Abstract
Enhancing subjective well-being is essential for enlightening individual pursuit of a better life in positive psychology. Although numerous research projects have preliminarily investigated the effect of mindfulness (MD) on subjective well-being (SWB) and its potential mechanisms, few longitudinal studies have investigated the bidirectional association between MD and SWB at both trait and state levels. On this basis, this study aimed to comprehensively explain the temporary and longitudinal relationships between MD and SWB [positive affect (PA), negative affect (NA), life satisfaction (LS)] at both trait and state levels using the longitudinal and weekly diary methods. A two-wave longitudinal survey with a time interval of eight months from a sample of 504 adolescents (N = 504; M = 15.11; 56.2% female) and a seven-week weekly diary survey from a sample of 117 adolescents (N = 117; M = 15.64; 65.81% female) were designed in studies 1 and 2, respectively. In study 1, first, the confirmatory factor analysis was performed on SWB as a hierarchical construct to confirm that the global subjective well-being (gSWB) could explain the covariance among its first-order factors (PA, NA LS, Model 1). Then, two cross-lagged models (Model 2: MD - PA, NA, LS; Model 3: MD - gSWB) were constructed to explore the bidirectional relationship between trait mindfulness and SWB (PA, NA, LS, and gSWB) through Mplus 8.3. In study 2, the hierarchical linear models were initially constructed to explore the correlation between state mindfulness and SWB. Furthermore, the longitudinal hierarchical linear models were conducted to examine the cross-lagged relationship between state mindfulness and SWB. Overall, the results of the longitudinal study revealed that (1) trait mindfulness positively predicted PA and LS and negatively predicted NA; (2) trait mindfulness showed a reciprocal prediction with NA; (3) gSWB positively predicted trait mindfulness. In addition, the results of the weekly diary study indicated that (1) state mindfulness of the current week positively predicted PA and LS in the following week and negatively predicted NA in the following week. (2) PA and LS of the current week positively predicted state mindfulness in the following week. Findings suggest that, to some extent, there is a reciprocal relationship between MD and SWB, which not only contributes to our understanding of mindfulness at both trait and state levels, but also provides an empirical foundation for improving adolescents’ subjective well-being.
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Acknowledgements
We thank Nina He and Jiali He for their suggestions on the first draft of this article. We thank Jiali He and Wenrui Zhang for helping with the data analysis. We thank Ji Shan for touching-up the language of the response to reviewers and the manuscript. We thank the editors and three reviewers for their valuable suggestions.
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This work was supported by the General Program of the National Social Science Fund of China (19BSH114). The funding source had no influence on study design; the collection, analysis, and interpretation of data; the writing of the report; or the decision to submit the manuscript for publication.
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LM: Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Methodology, Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing. YX: Conceptualization, Data curation, Methodology, Funding acquisition, Supervision, Writing - review & editing.
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Ma, L., Xiang, Y. Mindfulness and Subjective Well-being Among Chinese Adolescents: A Longitudinal Study and a Weekly Diary Investigation. J Happiness Stud 24, 1861–1881 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-023-00662-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-023-00662-2