Open AccessMediating effect of mindfulness cognition on the development of empathy in a university context
Author(s) -
Raquel De la Fuente-Anuncibay,
Ángela González-Barbadillo,
Jerónimo J. González-Bernal,
Esther Cubo,
Juan Pablo Pizarro-Ruiz
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
plos one
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.99
H-Index - 332
ISSN - 1932-6203
DOI - 10.1371/journal.pone.0215569
Subject(s) - mindfulness , empathy , psychology , context (archaeology) , psychological intervention , clinical psychology , cognition , facet (psychology) , trait , social psychology , personality , psychiatry , computer science , big five personality traits , paleontology , biology , programming language
Numerous interventions propose mindfulness training as a means of improving empathy. Our aim is to analyse the relationship between mindfulness practice and empathy through the mediating process of trait mindfulness. This sample comprised 264 undergraduate students (x ¯ = 24 , 13 years, SD = 11,39). The instruments used were Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire and Toronto Empathy Questionnaire. The indirect effect was calculated using 10.000 bootstrap samples for the bootstrap confidence intervals corrected for bias. Empathy improvement is mediated by changes in the cognitions derived from mindfulness (B = .346, p<.01). The direct effect of mindfulness practice on empathy disappears in presence of this mediator (B = .133, p>.05). Mindfulness interventions that aim to improve empathy should focus on three of its components; observing , describing and nonreactivity to inner experience . Given the significance of the results, the research must be extended to larger samples.