benefit of integrating contemplative theories/practices with psychological models and methods of emotion regulation.
沉思实践被认为可以减轻心理问题、培养亲社会行为和促进自我意识。此外，心理科学已经开发出了理解思维和促进幸福感的工具和模型。需要进一步努力将这些传统的框架和技术结合起来，以改善情绪体验和社会情绪行为。一项为期 8 周的密集（42 小时）冥想/情绪调节训练干预措施由沉思传统和情绪科学专家设计，旨在减少“情绪的破坏性表达”，增强亲社会反应。参与者为 82 名健康的女学校教师，他们被随机分配到训练组或候补对照组，并在评估前、评估后和训练完成后 5 个月进行评估。评估包括自我报告和实验任务，以捕捉情绪行为的变化。与对照组相比，训练组报告说，他们的特质负性情绪、沉思、抑郁和焦虑减少，而特质正性情绪和正念增加。在一系列行为任务中，训练增加了对他人情绪的识别（微表情训练工具），保护受训者免受实验性自我威胁（特里尔社会应激测试；TSST）的一些心理生理影响，似乎激活了与同情心相关的认知网络（词汇决策程序），并影响了婚姻互动任务中的敌对行为。在随访中检查的大多数在评估后出现的效果都得到了维持（不包括正性情绪、TSST 沉思和呼吸窦性心律失常恢复）。研究结果表明，增强对心理过程的认识可以影响情绪行为，并支持将沉思理论/实践与心理模型和情绪调节方法相结合的益处。
