Cognition and Emotion

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How mindfulness shapes the situational use of

emotion regulation strategies in daily life

Mario Wenzel, Zarah Rowland & Thomas Kubiak

To cite this article: Mario Wenzel, Zarah Rowland & Thomas Kubiak (2020): How mindfulness
shapes the situational use of emotion regulation strategies in daily life, Cognition and Emotion, DOI:
10.1080/02699931.2020.1758632

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COGNITION AND EMOTION
https://doi.org/10.1080/02699931.2020.1758632

How mindfulness shapes the situational use of emotion regulation

strategies in daily life
Mario Wenzel, Zarah Rowland and Thomas Kubiak
Institute of Psychology, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Mainz, Germany

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

Mindfulness is associated with a wide range of beneficial outcomes such as well- Received 21 June 2019
being. However, less is known about the mechanisms underlying these benefits. Revised 9 April 2020
Some researchers suggest that the benefits could be driven by emotion Accepted 13 April 2020
regulation, either by improving the effectiveness of emotion regulation or by
KEYWORDS
lessening the need for effortful emotion regulation. By using two longitudinal Mindfulness; emotion
Ambulatory Assessment data sets (NStudy1 = 125, NStudy2 = 175), based on a six-week regulation; emotion
randomised controlled trial and a one-week study, we tested these competing regulation strategies;
notions in daily life and found support for the latter: Mindfulness, and especially reappraisal; ambulatory
its non-judgmental acceptance facet, was significantly associated with less use of assessment
emotion regulation strategies. However, mindfulness was not significantly
associated with more effective emotion regulation strategy implementation.
Moreover, the mindfulness training focusing on present-moment attention and
awareness did not significantly influence emotion regulation. These findings
demonstrate the importance of the non-judgmental acceptance component for
emotion regulation and affective well-being.

The last two decades have seen a surge of interest in
mindfulness, the open and receptive awareness of
the present moment (Brown & Ryan, 2003), and its
beneficial psychological effects (Keng et al., 2011).
Mindfulness is often described by two key com-
ponents: (a) the regulation of attention to and aware-
ness of the present moment and (b) the non-
judgmental acceptance of these present-moment
experiences (Bishop et al., 2004). Meta-analytical evi-
dence suggests that mindfulness trainings are
effective in improving a large number of psychologi-
cal (Lomas et al., 2017) and clinical outcomes (Khoury
et al., 2015). For example, state mindfulness was
associated with less negative affect (Brown & Ryan,
2003) and trait mindfulness, especially its acceptance
facet, with a better regulation of negative affect
(Coffey et al., 2010). However, research so far
focused on the effects of mindfulness trainings or
associations with trait mindfulness, but less is
known about the mechanisms that lead to, e.g.
better well-being.
Two main theories have been put forward to
explain how mindfulness contributes to improved
well-being. According to the Mindfulness-to-Meaning
Theory (Garland et al., 2015), practicing mindfulness
increases the repertoire and the effectiveness of
emotion regulation strategies, especially reappraisal:
Being aware of and accepting one’s sensations helps
individuals to stop their habitual and automatic reac-
tions towards present-moment experiences by noti-
cing the many facets of a momentary situation
which can entail both positive and negative aspects.
The broadened attention can, then, help individuals
to regulate their emotions more effectively, i.e. by
reappraising a given situation with a focus on its posi-
tive aspects. By repeating this process across many
situations in daily life, individuals learn to generalize
to find meaning in specific situations, which improves
their well-being in the long run (Garland et al., 2015).
In contrast to the Mindfulness-to-Meaning Theory,
the Monitor-and-Acceptance Theory (Lindsay & Cres-
well, 2017) does not explain the link between

CONTACT Mario Wenzel wenzelma@uni-mainz.de

© 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
2 M. WENZEL ET AL.
mindfulness and well-being by improved emotion regu-
lation but by a lower necessity to regulate emotions due
to acceptance of negative and positive emotions. By
practicing mindfulness, individuals learn to regulate
and focus their attention on specific stimuli such as
one’s own breath in order to become aware of their
momentary sensations instead of thinking about past
or future events (monitoring process). However, moni-
toring is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for
improved well-being, given that focusing without
accepting one’s own feelings can actually increase
negative experiences (Barnes & Lynn, 2010; Pearson
et al., 2015). Thus, individuals also need to apply an
accepting and nonjudgmental stance towards momen-
tary and upcoming feelings in order to reduce affective
reactivity and the need to regulate their emotions
(acceptance process). This highlights the importance
of acceptance, which can be defined as the willingness
to remain present with experiences without trying to
change them or evaluate them as good or bad
(Lindsay & Creswell, 2017). Thus, both theories can be
situated at different stages in the process model of
emotion regulation (Gross, 2015). The Mindfulness-to-
Meaning Theory acts during the cognitive change
stage, such that acceptance helps individuals to reap-
praise difficult situations and, thus, increases the effec-
tiveness of effortful regulatory efforts. The Monitor-
and-Acceptance Theory acts earlier in the emotion regu-
lation process by decreasing emotional reactivity to
stressful situations, such that being in a mindful state
enables an individual to monitor their arising affective
experiences and let them pass without the need to
actively regulate them. Consequently, this highlights
that the Mindfulness-to-Meaning Theory and the
Monitor-and-Acceptance Theory are not mutually exclu-
sive, but that practicing mindfulness can improve both
acceptance and effortful emotion regulation.
Support for the Mindfulness-to-Meaning Theory
comes from a randomised controlled trial that found
that broadened awareness was associated with
increased use of reappraisal in a 9-month follow-up
after a mindfulness-based stress reduction pro-
gramme and that it led to significantly higher levels
of awareness than cognitive–behavioural therapy
(Garland et al., 2017). Regarding the Monitor-and-
Acceptance Theory, there is evidence that practicing
both monitoring and acceptance reduces feelings of
loneliness (Lindsay et al., 2019) and mind-wandering
(Rahl et al., 2017) as well as increases positive feelings
(Lindsay et al., 2018) compared to practicing monitor-
ing only or to an active control group.
However, evidence for the two theoretical accounts
of the association between mindfulness and emotion
regulation comes from laboratory and neuropsycholo-
gical research and, thus, evidence in daily life is
missing. In this line of research, the link between mind-
fulness and affect has been characterised as a bottom-
up process (i.e. decreased reactivity towards emotion-
eliciting stimuli in accordance to the Monitor-and-
Acceptance Theory), or as a top-down process (i.e.
increased effectivity of regulatory efforts in accordance
to the Mindfulness-to-Meaning Theory), in that it may
be an important precursor to reappraise emotions in
the first place (Chiesa et al., 2010; Creswell et al.,
2019). The terms bottom-up and top-down refer to
the notion of activity in brain regions associated with
effortful control over emotions such as the prefrontal
cortex (top-down) or in brain regions associated with
emotion experiences (bottom-up). Thus, top-down pro-
cesses are processes that influence emotions through
regulatory efforts, whereas bottom-up processes are
processes that more directly reduce reactivity towards
emotion-eliciting stimuli without effortful control and,
thus, influence the generation of emotions.
Support for the bottom-up perspective comes from
studies showing reduced activation in brain regions
associated with emotional processes (amygdala and hip-
pocampus) in experienced mindfulness meditators when
they experienced pain in comparison to non-meditators
(e.g. Grant et al., 2011). This suggests a functional decou-
pling of the cognitive-evaluative and sensory-discrimina-
tive dimensions of bodily sensations and emotions in
mindful individuals, which then signals less need for
effortful emotion regulation. Furthermore, participants
showed reduced amygdala activity and increased activity
in brain regions associated in attentional deployment
only in a breath-focused attention task but not in distrac-
tion-focused attention task (Goldin & Gross, 2010). Thus,
accepting the fluctuating nature of emotions shuns the
need to reappraise situations (Chambers et al., 2009)
and the need to react to or avoid them (Gratz & Tull, 2010).
In turn, evidence for the top-down perspective is
provided by studies that show that state mindfulness
is not only linked with activity in brain regions associ-
ated with emotional arousal but also with activity in
regions associated with cognitive control (Lutz et al.,
2008). Compared to the bottom-up perspective, practi-
cing mindfulness does not lessen the need to regulate
one’s emotions but instead leads to more effective
emotion regulation due to a higher recruitment of
executive control processes, as reflected in increased
activity regulatory prefrontal cortex brain regions.

