How mindfulness, decentering, nonattachment and rumination interact with the temporal associations between emotions and thoughts: An experience sampling study

The way emotions and thoughts affect each other in daily life deeply impacts an individual's well-being. This experience sampling study (N = 132, 24 random-schedule signals in 6 days) aimed to (a) test the bidirectionality of within-person concurrent (simultaneous) and prospective (from time t-1 to time t) associations between real-life emotions and thoughts; (b) explore the moderator roles of dispositions involving the ability to take an aware and detached perspective on inner experience (i.e., mindfulness, decentering, nonattachment and low rumination) in the abovementioned associations. Multilevel within-person and multilevel lagged models assessed concurrent and prospective links, respectively. Emotions and thoughts showed concurrent associations, and prospective associations only between same-valence emotions and thoughts. Low rumination and decentering strengthened the—respectively—simultaneous and prospective relationship between positive thoughts and positive emotions; decentering, nonattachment and low rumination suppressed the positive association between lagged negative emotions and present negative thoughts. Decentering also nullified the negative concurrent link between positive thoughts and negative emotions. Mindfulness and nonattachment strengthened the concurrent negative link between negative thoughts and positive emotions. Dispositions involving a detached perspective on inner experience improve individual abilities to deal with negative emotions and promote upward spirals between positive emotions and thoughts.