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The State-Like and Skillful Aspects of Mindfulness: The Roles of Working Memory and Self-Regulation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 December 2015

Kelsey L. Merlo
Kelsey L. Merlo*
Affiliation:
School of Psychology, Georgia Institute of Technology
*
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Kelsey L. Merlo, School of Psychology, Georgia Institute of Technology, 654 Cherry Street, Atlanta, GA 30332. E-mail: kmerlo@gatech.edu
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Extract

A common theme throughout the focal article (Hyland, Lee, & Mills, 2015) suggests that mindfulness is associated with a range of benefits, but the phenomenon itself is not well defined and conceptualized. Throughout the research area, mindfulness has been defined as a trait, as a skill, and, most commonly, as a state. In order to advance a productive research area, conceptual clarity is needed to further distinguish between these aspects of mindfulness. In this commentary, I will (a) provide a distinction between mindfulness as a state and the skill of entering a mindful state, (b) outline the implications of skillful mindfulness for working memory capacity (WMC) and job performance, and (c) discuss the conflicting hypotheses of state mindfulness and self-regulation.

Type
Commentaries
Information
Industrial and Organizational Psychology , Volume 8 , Issue 4 , December 2015 , pp. 633 - 638
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology 2015 

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