However, given that reviews showed that previous
findings are based on laboratory studies with relatively
small sample sizes (Chiesa et al., 2010; Creswell et al.,
2019), we aimed at testing the two notions on the
relationship between mindfulness and emotion regu-
lation in daily life by using two longitudinal Ambulatory
Assessment data sets, one based on a six-week ran-
domised controlled trial and the second one on a
one-week ambulatory assessment. If mindfulness is
best characterised as a top-down process that can be
situated during the cognitive change stage in the
process model of emotion regulation (Gross, 2015)
according to the Mindfulness-to-Meaning Theory, it
should moderate the effectiveness of effortful strat-
egies such as reappraisal and suppression in regulating
affect. If, however, mindfulness is better characterised
as a bottom-up process that reduces the need for
emotion regulation by accepting one’s own emotions
and behaviours, which can be best situated during
the attentional deployment stages in the process
model of emotion regulation, it should be significantly
associated with less efforts to actively change these
negative emotions. This would be reflected in less
emotion regulation strategy use in daily life.
Disclosures
Reporting
We affirm that we reported all manipulations and
exclusions in the present study. However, we did not
report all measures, because Study 1 was part of the
SMASH study, which examined the effectiveness of a
mindfulness intervention in influencing mindfulness,
self-control, and affective processes (Rowland et al.,
2016). Study 2 was part of a larger project on affect
dynamics and regulation in romantic dyads.
Preregistration
Study 1 was registered with clinicalTrials.gov
(NCT02647801) and a study protocol has been pub-
lished (Rowland et al., 2016). Although Study 2 has
been preregistered (https://osf.io/957ew/) we did not
preregister the specific research question examined
in the present research.
Data, materials, and online resources
All data, statistical analyses, and the full results can be
found at OSF (https://osf.io/e6ctr/).
COGNITION AND EMOTION 3
Ethical Approval
The protocol was approved by the ethics committee
of the Institute of Psychology at the Johannes Guten-
berg University Mainz (reference codes 2015-JGU-
psychEK-011 and 2017-JGU-psychEK-014).
Other publications
The dataset of Study 1 has been used for other publi-
cations which investigated the following research
questions: the influence of mindfulness on affective
dynamics (Rowland et al., 2018), the efficacy of an
ultra-brief mindfulness training (Rowland et al.,
2019), the moderation of consecutive self-control
(Wenzel et al., 2019), as well as the examination of
the setback effect (Wenzel, Rowland, Hofmann, &
Kubiak, in press). Study 2’s dataset will be used for
the preregistered research questions.
Study 1
Method
Participants and design
The power calculation was based on the parent study,
which aimed at a power of 1-β = .95, an alpha level of
α = .05, and an expected total attrition rate of 10% for
a small effect of the brief mindfulness training of
Cohen’s d = .33. To that end, 137 participants were
recruited in two study waves from October 2015
until December 2016. Eleven participants dropped
out during the study and one participant was
excluded due to less than 33% completed ambulatory
assessments. The resulting 125 participants (77.6%
female; M = 22.9 years, SD = 5.1) took part in seven
weekly laboratory sessions with a six-week experience
sampling and six signals per day. For more information
on the inclusion criteria, design, and compensation,
please refer to the study protocol (Rowland et al.,
2016).
Procedure
In the first laboratory session, participants first signed
an informed consent form, provided sociodemo-
graphic information, and completed several trait ques-
tionnaires which are detailed in the study protocol
(Rowland et al., 2016). Starting the next day and for
40 subsequent days, participants received six ran-
domly distributed signals per day between 10 am
and 8 pm via the movisensXS experience sampling
4 M. WENZEL ET AL.
application (movisens GmbH, Karlsruhe, Germany),
with the condition that two signals were always 45–
200 min apart (M = 103.4 min, SD = 34.3). Each signal
presented the participants with questionnaires
regarding their momentary emotions, use of
emotion regulation strategies, mindfulness as well as
self-control related items such as desire and resist-
ance. We had the participants return weekly to the lab-
oratory in order to, on the one hand, keep adherence
high and have the chance to personally talk about any
issues regarding the study and training that might
have arisen during the week. On the other hand, the
weekly laboratory sessions involved the mindfulness
training where one part of the participants performed
a computer-based guided-breathing meditation for
five weekly sessions (mindfulness condition) whereas
the other had the opportunity to perform these ses-
sions after study (control condition). With, on
average, 75.9% completed ambulatory signals, com-
pliance to the study protocol was good.
Training
Participants in the mindfulness condition practiced
mindfulness in five weekly laboratory sessions using
a computer-based guided breathing meditation for
approximately 12 min each session (Levinson et al.,
2014). The participants were first introduced to the
meditation exercise by a research assistant that
instructed them to continuously count their breath
from 1 to 9 on the computer by pressing a specific
key on the keyboard for breath one to eight, and
another key for breath nine. In case of errors, partici-
pants heard a sound to remind them to nonjudgmen-
tally revert their attention back to their breath.
Concluding the computer task, the participants
could talk with the research assistant, who was
present during the task, about their difficulties and
experiences during the meditation task. This compu-
ter task was accompanied by provided breathing
meditation and body scan material on movisensXS,
which 45 out of 68 participants took use of (M = 4.2
times). Finally, the training significantly improved
state and trait mindfulness as well as performance in
the breath counting task (Rowland et al., 2019).
Measures
Negative affect. Based on (Kuppens et al., 2010),
momentary negative affect was assessed by comput-
ing the mean score of the four items anxious, angry,
depressed, and sad. The items were rated on a visual
analogue scale ranging from 0 (not at all) to 100
(very much), with higher values indicating higher
levels of negative affect. To examine the reliability of
the measures, we opted against Cronbach’s alpha
due to the hierarchical nature of the data and report
the between-person reliabilities (RKRN) and the
within-person reliabilities for changes from time
point to time point (RCN; Shrout & Lane, 2012). The
reliabilities and other descriptive statistics of negative
affect and the other measures are illustrated in
Table 1, with both very good between-and within-
person reliabilities for all measures.
Emotion regulation strategies. Participants in Study 1
rated the following emotion regulation strategies on a
visual analogue scale ranging from 0 (not at all) to 6
(almost all the time): reappraisal, suppression, distrac-
tion, social sharing, rumination (Koval et al., 2015).
Each item began with “since the last beep, have
you” (German: “Seit dem letzten Signal haben Sie”),
followed by “viewed the cause of your feelings from
a different perspective?” (cognitive reappraisal;
German: “den Grund für Ihre Gefühle aus einer
anderen Perspektive betrachtet”), “talked about your
feelings with others” (social sharing; German: “mit
anderen über Ihre Gefühle gesprochen”), “suppressed
the expression of your feelings” (expressive suppres-
sion; German: “den Ausdruck Ihrer Gefühle unter-
drückt”), “distracted your attention away from your
feelings” (distraction; German: “Ihre Aufmerksamkeit
von Ihren Gefühlen abgelenkt”), and “brooded about
something in the past/future” (rumination; German:
„über etwas aus der Vergangenheit/ Zukunft gegrü-
belt”). In addition to the individual emotion regulation
strategies, we computed the mean across the strat-
egies to obtain a measure of mean strategy
endorsement.
Mindfulness. Momentary mindfulness was measured
using a modified state version of the Mindfulness
Attention Awareness Scale (MAAS; Brown & Ryan,
2003; Study 4). To reduce participants’ burden due
to the relatively large number of items, we chose
item 8 (“I rush through activities without being really
attentive to them”.), 10 (“I do jobs or tasks automatically,
without being aware of what I’m doing”.), and 14 (“I find
myself doing things without paying attention”.) of the
state version of the MAAS which showed the highest
factor loadings. These three items were assessed on
a 7-point scale Likert-type ranging from 0 (not at all),
3 (somewhat), to 6 (very much). Given that the items
assess lack of mindfulness, we inverted the items
 COGNITION AND EMOTION 5

