Interventions to enhance happiness: comparison of Loving Kindness Meditation practice with an Integrative Positive Emotion Regulation pro- gram in a randomised controlled trial

Weytens, Fanny;Luminet, Olivier;Mikolajczak, Moïra
(2012) 6th European Conference on Positive Psychology — Location: Moscow, Russia (26.June.2012)

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Benefits of positive emotions (e.g. joy, pride, awe, gratitude) have been well established in the past ten years (e.g. Frederickson, 2001; Keyes, 2007 ; Lyubomirsky, King, & Diener, 2005; Ryff & Singer, 2008). The increase of research on positive emotions went hand in hand with the creation of a true “market of happiness” for lay people. As a result, many people are now willing to increase their level of happiness (Cohn, & Fredrickson, 2010) and there is a boom of techniques aiming to address this need. Among the validated techniques, one finds methods as diverse as cognitive reframing (Seligman, Rashid, & Parks, 2006; Seligman, Steen, Park, & Peterson, 2005), savoring (Bryant, 1989), gratitude (Emmons & McCullough, 2003; Sheldon &, Lyubomirsky, 2006), expression of positive emotions (Adelmann & Zajonc, 1989), remembering of positive events (Lyubomirsky, Sousa, & Dickerhoof, 2006; Quoidbach, Hansenne, & Mottet, 2008) to cite but a few examples. These techniques (and others) have been recently organized by Quoidbach (2012) in a theoretical model based on Gross’ Process Model of Emotion Regulation (1998, 2007). While there is a miscellaneous of techniques to increase one's happiness, there is currently no psychological intervention that integrates and organises them. The only structured intervention to increase happiness validated so far appears to be the Loving Kindness Meditation (LKM). LKM is a meditation practice that induces feelings of warmth and caring for self and others (Salzberg, 1995). It has been found to increase daily experience of positive emotions and improve life satisfaction and reduce depressive symptoms (e.g. Cohn, & Fredrickson, 2010; Fredrickson, Cohn, Coffey, Pek, Finkel, 2008). Because the LKM is a single-method intervention, we wondered what would be the relative efficiency of a multi-method intervention. Using Quoidbach’s model as a conceptual framework, we designed an Integrative Positive Emotion Regulation-Program (IPER- Program) including a set of effective techniques to teach people how to generate, intensify or prolong positive emotions. The aim of our study is to compare the benefits of LKM and the IPER-Program on subjective well-being, physical health and social relationships in a North European sample. Our first hypothesis is that a multi-method program that gathers a core of positive emotion induction methods (as the IPER-Program) will generate greater effects than LKM which focus on generating feelings of warmth and care. Our second hypothesis is that the IPER-Program, articulating 1) explanations of scientific findings about positive emotions, 2) the way people can implement these findings in their daily lives and, 3) practical exercises in vivo, will be more "adherence-able" and thus, efficient and generalizable technique for North European people that can be culturally more reluctant to the meditational aspects of LKM. 140 students were randomly assigned to either (1) the IPER-Program, or (2) a LKM intervention or (3) a waiting-list control group. Both intervention groups followed a 12-hours program complemented with home exercises. Subjective well-being, physical health and social relationships were assessed before and 4- weeks after the training in different ways (self reported questionnaires, biomarkers levels and behavioral task). As the study is still in progress, results will be presented and discussed at the conference.
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Weytens, F., Luminet, O., & Mikolajczak, M. (2012). Interventions to enhance happiness: comparison of Loving Kindness Meditation practice with an Integrative Positive Emotion Regulation pro- gram in a randomised controlled trial. 6th European Conference on Positive Psychology, Moscow, Russia. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/161063