Who am I? Differential effects of three contemplative mental trainings on emotional word use in self-descriptions

authored by

Anna Lena Lumma, Anne Böckler, Pascal Vrticka, Tania Singer

Abstract

In a large-scale longitudinal mental training study, we examined whether learning different contemplative practices can change the emotional content of people’s self-concept as assessed through emotional word use in the Twenty Statement Test. During three 3-month training modules, participants learned distinct practices targeting attentional, socio-affective, or socio-cognitive capacities, or were re-tested. Emotional word use specifically increased after socio-cognitive training including perspective-taking on self and others, compared to attentional and socio-affective compassion-based trainings, and retest-controls. Overall, our findings demonstrate training-induced behavioral plasticity of the emotional self-concept content in healthy adults and could indicate greater emotional granularity. These findings can inform future interventions in mental health, given that alterations in self-referential processing are a common contributing factor in psychopathology.

External Organisation(s)

Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Science (MPI CBS)
Julius Maximilian University of Würzburg

Type

Article

Journal

Self and identity

Volume

16

Pages

607-628

No. of pages

22

ISSN

1529-8868

Publication date

03.09.2017

Publication status

Published

Peer reviewed

Yes

ASJC Scopus subject areas

General Psychology

Sustainable Development Goals

SDG 3 - Good Health and Well-being

Electronic version(s)

https://doi.org/10.1080/15298868.2017.1294107 (Access: Open)