Between Can’t and Won’t: The Relationship Between Trait Mindfulness, Stoic Ideology, and Alexithymia in Norway and New Zealand

The aim of the present study was to provide cross-cultural insight into the relationship between mindfulness, alexithymia, and stoic ideology.

Using samples from New Zealand (n = 330) and Norway (n = 326), we estimated the facet-level network relationship of our target constructs, as well as the invariance of the estimated networks across cultural contexts.

Across cultural contexts, we found a consistent pattern of relationships in which both stoic ideology and alexithymia were negatively related to mindfulness. Negative relationships were especially pronounced between alexithymia and the mindfulness facets of Describing, Non-Judgement, and Acting with Awareness. This indicates that individual differences in these mindfulness facets might be more firmly rooted in difficulties identifying and describing emotions, compared to beliefs related to emotional suppression, as captured by stoic ideology. While the mindfulness facets showed overall expected patterns of relationships with both alexithymia and stoic ideology, Non-Reacting showed a divergent pattern. Non-Reacting was positively related to a tendency of Externally Oriented Thinking, as well as with Death-Acceptance, in both countries. Thus, this facet not only might capture Non-reactivity within the context of mindfulness, but also could potentially capture aspects of emotional avoidance.

Overall, the study highlights that mindfulness could be influenced by both individual differences in emotion processing and cognitive beliefs about emotion processing. This accentuates the importance of examining both individual differences in, and cognitive beliefs about emotion regulation in research regarding mindfulness.