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Background and Objectives: Mind-wandering, and specifically the frequency and content of mind-wandering, plays an important role in the psychological well-being of individuals. Repetitive negative thinking has been associated with a high risk to develop and maintain Major Depressive Disorder. We here combined paradigms and techniques from cognitive sciences and experimental clinical psychology to study the transdiagnostic psychiatric phenomenon of repetitive negative thinking. This allowed us to investigate the adjustability of the content and characteristics of mind-wandering in individuals varying in their susceptibility to negative affect., Methods: Participants high (n = 42) or low (n = 40) on their vulnerability for negative affect and depression performed a Sustained Attention to Response Task (SART) after a single session of positive fantasizing and a single session of stress induction in a cross-over design. Affective states were measured before and after the interventions., Results: After stress, negative affect increased, while after fantasizing both positive affect increased and negative affect decreased. Thoughts were less off-task, past-related and negative after fantasizing compared to after stress. Individuals more susceptible to negative affect showed more off-task thinking after stress than after fantasizing compared to individuals low on this., Limitations: In this cross-over design, no baseline measurement was included, limiting comparison to 'uninduced' mind-wandering. Inclusion of self-related concerns in the SART could have led to negative priming., Conclusions: Stress-induced negative thinking underlying vulnerability for depression could be partially countered by fantasizing in a non-clinical sample, which may inform the development of treatments for depression and other disorders characterized by maladaptive thinking., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors have no competing interests to declare that are relevant to the content of this article. This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors., (Copyright © 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.)

Analytical meditation and monastic debate are contemplative practices engaged in by Tibetan Buddhist monastics that have up to now been largely unexplored in Western contemplative science. The highly physical form of contemplative debating plays an important role in the monastic curriculum. Based on discussions and recorded interviews Tibetan monastic teachers and senior students at Sera Jey Monastic University and preliminary experiments, we outline an initial theory that elucidates the psychological mechanisms underlying this practice. We then make predictions about the potential effects of this form of debating on cognition and emotion. On the basis of initial observations, we propose that successful debating requires skills that include reasoning and critical thinking, attentional focus, working memory, emotion regulation, confidence in your own reasoning skills, and social connectedness. It is therefore likely that the many cumulative hours of debate practice over 20+ years of monastic training helps to cultivate these very skills. Scientific research is needed to examine these hypotheses and determine the role that monastic debate may play in terms of both psychological wellbeing and educational achievement., (© 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)