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Mindfulness, Emotion regulation and Subjective well-being: An

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 Indian Journal of Social Science Researches
Vol. 8 No. 1-2, March & Oct. 2011, pp. 159-167
ISSN 09749837

Mindfulness, Emotion regulation and Subjective well-being:

An Overview of Pathways to Positive Mental Health
Satchit Prasun Mandal*, Yogesh Kumar Arya** and Rakesh Pandey***

There is a general agreement among researchers that mindful meditation training enhances functional status,
physical and psychological well-being. Studies on mindfulness and well-being relationship seem to converge on
the fact that mindfulness is associated with different components of subjective well-being (SWB). The
mindfulness-well-being relationship though, has been well documented in the literature; the exact mechanism
underlying this relationship is not well understood so far. The present paper makes an attempt to review studies
dealing with the relationship of mindfulness with emotional regulation and well-being as well as those dealing
with relationship of emotion regulation with well-being in order to identify the probable mediating processes and
mechanism that may potentially explain the mindfulness and well-being relationship. Based on the reported
pattern of relationship among the said constructs it was theorized that emotion regulation may serve as a
potential mediator of the relationship between mindfulness and well-being. However, well-planned empirical
studies are needed to attest this theoretical speculation inasmuch as some studies points towards the possibility
that mindfulness may serve as a potential mediator in the relationship of emotion regulation and well-being.
Keywords: Mindfulness, subjective well-being, emotion regulation, positive affect

Human beings have been concerned about well-
being, happiness, life satisfaction and positive
emotional experiences from very initial days of
their existence. In recent years, issues related to
well-being and happiness and their possible
correlates have drawn considerable attention and
interest of researchers. Consequently, a plethora
of experimental and theoretical literatures on the
different dimensions, mechanisms and correlates
of health and well-being have been produced
(Diener, 1999; Hoorn, 2007). However, from
applied perspective there is a need to focus more
on those correlates which can be developed and
modified within an individual through practice
and/or training and effort. The construct of
mindfulness is of great interest in this regard,
because oriental meditation practices particularly
Buddhism provides methods of cultivating it,
which are now being adopted in the western
research world also in order to promote health
and well-being.
Mindfulness as an eastern construct connotes
non-judgmental and nonreactive acceptance of
emotional states. Eastern traditional knowledge
base and theoretico-religious understandings of it
advocated the association between mindfulness
and positive health/well-being since very long
past. Now the highly beneficial effects of
mindfulness practices on human well-being have
been confirmed in several empirical studies of
both east and west (e.g., Brown & Ryan, 2003;
Ryan & Deci, 2000). It is theoretically well-known
that mindfulness is the attribute of consciousness,
which promotes optimal health and well-being.
mindfulness is thought to play a big role in
making human being free from automatic
thoughts, habits and unhealthy behaviors and
thus it enhances self-regulated behavior which is
related to enhancement of well-being (Ryan &
Deci, 2000). However, the mediating
mechanisms that can effectively explain the
mindfulness-health/well-being relationship have
not yet been studied thoroughly.
The available literature on mindfulness and well-
being relationship indicates that mindfulness may
promote some self-regulatory emotional
mechanisms that in turn effectively enhance
human health/well-being. As mindfulness has
been shown to promote non-judgmental
consciousness over emotional experiences, one

* Research Scholar, ** Assistant Professor, *** Professor (corresponding author), Department of Psychology
Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, India. Email: rpan_in@yahoo.com
160 Mandal, Arya & Pandey
may argue that this conscious emotional control
may serve as the pathway that links mindfulness-
human health/well-being relationship. In earlier
studies this relationship has been discussed
partially in relation to psychological defenses
(Freud, 1926), self-regulation (Mischel, Shoda &
Rodriruez, 1989), stress and coping (Lazarus,
1966) and attachment (Bowlby, 1969). Based on
such observations we speculated that emotion
regulation may be a potential link between
mindfulness and health/well-being relationship.