Table 1. Means, standard deviations, range, and reliabilities of the variables in study 1.
Multilevel
Actual range reliability Variance Stationarity
Dependent variables M SD Min Max RKRN RCN Within-person Between-person punitroot
Awareness (MAAS) 4.78 1.31 0 6 .98 .86 55.7% 44.3% < .001
Reappraisal 0.91 1.34 0 6 – – 63.7% 36.3% < .001
Suppression 1.20 1.59 0 6 – – 63.5% 36.5% < .001
Distraction 1.30 1.64 0 6 – – 61.4% 38.6% < .001
Social Sharing 1.01 1.50 0 6 – – 73.1% 26.9% < .001
Rumination 1.77 1.84 0 6 – – 55.7% 44.3% < .001
NA 15.83 17.80 0 100 .91 .64 56.4% 47.4% < .001
Notes: MAAS = Mindfulness Mindful Attention Awareness Scale; NA = negative affect; punitroot = the p-value of the inverse normal Z-statistic of the
augmented Dickey-Fuller tests to examine the existence of a unit root. A non-significant test statistic indicates that the data contain a random
walk with a trend and are, thus, not stationary. N = 125.

and then computed the mean score, such that higher
scores indicated higher levels of present-moment
awareness since the last assessment. Given that we
used a multifaceted instrument to assess mindfulness
in Study 2, which differentiates between present
moment attention, acting with awareness and non-
judgmental acceptance, we will refer to the unidimen-
sional MAAS as acting with awareness (awareness).
Acting with awareness is also a facet of the most
popular trait mindfulness questionnaire Five Facet
Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ; Baer et al., 2008)
and is highly correlated with the MAAS (r = .89; Baer
et al., 2008). This not surprising given that the MAAS
items we selected have been used in modified form
to assess awareness in the FFMQ and in the Multidi-
mensional State Mindfulness Questionnaire (Blanke
& Brose, 2017) used in Study 2.
Analytic approach. To capture the hierarchical nature
of our data, where observations (level 1) are nested
within individuals (level 2), we computed mixed
regressions in Stata 15 (Stata Corporation, College
Station, TX) using the mixed command with the
restricted maximum likelihood option. To examine
within-person associations, continuous Level 1 vari-
ables were within-person standardised, such that
each score of an observation of a given variable was
subtracted by the person mean of that variable and
then divided by the person standard deviation of
that variable. We chose within-person standardisation
over within-person centreing (Enders & Tofighi, 2007)
since it allows for easier interpretation of the effect
sizes and is associated with less bias when between-
person variance exists (Wang et al., 2019). To
examine between-person associations, we aggregated
the data on the individual and used z-standardisation
to obtain standardised effect sizes. In all analyses, we
examined the mean of the emotion regulation strat-
egies and all five emotion regulation strategies separ-
ately. To control the familywise error rate, we applied
Šidák-correction for the five comparisons regarding
the single strategy. In the following analyses, momen-
tary refers to the assessment of a state at a given
moment t, prior to the laggedt−1 momentary variable
(value of a momentary variable during the previous
ambulatory assessment t−1), and recent to the interval
between the current assessment t and the prior
assessment t−1.
Decreased emotion regulation efforts (Monitor-and-
Acceptance Theory). To examine how awareness was
associated with the use of emotion regulation strat-
egies, we computed mixed regressions predicting
the five within-person standardised strategies. In the
unadjusted analyses, we predicted the intensity of
the implementation of a strategy (Y) by entering the
laggedt−1 within-person standardised awareness
(PriorAwa) in the fixed part of the mixed regression.
In the random part, we included the random partici-
pants intercepts (P) and a random slope for prior
awareness which allows prior awareness to vary
between participants. The within-person model is rep-
resented by Equation 1, the between-person model by
Equation 2. Please note that we did not include the
autocorrelation of the strategy given that this regulat-
ory effort could had been linked to another event and,
thus, change in the outcome would had been more
difficult to interpret.
Yij = b00 + mP0j + (b10 + mPxPriorAwa
1j )PriorAwaij
+ 1ij (1)
Yi = b0 + b1 Awa + b2 Groupi + 1i (2)
6 M. WENZEL ET AL.

Additionally, we investigated the impact of the (Equation 6).

brief mindfulness training on emotion regulation strat-
egy implementation by regressing each z-standar-
dised strategy on the two-way interaction between
group (0 = control condition, 1 = mindfulness training)
and time (0 = first week, 1 = last week) in a three-level
model where observations were nested in time (T) and
time nested in participants (P; Equation 3).
Yijk = b000 + mP0k + mT0jk + b100 Group1k
+ b200 Time2jk + b300 Groupx Time3jk + 1ijk (3)
Increased emotion regulation effectiveness (Mindful-
ness-to-Meaning Theory). To test the assumption
derived from the Mindfulness-to-Meaning Theory,
we investigated whether awareness could moderate
the effectiveness of emotion regulation strategies in
down-regulating negative affect. For the within-
person level, we modelled momentary negative
affect (Y) by computing mixed regressions with
random participants intercepts (P) and entered the
two-way interaction between within-person standar-
dised prior awareness (PriorAwa) and recent emotion
regulation strategy use (ERS) along with the main
effects and random slopes, controlling for prior nega-
tive affect (PriorNA; Equation 4).
Yijk =b000 + mP0k + mT0jk + b100 Group1k + b200 Time2jk
+ b300 Group × Time3jk + (b400 + mPxPERS
1k )ERSijk
+ b500 Group × ERSijk + b600 Time × ERSijk
+ b700 Group × Time × ERSijk + 1ijk
(6)
Alternative explanation for decreased emotion regu-
lation efforts. One might argue that mindfulness is
possibly negatively associated with emotion regu-
lation strategy use due to the, to some extent, exclu-
sive employment of emotion regulation strategies, in
that individuals only use one strategy at a time. The
idea here is that mindfulness could be seen as
another emotion regulation strategy that participants
employ instead of the other strategies, which would
explain a possible negative relation between mindful-
ness and emotion regulation strategy use. To test this
alternative explanation, we computed mixed
regressions with random participants intercepts and
entered the fixed effects and random slopes of the
strategies to predict recent emotion regulation strat-
egy use (Y). For example, Equation 7 represents the
model for reappraisal use.
Yij =b00 + mP0j

+ (b10 + mPxPrior
1j
Suppression
)Prior Suppressionij
Yij = b00 + mP0j + (b10 + mPxPrior
1j
Awa
)Prior Awaij
+ (b20 + mPxPrior
2j
Distraction
)Prior Distractionij
+ (b20 + mPxERS
2j )ERSij
+ (b30 + mPxSocial Sharing
)Prior Social Sharingij
+ (b30 + mPxPrior
3j
Awax ERS
)Prior Awax ERSij 3j

+ (b40 )Prior NAij + 1ij (4) + (b40 + mPxPrior

4j
Rumination
)Prior Ruminationij

For the between-person, we again aggregated the
data on the individual level and regressed z-standar-
dised negative affect on the two-way interaction
between z-standardised awareness and emotion regu-
lation strategy use, controlling for the mindfulness
training (Group; Equation 5).
Yi = b0 + b1 Awai + b2 ERSi + b3 Awax ERSi
+ b4 Groupi + 1i
For the effect of the mindfulness training on strategy
effectiveness, we regressed within-person negative
affect on the three-way interaction between mindful-
ness training, time and recent emotion regulation
strategy use, controlling for prior negative affect
+ (b50 + mPxPrior
5j
Awa
)Prior Awaij + +1ij
(7)
Results
Within- and between-person variance in emotion
regulation strategies
We first investigated how much within-person var-
(5) iance was in the use of the five emotion regulation
strategies. To that end, we computed a random-inter-
cept mixed regression on the unstandardised strat-
egies which estimated the person mean (fixed
intercept) of a strategy, the between-person variance
describing the variation of the intercept between par-
ticipants (random intercept), and the within-person
 COGNITION AND EMOTION 7

