Self-description : the impact of Mindfulness

In Mindfulness, the Self is broadly investigated within the scope of clinical psychology. Wheareas there is a growing interest for Mindfulness in social psychology (Karremans & Papies, 2017), some of the flagship objects of the research field have not been looked upon closely yet, among which the Self. Classical conceptualizations consider the Self as either multidimensional (e.g., Baumeister, 2012 ; James, 1892) and socially interacting (Mead, 1963) or as a dynamic process built on a search for stability or for malleability (Markus & Kunda, 1986 ; Martinot, 1995, 2006). The reperception process at stake in Mindfulness practice ( Holzel et al., 2011; Shapiro et al., 2006) elicits two divergent processes which are independently documented in the literature. On one hand, Mindfulness allows better self-knowledge (e.g., Carlson, 2013 ; Hanley et al., 2017), on the other hand, Mindfulness leads to a transitory and impermanent Self-concept, up to a no-Self (e.g., Crescentini & Capurso, 2015 ; Fulton, 2008, Xiao et al., 2017). This projects aims at investigating through a mixed methods study the links between the dimensions of the Self and Mindfulness, and more specifically the social dimension of the Self, and its dynamics, in Mindfulness meditators vs. non-meditators. The social elements of the Self spontaneously brought up by the participants will be of great interest for the purpose of the study. The research consists of an online questionnaire comprised of the Twenty Statements Test (Kuhn & McPartland, 1954) and a series of Mindfulness and Self-concept based scales.