To explore the viability of this speculated
pathway to positive development and well-being
we reviewed the existing literature dealing with
the relationship among mindfulness, emotion
regulation and well-being. The present review
aims to explore the relationship of mindfulness
with health/well-being through theoretical and
empirical recollection of earlier researches. It also
aims to review the role of emotion regulation in
mediating the relationship of mindfulness with
human health and well-being. Theoretical
support for the idea that emotional control may
play a mediating role in mindfulness-well-being
relationship may be advanced if empirical
evidences provide support for relationship
between mindfulness and emotion regulation as
well as the relationship of these two constructs
with health/well-being. In view of this, while
reviewing the empirical studies we classified
them in three sets. The first set of studies addresses
the relationship between mindfulness and
health/well-being, while second set of studies
explores mindfulness-emotion regulation
relationship. The third set of studies focuses on
relationship between emotion regulation ability
and health/well-being.
Mindfulness and Human Health/well-being
The ancient tradition of mindfulness meditation
practice has been increasingly integrated in the
psycho-therapeutic practices and such trend is
evident from the beginning of the latter half of
twentieth century (Baer, 2003; Grossman,
Niemann, Schmidt, & Walach, 2004; Teasdale et
al., 2000). The promising findings from such
studies have led the researchers to focus their
attention on efficacy of mindfulness-based
interventions using Mindfulness Based Stress
Reduction (MBSR) program in clinical population
(Kabat-Zinn, 1990). Consequently, a bulk of
empirical researches has been produced since
last two decades. Findings from such studies
generally suggest that individuals with
psychological and physical symptoms are
benefited from MBRS program (e.g., Baer, 2003;
Bishop, 2002; Grossman et al., 2004). Other
studies exploring the effects of mindfulness-based
stress reduction training on quality of life and
physical and psychological symptoms in a
heterogeneous patient population also
demonstrated that mindfulness meditation
training program enhanced functional status,
well-being and reduced physical/psychological
distresses (e.g., Reibel, Greeson, Brainard, &
Rosenzweig, 2001). Some recent studies have
also demonstrated the effectiveness of
mindfulness-based therapeutic programs in
alleviating the symptoms of behavioral disorders
such as anxiety (Roemer, Orsillo, & Salters-
Pedneault, 2008), substance abuse (Brown, Ryan,
& Creswell, 2007), eating disorders (Tapper et al.,
2009).
The effect of mindfulness-based treatment is not
limited to alleviating physical symptoms only but
it has also been shown to improve subjective
well-being (SWB) of those individuals who
received a mindfulness-based treatment (e.g.,
Cherie & Dianne, 2010; Corey, Patricia, &
Rhonda, 2006; Ryan, 2003). Brown and Ryan
(2003) in an experience-sampling study observed
that mindfulness induces self-regulatory
behaviours and frequent experiences of positive
emotional states. Frequent experiences of
positive emotions are indicators of greater
subjective well-being. Jacob, Jovic and
Brinkerhoff (2004) conducted a survey research
on mindfulness, spirituality and subjective well-
being. They basically tried to find out whether

mindfulness practices lead to sustainable lifestyle
practices and can explain the variances in
subjective well-being. Their result showed that
mindfulness led to pro-social values and
ecologically sustainable practices and enhanced
subjective well-being and quality of life. Other
studies have also reported the positive effects of
mindfulness training on different wellbeing
dimensions and suggest that mindfulness reduces
stress and increases the life satisfaction, relaxation
and decreases burn-out symptoms and negative
emotions in the clinical population (Corey,
Patricia & Rhonda, 2006). Similarly, it has been
found that mindfulness contributes to the
subjective well-being of the social workers (Shier
& Graham, 2011) and influences several
dimensions of well-being (Cherie & Dianne,
2010).