variance not explained by the between-person differ-
ences (residual error).
The results, as indicated in Table 1, show substan-
tial within-person variance. This indicates, on the one
hand, the presence of relatively large individual
differences when using emotion regulation strategies,
with between-person variances around 40%. On the
other hand, the large within-person variance around
60% hints at possible situational moderators, such
as awareness, that could explain the differences in
emotion regulation strategy implementation
intensity.
Decreased emotion regulation efforts (Monitor-
and-Acceptance Theory)
As shown in Figure 1(a) (and Table S1 in the online
supplement, https://osf.io/e6ctr/), prior awareness
was significantly associated with less employment of
all five emotion regulation strategies subsequently,
both on the within and between person. The negative
effect sizes were largest for suppression and distrac-
tion as well as for the mean of all five strategies.
Thus, individuals reported to implement emotion
regulation strategies less intensely when they were
more aware of their thoughts and behaviour before-
hand than usual and when individuals were generally
more aware of their thoughts and behaviour than
other individuals.
Additionally, we investigated how the mindfulness
training impacted emotion regulation strategy use
over the course of Study 1 (Table S2). To that end,
we regressed the z-standardised strategy, aggregated
on the time level (that is aggregated for the first and
last week of the assessment), on the two-way inter-
action between mindfulness training and time (base-
line vs. end of training) to see whether participants
in the mindfulness training reported to use emotion
regulation strategies less intensely over the course of
the study compared to participants in the control con-
dition. As illustrated in Figure 1(a), these models
revealed that participants in the mindfulness training
condition did not significantly use emotion regulation
strategies less intensely over the course of Study 1.
Increased emotion regulation effectiveness
(Mindfulness-to-Meaning Theory)
With regard to whether mindfulness affects the effec-
tiveness of emotion regulation strategies, as derived
from the Mindfulness-to-Meaning Theory for reapprai-
sal and from biological research focusing on a top-
down regulatory perspective, the results illustrated
in Figure 1(b) (and Tables S3 and S4 in the online

Figure 1. (a) The coefficient plot shows the standardised regression coefficients (the dots) and their 95% CIs (the whiskers) in Study 1 for the
association between emotion regulation strategy intensity and either prior levels of the mindfulness facet acting with awareness (within-person
level), the person mean of acting with awareness (between-person level), or the interaction between the mindfulness training and time (first vs.
last week). (b) The coefficient plot shows the standardised regression coefficients and their 95% CIs for the association between negative affect
and the two-way interaction between the mindfulness facet acting with awareness and emotion regulation strategy intensity (within- and
between-person level) or between negative affect and the three-way interaction between the mindfulness training, time (first vs. last week),
and emotion regulation strategy intensity.
Note: Mean = mean intensity of all emotion regulation strategies; REA = reappraisal; SUP = suppression; DIS = distraction; SOC = social sharing; RUM = rumination.
8 M. WENZEL ET AL.

Table 2. Fixed-effects estimates of recent emotion regulation strategies as a function of prior emotion regulation strategies.
Outcome (right)/Predictor (below) βreapraissal (SE) βsuppression (SE) βdistraction (SE) βsocial_sharing (SE) βrumination (SE)
Study 1
Prior reappraisal – .02* (.01) .05*** (.01) .05*** (.01) .04** (.01)
Prior suppression .04*** (.01) – .18*** (.02) .01 (.01) .04*** (.01)
Prior distraction .03** (.01) .18*** (.02) – .02 (.01) .06*** (.01)
Prior social sharing .07*** (.01) .01 (.01) .02* (.01) – .06*** (.01)
Prior rumination .03* (.01) .05*** (.01) .06*** (.01) .06*** (.01) –
Study 2
Prior reappraisal – .02 (.02) .07*** (.02) .08*** (.02) .02 (.02)
Prior suppression <.01 (.02) – .09*** (.02) <.01 (.01) .06*** (.02)
Prior distraction .06*** (.02) .05** (.02) – .04* (.02) .06** (.02)
Prior social sharing .08*** (.02) .02 (.01) .02 (.02) – <.01 (.01)
Prior rumination .03* (.02) .09*** (.02) .05** (.02) .03 (.02) –
Note: *p < .05, **p < .01, ***p < .001.

supplement, https://osf.io/e6ctr/) demonstrated that Mediation analysis: can emotion regulation

prior awareness did not significantly moderate the
effectiveness of any of the five strategies in reducing
negative affect, with effect sizes close to zero both
on the within- and between-person level. Thus, it
can be assumed that awareness is not associated
with the effectiveness of emotion regulation strategies
in daily life.
Regarding the mindfulness training, the three-way
interaction between the training, time, and each strat-
egy did not reveal any significant differences in nega-
tive affect. Thus, participants in the mindfulness
condition did not report more effective emotion regu-
lations efforts over the course of the training com-
pared to the control condition.
Alternative explanation for decreased emotion
regulation efforts
As illustrated in Table 2, all laggedt−1 strategy
measures were positively and mostly significantly
associated with subsequent ERS use. Thus, only prior
levels of awareness but not of other strategies were
negatively associated with subsequent strategy use.
efforts explain the relationship between
awareness and NA?
The goal of both the Monitor-and-Acceptance Theory
and the Mindfulness-to-Meaning Theory is to explain
how mindfulness is related to well-being and health.
So far, we found evidence for the link between aware-
ness and less emotion regulation use. In the next step,
we wanted to examine whether less emotion regu-
lation use can explain the association between aware-
ness and negative affect by computing mediation
models. We first established whether prior levels of
awareness and subsequent levels of negative affect
were significantly associated in our data, which was
the case for both the within-person, β = −.13, SE
= .01, p < .001, 95% CI [−.16, −.10], and between-
person level, β = −.58, SE = .07, p < .001, 95% CI
[−.73, −.44].
Given the established link between mindfulness
and well-being in our data, we computed the
mediation model, which is illustrated in Figure 2. We
bootstrapped the indirect effect via mean strategy
use with n = 1000 repetitions, which indicated that
25% / 32% (within-/between-person) of the total
effect of β = −.13/−.58 was mediated by mean

Figure 2. Standardised regression coefficients on the within- / between-person level in Study 1 for the relationship between the mindfulness
facet acting with awareness (X) and negative affect (Y) as mediated by the averaged intensity of implemented emotion regulation strategies (M).
Note: *p < .05, **p < .01, ***p < .001.

