Processing fluency affects behavior more strongly among people higher in trait mindfulness

• Individuals higher in trait mindfulness tend to be more aware of their internal states.
• Processing fluency is enjoyable and can promote continuing tasks for enjoyment.
• Participants higher in mindfulness showed a more positive effect for processing fluency on task engagement.

Processing fluency is the ease of processing information about a stimulus, which people can attribute to the experience of enjoyment. Despite consistent findings that processing fluency can affect self-reported judgments, little research has examined whether processing fluency or its interactions with personality traits can affect behavior. The current studies demonstrate that processing fluency is more likely to affect behavior among people higher in trait mindfulness. We manipulated processing fluency with rhyming versus nonrhyming maxims in Study 1 and with regulatory fit versus nonfit in Study 2. Participants higher in mindfulness showed a stronger positive effect for processing fluency on the dependent variable: the number of ideas they listed in a task they continued for as long as they enjoyed it.