The Role of Regular Meditation Practice, Trait Mindfulness, and Psychological Characteristics in Affective Startle Modulation: A Psychophysiological Study
- Title
- The Role of Regular Meditation Practice, Trait Mindfulness, and Psychological Characteristics in Affective Startle Modulation: A Psychophysiological Study
- Creator
- Shukla, Meenakshi; Upadhyay, Niti; Tripathi, Vishnukant; Kumari, Veena; Pandey, Rakesh
- Description
- Meditation practices, including mindfulness, are linked with adaptive emotional processing and regulation. Although startle response modulation among meditators has been studied using habituation and prepulse-induced startle inhibition paradigms, affective startle modulation, which refers to potentiation by negative stimuli and attenuation by positive stimuli (both relative to neutral stimuli), remains unexplored. This study examined how regular meditation practice, dispositional mindfulness, and affective difficulties influence affective modulation of the acoustic startle reflex. Seventeen meditators and thirty non-meditators were exposed to pleasant, neutral, and unpleasant images while their eye-blink startle responses were recorded. Participants also completed self-report measures of dispositional mindfulness, alexithymia, emotion regulation difficulties, depression, anxiety, and stress. Meditators, compared to non-meditators, reported higher dispositional mindfulness, particularly in the Observing and Non-reactivity domains, lower stress, and fewer difficulties in goal-oriented behaviour during negative emotions; they also had longer startle onset latencies, potentially indicating lower state anxiety, across the entire experiment regardless of the valence of visual images. Higher dispositional mindfulness correlated with lower scores on alexithymia, emotion regulation difficulties, depression, anxiety, and stress across the pooled sample. These findings suggest that mindfulness, whether cultivated through meditation or as a trait, reduces negative emotionality, highlighting its potential for emotional regulation and stress reduction. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2026.
- Source
- Applied Psychophysiology Biofeedback;
- Date
- 01-01-2026
- Publisher
- Springer
- Subject
- Alexithymia; Dispositional mindfulness; Emotion regulation; Latency to startle onset; Latency to startle peak; Meditators
- Coverage
- Shukla M., University of Allahabad, Prayagraj, India; Upadhyay N., Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, India, CHRIST Deemed to be University, Delhi NCR, India; Tripathi V., Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, India, Gandhi Smarak P.G. College, Jaunpur, India; Kumari V., Brunel University of London, London, United Kingdom; Pandey R., Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, India
- Rights
- Restricted Access; Hardcopy may be available in the library
- Relation
- ISSN: 10900586; CODEN: APSBF
- Format
- online
- Language
- English
- Type
- Article
Collection
Citation
Shukla, Meenakshi; Upadhyay, Niti; Tripathi, Vishnukant; Kumari, Veena; Pandey, Rakesh, “The Role of Regular Meditation Practice, Trait Mindfulness, and Psychological Characteristics in Affective Startle Modulation: A Psychophysiological Study,” CHRIST (Deemed To Be University) Institutional Repository, accessed June 19, 2026, https://archives.christuniversity.in/items/show/21870.