strategy use, β = −.03, SE = .003, 95% CIbca [−.04, −.02]
and β = −.18, SE = .09, 95% CIbca [−.39, −.05]. The
direct effects were still significant on both levels,
hinting at other possible mediators.
Discussion
To summarise, Study 1 provides evidence for the
hypothesis derived from the Monitor-and-Acceptance
Theory, such that awareness was associated with less
emotion regulation efforts both within and between
individuals. Moreover, emotion regulation efforts and
stress exposure could explain considerably (around
40% for both levels) the negative link between aware-
ness and negative affect. In turn, the hypothesis
derived from the Mindfulness-to-Meaning Theory
that awareness improves the effectiveness of
emotion regulation strategies, especially of reapprai-
sal, could not be confirmed in Study 1. To replicate
these results and better guard it against the possibility
of reporting a false positive, we re-analyzed another
ambulatory assessment dataset in Study 2. This
dataset not only included the awareness facet of
mindfulness but also present-moment attention and,
importantly, the non-judgmental acceptance facet,
which enables us to more directly examine the impor-
tance of acceptance in the interplay between mindful-
ness, emotion regulation, and affect.
Study 2
Method
Participants and design
The parent study preregistered to stop collecting data
after 90 romantic dyads were enrolled, which was
slightly exceeded by 2 dyads due to scheduling
issues. Participating couples, of which at least one par-
ticipant within a couple was an undergraduate
student, could choose between receiving five hours
of course credit or 50 € (app. US$ 57). One couple
dropped out after the first day and seven participants
were excluded due to responding to less than 33% of
the signals. Thus, the final sample comprised 175 par-
ticipants (52.0% female; M = 25.0 years, SD = 5.4).
Please note that participants of Study 1 were not eli-
gible for Study 2.
Procedure
If interested, individuals received an e-mail, which con-
tained information about the study and a weblink to
COGNITION AND EMOTION 9
assess several trait questionnaires. After completing
the questionnaires, participants scheduled the first lab-
oratory session via an online calendar. After signing an
informed consent form in the first lab session, partici-
pants were explained how to use the movisensXS
experience sampling application (movisens GmbH,
Karlsruhe, Germany). Starting the next day and for 7
subsequent days, participants received signal-triggered
prompts to complete self-reports on their momentary
emotions, emotion regulation strategies, and mindful-
ness. Twelve signals were distributed within 12 h with
two consecutive signals required to be at least 30 min
apart (M = 58.3 min, SD = 20.6). The couples could
choose the start time within a day, either 9, 10, or 11
am, which set the end time to 9, 10, or 11 pm, respect-
ively. For each day and for each start condition, the
times were randomly generated and, then, presented
at fixed times to ensure that couples received the
signals at the same time (https://osf.io/957ew/). Compli-
ance to the study protocol was acceptable with 67.2%
completed ambulatory signals.
Measures
Affect. Momentary negative affect was assessed as in
Study 1 but on a scale ranging from 0 (not at all) to
6 (very much).
Emotion regulation strategies. The emotion regu-
lation strategies in Study 2 were the same as in
Study 1 but were assessed with different items
based on Pavani et al. (2017). Each item, ranging
from 0 (not at all) to 6 (very much), began with
“since the last signal or since awakening” (German:
“Seit dem letzten Signal/ seit dem Aufwachen”), fol-
lowed by “I have seen what positive things a negative
event can bring me” (positive reappraisal; German:
“habe ich gesehen, welche positiven Dinge ein nega-
tives Ereignis mit sich bringen kann”), “I have talked
about my feelings with others” (social sharing;
German: “habe ich mit anderen über meine Gefühle
gesprochen”), “I have tried not to show or express
my emotions” (expressive suppression; German:
“habe ich versucht, meine Emotionen nicht zu
zeigen oder auszudrücken”.), “I have diverted my
attention away from my problems” (distraction;
German: “habe ich meine Aufmerksamkeit von
meinen Problemen weggeleitet”), and “I have wasted
time thinking of a past event again and again” (rumi-
nation; German: „habe ich meine Zeit damit vergeu-
det, immer wieder über ein Ereignis zu grübeln”).
10 M. WENZEL ET AL.

Table 3. Means, standard deviations, range, and reliabilities of the variables in study 2.
Multilevel
Actual range reliability Variance Stationarity
Dependent variables M SD Min Max RKRN RCN Within-person Between-person Between-dyad punitroot
Awareness (MSMQ) 4.06 1.15 0.89 5.98 .96 .91 35.7% 51.7% 12.6% < .001
Attention (MSMQ) 3.75 0.85 1.45 5.87 .95 .84 54.3% 42.7% 3.0% < .001
Acceptance (MSMQ) 4.96 0.94 1.49 6 .96 .78 25.5% 53.3% 21.1% < .001
Reappraisal 0.88 0.89 0 3.39 – – 51.0% 37.0% 12.0% < .001
Suppression 0.95 0.89 0 3.75 – – 47.2% 39.1% 13.7% < .001
Distraction 1.29 1.10 0 3.93 – – 43.2% 44.6% 12.2% < .001
Social Sharing 1.50 1.11 0 5.30 – – 54.3% 29.2% 16.5% < .001
Rumination 0.95 0.99 0 3.92 – – 44.1% 44.9% 11.0% < .001
NA 0.60 0.64 0 2.85 .91 .50 30.3% 46.5% 23.2% < .001
Notes: MSMQ = Multidimensional State Mindfulness Questionnaire; NA = negative affect; punitroot = the p-value of the inverse normal Z-statistic of
the augmented Dickey-Fuller tests to examine the existence of a unit root. A non-significant test statistic indicates that the data contain a
random walk with a trend and are, thus, not stationary. N = 175.