All these studies seem to converge on the fact that
mindfulness is associated with different
components of subjective well-being such as
greater life satisfaction, enhanced positive and
reduced negative emotions. The preceding
review also suggests that mindfulness as a
practice as well as a trait enhances positive
functioning and reduces pain or sufferings mainly
by inducing greater emotional management i.e.
increasing positive affective experiences and
decreasing negative affective experiences related
to physical and psychological illness. Such
findings open a scope to speculate that
mindfulness relates with health and well-being
through emotion regulatory mechanisms.
However, feasibility of such speculation depends
on the nature and magnitude of relationship
between mindfulness and emotion regulation on
one hand and the link between emotion
regulation and health on the other. The following
two sections presents a brief overview of the
empirical studies dealing with the relationship of
mindfulness and emotion regulation as well as
emotion regulation and health.
Mindfulness and Emotion-regulation
The conceptual models of mindfulness suggest it
Mindfulness, emotion regulation and well-being 161
may be linked with emotion regulation. For
instance, Bishop and associates (2004) described
mindfulness as a way of maintaining attention on
the current experiences in order to bring a quality
of consciousness having sensitive awareness,
curiosity, openness and acceptance. Such
conceptualization suggests that mindfulness may
promote a healthy emotional engagement and
emotion regulation by making people aware of
their emotional experiences in a compassionate
and non-judgemental way (Hayes & Feldman,
2004).
The empirical support for this theorization comes
from studies suggesting a significant role of
mindfulness in enhancing effective management
of negative emotions in clinical population. For
example, in a correlational study on mindfulness
skills and emotional regulation it was found that
mindfulness was positively correlated with
emotion regulation and it also controlled the
symptoms of depression, anxiety and stress
(Shannon, Kristalyn, & Lizabeth, 2005). Similarly,
Goldin and Gross (2010) empirically investigated
the effect of mindfulness training on emotional
reactivity and attention regulation in a sample of
patients with social anxiety disorder. Their results
revealed that mindfulness based training induces
greater emotion regulation which results in
improvement in anxiety, depression, decreased
negative emotional experiences and emotional
reactivity. Findings support the idea that
mindfulness empowers individuals to manage
negative emotional experiences.
Similar findings have been obtained by many
others. For example, Foley, Baillie, Huxter, Price
and Sinclair (2010) examined the effectiveness of
mindfulness-based training programme for the
individuals with a diagnosis of cancer. Their
result showed that this training programme
produced significant improvement in
mindfulness and reduction in depression, anxiety
and other negative emotions. Such observations
further support the idea that mindfulness
empowers individuals to manage negative
162 Mandal, Arya & Pandey
emotional experiences. In a study Kumar and
associates (Kumar, Feldman & Hayes, 2003)
observed that mindfulness was associated with
decreases in experiential avoidance and
rumination. Experiential avoidance and
rumination are two forms of severe difficulties in
the process of adaptive emotion regulation.
