When less is more: Mindfulness predicts adaptive affective responding to rejection via reduced prefrontal recruitment

Alexandra M. Martelli, David S. Chester, Kirk Warren Brown, Naomi I. Eisenberger, C. Nathan DeWall

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

19 Scopus citations

Abstract

Social rejection is a distressing and painful event that many people must cope with on a frequent basis. Mindfulness- defined here as a mental state of receptive attentiveness to internal and external stimuli as they arise, moment-to-moment- may buffer such social distress. However, little research indicates whether mindful individuals adaptively regulate the distress of rejection-or the neural mechanisms underlying this potential capacity. To fill these gaps in the literature, participants reported their trait mindfulness and then completed a social rejection paradigm (Cyberball) while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging. Approximately 1 hour after the rejection incident, participants reported their level of distress during rejection (i.e. social distress). Mindfulness was associated with less distress during rejection. This relation was mediated by lower activation in the left ventrolateral prefrontal cortex during the rejection incident, a brain region reliably associated with the inhibition of negative affect. Mindfulness was also correlated with less functional connectivity between the left ventrolateral prefrontal cortex and the bilateral amygdala and the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, which play a critical role in the generation of social distress. Mindfulness may relate to effective coping with rejection by not overactivating top-down regulatory mechanisms, potentially resulting in more effective long-termemotion-regulation.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)648-655
Number of pages8
JournalSocial Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience
Volume13
Issue number6
DOIs
StatePublished - Jun 1 2018

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) (2018). Published by Oxford University Press.

Keywords

  • Emotion-regulation
  • FMRI
  • Mindfulness
  • Social rejection
  • Ventrolateral prefrontal cortex

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Experimental and Cognitive Psychology
  • Cognitive Neuroscience

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