Mindfulness. Mindfulness was captured via the Multidi-
mensional State Mindfulness Questionnaire (Blanke &
Brose, 2017), which consists of three subscales with
three items each: present-moment attention (atten-
tion), acting with awareness (awareness), and non-
judgmental acceptance (acceptance). Participants
were asked to report how they have felt, behaved or
what they have thought since the last prompt/ since
waking up by answering all items on a scale from 0
(does not apply at all) to 6 (applies strongly).
Analytic approach. The analytical approach was
largely the same as in Study 1. To respect the dyadic
structure of the data, where observations (level 1)
were nested within individuals (level 2), and addition-
ally, nested in dyads (level 3), we computed three-level
mixed models for the within-person processes using
the within-person standardised variables. For the
between-person processes, we computed two-level
models (participants and dyads) using the z-standar-
dised aggregated variables. To improve readability of
the result section, we only present the results for
mean strategy use. The results for each emotion regu-
lation strategy as well as the full results, the analysis
plan, and the data can be found in the online sup-
plement at (https://osf.io/dp5gv/).
Results
Within- and between-person variance in emotion
regulation strategies
Again, there was substantial within- and between-
person variance in the relevant variables, as shown in
Table 3. Thus, the data is well suited to examine the
relationships on both the within- and between-person
level.
Decreased emotion regulation efforts (Monitor-
and-Acceptance Theory)
Figure 3(a) (and Table S5 and S6 in the online sup-
plement, https://osf.io/e6ctr/) shows the results for the
bottom-up approach: In the unadjusted analyses,
awareness was significantly associated with lesser inten-
sity of strategy implementation both within-person and
between-person, replicating the results reported in
Study 1. However, the significant associations greatly
reduced in size and were no longer significant in the
adjusted analyses when the mindfulness facets were
entered simultaneously. Instead, only acceptance was
significantly associated with strategy use, both on the
within- and between-person level. Thus, individuals
who accept their thoughts and feelings do not only
reported less intense regulation of their emotions
than other individuals but also in the very next
moment. These results highlight the importance of
the acceptance facet of mindfulness for emotion regu-
lation and provides further evidence for the multi-fac-
torial structure of mindfulness that should be reflected
by using mindfulness questionnaires that respect this
structure.
Increased emotion regulation effectiveness
(Mindfulness-to-Meaning Theory)
The results for the top-down approach mirrored the
results in Study 1, with none of the mindfulness
facets significantly moderating the mean emotion
regulation effectiveness (Figure 3(b); Table S7 and S8).
The only exception was attention in the between-
person analyses (Table S8 in the online supplement,
https://osf.io/e6ctr/) which showed that mean
emotion regulation endorsement was only significantly
associated with negative affect in participants who
reported less present-moment attention, β = .40, SE
 COGNITION AND EMOTION 11

Figure 3. (a) The coefficient plot shows the standardised regression coefficients (the dots) and their 95% CIs (the whiskers) in Study 2 for the
association between mean intensity of all emotion regulation strategies (Mean ERS) and the three mindfulness facets acting with awareness,
present-moment attention, and non-judgmental acceptance, both on the within-person (wp) and between-person level (bp). (b) The coefficient
plot shows the standardised regression coefficients and their 95% CIs for the association between negative affect and the two-way interaction
between the three mindfulness facets and mean intensity of all emotion regulation strategies. The mindfulness facets were entered separately
(unadjusted) and simultaneously (adjusted).

= .10, p < .001, 95% CI [.20, .61], in comparison to those emotions, and behaviours is associated with a reduction
who reported more attention on the present moment, of subsequent emotion regulation efforts which cannot
β = .03, SE = .11, p = .751, 95% CI [−.18, .25]. All other be interpreted as the result of exclusive emotion regu-
emotion regulation strategies were not significant. lation strategy employment.

Alternative explanation for decreased emotion
regulation efforts
As in Study 1, strategy use at the previous observation
did not show negative association with subsequent
strategy use as did mindfulness. Instead the associations
were positive, indicating that prior effortful emotion
regulation endorsement was significantly associated
with increased regulation efforts subsequently. Consid-
ering all results, Study 2 provides further evidence that
only mindful acceptance of one’s own thoughts,
Mediation analysis: can emotion regulation
efforts explain the relationship between
acceptance and NA?
As in Study 1, awareness was significantly associated
with negative affect, β = −.06, SE = .02, p < .001, 95%
CI [−.09, −.03] within-person and β = −.31, SE = .07,
p < .001, 95% CI [−.44, −.18] between-person.
However, these associations became non-significant
in the adjusted analyses when all three mindfulness
facets were included, β = −.01, SE = .01, p = .332, 95%

