Agnieszka Golec de Zavala

Understanding of the exact trajectories of mood improvements during mindfulness practice helps to optimize mindfulness‐based interventions. The Mindfulness‐to‐Meaning model expects mood improvements to be linear, incremental, and cumulative. Our findings align with this expectation. We used multilevel growth curve models to analyze daily changes in positive mood reported by 190 Polish participants during 42 days of a mobile‐app‐supported, mindfulness‐based intervention. The daily positive mood increased among 83.68% of participants. Participants who started the training reported worse mood improved more and faster than participants with better mood at the baseline. Dispositional mindfulness and narcissism – individual difference variables associated with high vs. low emotion regulation ability, respectively – were not associated with mood improvement trajectories. A small group of participants (16.32%) showed a steady decline in positive mood during the intervention. The results underscore the importance of a more comprehensive understanding of individual variability in benefiting from mindfulness‐based interventions.

Recent allegations that Pope John Paul II turned a blind eye to clergy sexual abuse as archbishop and pope have ignited much controversy in Poland. In this study, we utilize data from an original representative survey of Polish adults to examine predictors of defensive political reactions to these allegations. We hypothesized that national and Catholic collective narcissism (an exaggerated belief in in-group greatness that requires consistent external validation) would predict defensive attitudes in the face of the allegation, and that nonnarcissistic in-group satisfaction with national and Polish identities would be less related to defensive attitudes. Using a variety of statistical approaches, we find support for these predictions among Polish Catholics.