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'Mindfulness' may make you more empathetic, but may not help you recognise others' emotions

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Being more 'mindful', or aware of the present moment, may make you more empathetic towards others, but it may not make you any better at recognising their emotional state, according to Portuguese researchers. They asked 107 participants to fill in questionnaires to determine how 'mindful' they were. Then they filled in questionnaires to assess how empathetic they were, and were asked to judge the emotional states of people based on photos of faces and voice recordings. People who scored highly for 'mindfulness' also scored highly in the empathy questionnaire, but they were no better than others at recognising emotional states, the researchers say.

Journal/conference: Royal Society Open Science

Research: Paper

Organisation/s: Instituto Universitário de Lisboa, Portugal

Funder: Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology.

Media release

From: The Royal Society

Mind my emotions – Practising mindfulness is associated with higher levels of empathy, but not emotion recognition in others. Previous studies have shown that mindfulness is linked with better personal emotional regulation and the authors suggest their findings highlight a difference between “cognitive and affective empathy” which may affect how mindfulness is used in clinical settings.

Higher Trait Mindfulness is Associated with Empathy But Not With Emotion Recognition Abilities

Mindfulness involves an intentional and non-judgmental attention or awareness of present-moment experiences. It can be cultivated by meditation practice or present as an inherent disposition or trait. In previous studies, higher trait mindfulness has been associated with improved ability to regulate emotions, but it remains unknown if it also relates to higher empathy and to a better ability to recognize emotions in others. In the current study, we found that higher trait mindfulness is associated positively with empathy, but not with the ability to recognize emotions in facial expressions or in speech. 

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