Figure 4. Standardised regression coefficients on the within- / between-person level in Study 2 for the relationship between the mindfulness
facet non-judgmental acceptance (X) and negative affect (Y) as mediated by the averaged intensity of implemented emotion regulation strat-
egies (M).
Note: *p < .05, **p < .01, ***p < .001.
12 M. WENZEL ET AL.
CI [−.04, .01] within-person and β = .11, SE = .07,
p = .113, 95% CI [−.03, .25] between-person. Instead,
acceptance was the strongest predictor of negative
affect, both within individuals, β = −.12, SE = .02, p
< .001, 95% CI [−.15, −.09], and between individuals,
β = −.68, SE = .06, p < .001, 95% CI [−.81, −.56]. We,
thus, focused on the acceptance facet of mindfulness
in the following mediation analyses.
To test whether participants’ regulatory efforts
would mediate the relation between acceptance and
negative affect, we again conducted mediation ana-
lyses with bootstrapped indirect effects (n = 1,000
resamples). As Figure 4 illustrates, mean emotion regu-
lation was associated with both acceptance and nega-
tive affect, resulting in an indirect effect of β = −.025,
SE = .003, 95% CIbca [−.03, −.02] that mediated 22.0%
of the total within-person association and in an indirect
effect of β = −.18, SE = .09, 95% CIbca [−.38, −.05] that
mediated 25.6% of the total between-person associ-
ation between acceptance and negative affect.
General discussion
This study is the first to compare two notions of the
relationship between mindfulness and emotion regu-
lation in daily life derived from theoretical and neuro-
biological accounts of mindfulness. We did not find
evidence for a top-down approach compatible with
the Mindfulness-to-Meaning Theory where mindful-
ness reliably moderates the effectiveness of emotion
regulation strategies, evidenced by very small and
mostly non-significant effect sizes for the interactions
between the mindfulness facets and emotion regu-
lation strategies on negative and positive affect as
well as very small within-person variations in these
interactions. Instead, mindfulness was significantly
associated with less use of emotion regulation, provid-
ing evidence for a bottom-up process compatible with
the Monitor-and-Acceptance Theory: Participants who
reported higher levels of mindfulness, especially of
non-judgmental acceptance, than usual or than
others also reported to subsequently use less
emotion regulation strategies than usual or than
others. In addition, we found that emotion regulation
use significantly mediated the negative relation
between mindfulness, especially acceptance, and
negative affect, indicating that mindful individuals
feel better due to better acceptance of their own,
sometimes undesirable, thoughts and behaviours.
Thus, accepting one’s own thoughts and emotions
reduces the need to actively change them which, in
turn, frees the individual to do affectively more ben-
eficial things than endorsing effortful emotion
regulation.
Based on these results, we confirm the assumption
that mindfulness is associated with bottom–up reac-
tivity rather than top-down regulatory processes in
relatively meditation-naïve individuals (Chiesa et al.,
2010) and provide direct support for the Monitor-
and-Acceptance Theory (Creswell et al., 2019) but
not for the Mindfulness-to-Meaning Theory (Garland
et al., 2015). The only exception was social sharing,
which did not show significant within-person associ-
ations with prior mindfulness and was not significantly
affected by the mindfulness training. One possibility is
that mindfulness may have improved the perceived
quality of interpersonal relationships and communi-
cation (e.g. Barnes et al., 2007; Pratscher et al., 2018),
which may have cancelled out the reduction of
social sharing, in that individuals still like to share
thoughts and emotions with their friends.
Theoretical implications
Our results demonstrate that non-judgmental accep-
tance may be a key mechanism that broadens one’s
awareness of affective cues so that positive or nega-
tive stimuli may be monitored without applying
effortful control in the form of emotion regulation,
as only the non-judgmental facet of the MSMQ was
significantly associated with less emotion regulation
use but not the attention or the awareness facet
when all three mindfulness facets were entered simul-
taneously. These results are in line with recent
research demonstrating that removing the practice
of acceptance skills from mindfulness trainings signifi-
cantly reduced the beneficial effects on positive affect
(Lindsay et al., 2018) and significantly attenuated
stress-reduction benefits (Chin et al., 2019). With
regard to the Monitor-and-Acceptance Theory, the
results of Study 2 demonstrate that only nonjudgmen-
tal acceptance was significantly associated with
affective benefits, which represents the acceptance
factor of the Monitor-and-Acceptance Theory,
whereas attention and awareness, which both reflect
the monitoring factor, were not significantly associ-
ated. Thus, our results highlight the importance of