Overall, the findings of the preceding studies
clearly indicates a potential link between
mindfulness and emotion regulation and suggest
hat mindfulness may lead to better emotionally
regulated state by reducing negative affectivity
and various emotion related difficulties. The
hypothesis that mindfulness may improve
emotion regulatory mechanisms through
reduction in negative affect or enhancement of
positive affect gets support from several empirical
studies and theories related to positive/negative
affect. For example, Researchers have observed
that mindfulness-practice is strongly correlated
with increased positive emotion experiences
(Ekblad, 2009). Fredrickson (2000) has also
associated her famous broaden-and-build theory
to the practice of mindfulness. She
conceptualized that mindfulness promotes more
awareness and sensitivity to positive emotions
which in turn broadens an individual's though-
action repertoire and increases psychological
resource and well-being. She thought that
mindfulness practice generates mindful
awareness which makes people free from fear,
anxiety and other negative emotions. Arch and
Craske (2006) empirically investigated the effects
of 15-minutes brief mindful breathing exercise on
the experiences of emotion regulation. Their
result spoke for the view that mindfulness
enhances emotion regulation by reducing
negative emotional experiences. This study also
bring out the fact that negative emotions can be
reduced or overcome by enhancing awareness
and acceptance of the negative or difficult stimuli
(Ekbald, 2009). According to Ekbald (2009) this
study also reflects that mindfulness possibly
results in 'Positivity bias' which has been
conceptualized as a process of cognitive
appraisal. In case of positivity bias people have a
strong tendency to attend and process only
positive stimuli and they cognitively appraise
neutral stimuli in the positive ways. Issacowitz
(2005) put this process as like perceiving the
world with a “rose colored glasses.” If we try to
put the relationship between mindfulness and
positivity bias in the theoretical light, the Socio-
Emotional Selectivity theory (SEST) would be the
best one to explain this process. The Socio-
Emotional Selectivity theory, given by Carstensen
et al. (1999) states that when a person is more
concerned and motivated towards present
experiences and less towards future expectations,
he tends to be more focused in attending positive
stimuli and perceiving neutral stimuli in a positive
way i.e. positivity bias occurs. According to SEST,
positivity bias actually occurs in case of older
ones who perceive that their deaths are near so
they are more involved in present experiences
and less future-oriented. Similarly mindfulness
may also induce positivity bias as it promotes
awareness of and attention to the present reality
and reduces the load of future expectations.
Again positivity bias increases emotion regulation
as it leads a person to perceive positive emotional
cues only and to ignore the stimuli which contain
negative emotional cues. So, it can be inferred
from the SEST that mindfulness leads to better
emotional regulation by inducing positivity bias.
From the preceding review it is clear that the
attributes of mindfulness regulate emotional
mechanisms by cognitively manipulating and
restructuring the emotional cues at the early
phase of emotion generation. On the basis of
these earlier studies it one may infer that
mindfulness leads to greater emotion regulation
through cognitive manipulation of the emotional
cues that directly influences the emotion
generation process.
Emotion regulation and well-being
The preceding section dealing with the
mindfulness and well-being relationship though,
suggest the possibility that mindfulness exerts

beneficial effect on happiness and well-being by
influencing the emotion regulatory mechanisms,
it does not provide direct empirical support for
the link between emotion regulation and well-
being. The present section thus, briefly reviews
the empirical studies that focused directly on the
relationship of emotion regulation with well-
being.
According to Gross (1998), “Emotion regulation
refers to how we try to influence which emotions
we have, when we have them, and how we
experience and express these emotions”. Gross
(1998) also proposed a model for emotion
regulation, known as process model in which he
mentioned five different strategies for emotion
regulation such as situation selection, situation
modification, attention deployment, cognitive
change and response modulation. According to
him, these five types of strategies can be
categorized as “antecedent focused” and
“response focused” on the basis of their shared
similarities. The first four emotion regulation
strategies are “antecedent-focused” or cognitive
strategies as they appear before cognitive
appraisal and generate full-blown emotional
responses. The last one is “response-focused” or
response suppression because it comes after the
generation of emotional responses (Gross &
Munoz, 1995; Gross & Thompson, 2007). The
conscious control over the emotion generation
process can significantly determine the overall
status of human health and well-being (Garland,
Gaylord & Park, 2009).
Researchers have shown that use of different
types of emotion regulation strategies are related
with different health outcomes. In a study, Haga,
Kraft and Corby (2009) raised the fact that
successful emotion regulation is quite effective
for adaptive functioning of the individual. In their
study, they explored the effects of two emotion
regulation strategies, namely cognitive appraisal
and expressive suppression, on well-being of the
university students of Norway, Australia and
U.S.A. Their study showed that cognitive
Mindfulness, emotion regulation and well-being 163
appraisal strategy and expressive suppression
strategy are related to well-being in different
ways. Cognitive appraisal is positively associated
with well-being whereas expressive suppression
results in negative outcomes. Haga and associates
also investigated the effects of these two emotion
regulation strategies on the personality processes,
individual differences and life span development.
