Daily stress and the benefits of mindfulness: Examining the daily and longitudinal relations between present-moment awareness and stress responses

- Present-moment awareness is associated with enhanced responses to daily stress.
- Present-moment awareness predicts enhanced responses to stress on a subsequent day.
- The above effects are independent of daily negative affect and threat appraisal.

Theories of mindfulness claim that a state of present-moment awareness enhances self-regulation in the presence of negative emotion. However, very little research has tested this claim in relation to daily stressors. This paper examined whether present-moment awareness during daily stressful events predicted enhanced responding to (a) the same day's event, (b) a stressful event on the subsequent day and (c) stressful events on average, among a sample of adults (N = 143) over 20 days. We found support for these predictions, controlling for negative affect and stress-related appraisals. These novel findings extend the personality literature by showing that present-moment awareness facilitates adaptive stress-responses, independent of an individual's affective state and the severity of threat experienced.