the acceptance factor of the Monitor-and-Acceptance
Theory, demonstrating that mindfulness trainings
should not only focus on formal practices of focusing
on the present moment but should also incorporate
components on facilitating one’s own perceptions of

present-moment experiences with an open and
accepting stance (e.g. Lindsay et al., 2018).
We also tested the alternative explanation that
mindfulness is another emotion regulation strategy
and that the negative associations are driven by the,
to some extent, exclusive employment of emotion
regulation strategies. First, empirically, this was not
the case, as prior levels of strategy use were positively
instead of negatively associated with subsequent
levels of strategy use, unlike mindfulness. Second,
we think that mindfulness differs in regard to
common emotion regulation strategies, in that the
five strategies investigated in the present research
are conceptualised to be used situationally, e.g.
when confronted with negative affect in a situation
without much control, individuals might employ sup-
pression to temporarily deal with the unpleasant
experience. Given the accepting and non-judgmental
focus on the present moment (Bishop et al., 2004),
mindfulness is better characterised as a general state
and embodied ethical stance (Grossman, 2015) that
reduces affective reactivity rather than an emotion
regulation strategy that is only employed on demand.
Study 1 also included a brief mindfulness training
over the course of the six weeks of assessment.
However, we did not find evidence that practicing
mindfulness led to less emotion regulation, which
might be due to the relative briefness and the focus
of the mindfulness training on the awareness facet
of mindfulness. Thus, future research might use a
more elaborated training that focuses on acceptance
to increase the likelihood of detecting meaningful
effect sizes with regard to strategy use.
Limitations
This study has several limitations to discuss. Firstly, we
used different operationalizations and different word-
ings in both data sets to capture the emotion regu-
lation strategies. Whereas Study 1 assessed cognitive
reappraisal, focusing on viewing the cause of one’s
feelings from a different perspective in order to
change it, Study 1 assessed positive reappraisal,
which focused on a positive perspective without
necessarily changing the cause of one’s feelings. As
for rumination, the operationalisation in Study 2 only
referred to brooding about events in the past and
not also in the future as in Study 1. On the one
hand, future research should avoid these issues by
using consistent operationalizations of emotion regu-
lation strategies. On the other hand, our results show
COGNITION AND EMOTION 13
that the result are robust regarding different operatio-
nalizations of the emotion regulation strategies and
not due to specific wordings of the items.
Given the investigation period of six weeks in
Study 1 and the frequent ambulatory assessment
with 12 signals per day in Study 2, each emotion regu-
lation strategy was assessed with only a single item in
order to decrease the burden for the participants. The
downside is that this limits the reliability of the
emotion regulation strategy assessment. However,
given that emotion regulation strategies are compara-
tively narrow concepts, using single items provides a
good trade-off between reliability and space con-
straints, two hardly compatible issues ambulatory
assessment studies often have to deal with (Brans
et al., 2013; Koval et al., 2015).
Finally, we need to highlight our concerns about
generalizability of results with regard to the general
population given that we mostly recruited female
undergraduate students with 18 and 30 years. The
sample of Study 2 included a higher share of the
male and academic population, but still could not be
considered as representative of the general
population.
Conclusion
To sum up, our findings support the view that mindful-
ness, especially its non-judgmental acceptance facet,
is a bottom-up process that is negatively associated
with the use of several emotion regulation strategies,
suggesting that acceptance is associated with less
need or motivation to regulate emotions. These
results highlight the value of ambulatory assessment
as a complementary tool to laboratory research to
study the relation between mindfulness and
emotion regulation.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Kimberly Holtz, Tobias Kammann, Luisa
Sofie Ludwig, Markus Müssig, Maike Vogel, and Julius Welzel
for the great help in collecting the data. The research presented
in this article was supported by a scholarship of the Stipendien-
stiftung Rheinland-Pfalz awarded to Zarah Rowland, and by an
intramural grant of the Johannes Gutenberg University
awarded to Mario Wenzel.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
14 M. WENZEL ET AL.
Funding
This work was supported by Stipendienstiftung Rheinland-Pfalz;
Internal University Research Funding.
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