They found that the cognitive appraisal promotes
healthier profile of cognitive, affective and social
consequences than expression suppression. They
confirmed the fact that the cognitive appraisal
strategy is related to positive affective
experiences, social functioning and well-being.
Similarly, Quoidbach, Berry, Hansenne and
Mikolajczak (2010) in their study, examined the
effects of positive emotion regulation strategies
on two basic dimensions of subjective well-being
in a sample of 282 participants. Their result
showed that positive emotion regulation
increases the experience of positive emotional
states, enhances life satisfaction and decreases
negative emotional experiences. Their result also
suggested that wide range of emotional
regulation strategies instead of some specific ones
promotes overall happiness and life satisfaction.
Findings from some other studies are also in
consonant with these findings. For example, it
has been found that proper emotion regulation
strategies foster higher life-satisfaction and lowers
negative affect (Martini & Busseri,2010), whereas
improper emotion regulation strategy i.e.
expression suppression, leads to increased
vulnerability to negative symptoms, burn out and
decreased well-being (Zammuner, Lotto & Galli,
2003).
Overall, the review suggests that the beneficial
effect of emotion regulation depends upon the
nature of emotional regulatory strategies used. It
is evident from the preceding review that when
emotions are regulated through cognitive
reappraisal and/or restructuring it is very much
beneficial for health and well-being but when it is
done through deliberate expression suppression
164 Mandal, Arya & Pandey
it often results in negative symptoms, decreased
satisfaction with life and well-being. In other
words the present review indicates that emotion
regulation processes are associated with health
and well-being but the nature of outcome
depends on the type of emotion regulatory
mechanisms used. Cognitive reappraisal
improves human health by successfully altering
emotional cues at early phase that exerts direct
influence on biological stress pathway, involved
in the activation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-
adrenal (HPA) and cortisol secretion (Garland,
Gaylord & Park, 2009). On the contrary, it is also
evident in the literature that expression
suppression leads to psycho-somatic ill
symptoms.
Conclusion
The preceding review makes it explicit that
mindfulness as a trait as well as practice is
associated with better health and well-being.
However, the mechanism or process through
which mindfulness brings positive health
outcomes is under curious concerns of the
researchers. The present review suggests the
possibility that that mindfulness may give
beneficial effect on health and well-being through
positively modifying the emotion regulatory
mechanisms. Such speculation is based on the
observation that mindfulness correlates with both
emotion regulation and human health/well-being
and emotion regulation is also lined with health
and well-being. In a relatively recent review
Nyklíèek (2011) also speculated the possibility
that emotion regulation is likely to mediate the
positive effects of mindfulness on well-being.
However, he also proposed a new elaborated
theoretical model suggesting that mindfulness
influences well-being through some of its direct
outcomes such as relaxation, insight, contact, and
harmony. These direct outcomes of mindfulness
exert their beneficial effects on a number of
lower-level intermediate factors (that includes
nonvolitional emotion regulation), which finally
influence psychological well-being.
Further, the conceptual synthesis of the
definitional models of mindfulness with
empirical findings also support the possibility that
the positive influence of mindfulness on health
and well-being is likely to be mediated by
emotional factors such as emotion regulation. For
example, mindfulness as defined by Baer, Smith,
Hopkins, Krietemeyer, and Toney (2006),
includes five dimensions like observation of
emotional states, its description, action with
awareness, not judging emotions in terms of its
valences and non-reactivity to inner experiences.
These mindfulness dimensions reflect and
promote high self-regulatory emotional states by
making individuals cognitively distanced from
the emotion turmoil (Hayes et al., 1999), which in
turn may promote better health and well-being.
