Brief mindfulness meditation training alters psychological and neuroendocrine responses to social evaluative stress
Section snippets
Participants
We recruited 73 healthy male and female students from the Carnegie Mellon University and University of Pittsburgh campus communities. Inclusion criteria for study participation were being between the ages of 18 and 30 years, being mentally and physically healthy (i.e., no medical diagnosis of any ongoing disease), and not currently taking any form of oral contraceptive (i.e., birth control). We excluded one participant who was administered the wrong study training on day two and three
Preliminary analyses
Randomization was successful in equalizing the mindfulness and cognitive training control groups at baseline; they did not differ significantly on age (t(64) = −.05, p = .96), gender (χ2(1) = 1.81, p = .18), ethnicity (χ2(4) = 5.89, p = .21), prior exposure to meditation or mind-body practices (χ2(1) = .33, p = .57), or day one dispositional mindfulness (t(63) = −1.36, p = .18). Likewise, on the day three TSST session, there were no group differences in time of day of first cortisol sample (t(64) = −.43, p = .67).
Did
Discussion
The present study is the first to demonstrate that a small dose of mindfulness meditation training (75 min over three days) reduces self-reported psychological stress reactivity to the TSST. Notably, this same psychological stress buffering effect was observed for participants who had high levels of dispositional mindfulness upon study entry. These results are consistent with previous studies indicating that eight weeks of mindfulness training or high levels of dispositional mindfulness are
Conclusions
The present study offers new insights into how brief mindfulness meditation training and dispositional mindfulness can impact stress reactivity to an acute stress challenge. Compared to an active cognitive analytic control training, we provide initial evidence that a brief mindfulness meditation training program (75 min) buffers self-reported psychological stress reactivity and increases cortisol reactivity to the TSST. We postulate that this pattern reflects greater engagement and active coping
Role of the funding source
This research was supported by the Pittsburgh Life Sciences Greenhouse Opportunity Fund.
Conflicts of interest
The authors report no conflicts of interest.
Acknowledgments
We thank Fadel Zeidan for sharing his mindfulness meditation scripts, which we adapted for this study, the research assistants in the Health and Human Performance Laboratory at Carnegie Mellon University, and Sheldon Cohen for feedback.
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