However, as far as the nature of this emotion
regulation mediated relationship between
mindfulness and well-being is concerned, the
present review suggests that it depends on the
nature of emotion regulation strategy or
mechanisms. It is evident from the present review
that certain sub-domains of emotion regulation
such as cognitive appraisal strategies correlate
positively with health and well-being, whereas
others like response suppression strategies
correlate negatively with the same. In the light of
these observations it may be argued that
mindfulness may influence certain aspects of
emotion regulation which in turn may influence
the health status and well-being of an individual.
However, we could not find much empirical
studies directly examining the mediating role
emotion regulation in mindfulness – well-being
relationship. Few researchers conducted path
analytic studies which showed that mindfulness
indeed had indirect effect on psychological
distress through emotion regulation ability
(Coffey & Hartmann, 2008). Indirect empirical
support for the mediating role of emotion
regulation in mindfulness-health/well-being
relationship also comes from the studies
exploring the mediating role of other emotion

related constructs such as emotional intelligence
and positive-negative affect. For example,
Mandal, Arya and Pandey (2012) explored the
mediating role of positive/negative affectivity in
relationship between mindfulness and health.
The results indicated that mindfulness was
associated with SWB as well as with higher
positive emotional experience and lower
negative affect. However, indirect beneficial
effect of mindfulness on mental health was
observed largely due to reduction of negative
affectivity rather than its positive emotion
enhancing effect. Similarly, Schutte and Malouff
(2011) in a recent study explored the mediating
role of emotional intelligence between
mindfulness and SWB. They found that
mindfulness was positively associated with
emotional intelligence, positive affect and life
satisfaction whereas higher emotional
intelligence led to enhanced positive affects and
life satisfaction. These studies provide indirect
support for the possible role of emotion
regulation in explaining mindfulness- well-being
relationship inasmuch as they observed the
beneficial effect of mindfulness on health/well-
being through modification of some emotional
aspects closely related to emotion regulation.
To sum up, the available direct and indirect
empirical evidences suggests that human well-
being and happiness is related with the
dispositional mindfulness as well as with the
emotion regulation strategies focusing on
cognitive reappraisal. Further, it also suggest the
possibility that the health promoting and well-
being enhancing effect of mindfulness is likely to
be mediated by emotion regulation and certain
other emotion related constructs. However, such
conclusions are fraught with dangers of
oversimplification and generalization. We tried
to retrieve the representative studies in all the
areas reviewed covering all types of reported
findings, however, we cannot claim it to be
exhaustive since we have limited or no access to
various databases on psychological researches.
Further, even if we might have arrived at same
Mindfulness, emotion regulation and well-being 165
conclusion after making an exhaustive review of
the existing literature, the scarcity of empirical
studies directly assessing the mediational role of
emotion regulation in mindfulness and well-
being relationship would be stumbling block to
support and generalize our conclusions. Despite
the convincing evidences and some
direct/indirect empirical to support the
conclusion that emotion regulation may
potentially mediate the relationship between
mindfulness and well-being, our own ongoing
research is likely to cast doubt on the said
conclusion. A recent unpublished study
conducted by the present research group failed to
provide support for the mediational role of
emotion regulation in the mindfulness –
subjective well-being relationship (Mandal, Arya
& Pandey, 2012). We in fact, noted that emotion
regulation has a direct effect on some dimensions
of mindfulness as well as indirect effect on various
components of SWB through mindfulness. Such
observations, thus, put a caveat against the
present theorization as well as earlier empirical
findings that the beneficial effect of mindfulness
on well-being is mediated by emotion regulation.
The scarcity of empirical evidences and
explanation of the mechanism through which the
mindfulness promotes health and wellbeing
makes this area lively for further investigation.
The present review, however, helps to funnel this
area to a specific mediator – emotion regulation
and extends two possibilities- the mindfulness
may influence health and well-being through
emotion regulation or mindfulness may emerge
as a mediator for explaining the emotion
regulation –health/well-being relationship.
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