A Partial Least Squares Path Model of Mindfulness As a Driver of Hope and Flourishing

   Mindfulness is central to emotional self-regulation through learning to detect when the mind shifts towards negative past or future events. Attention control is important to the state of mindfulness, as suggested by Kabat-Zinn who noted mindfulness is “the awareness that emerges through paying attention on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally to the unfolding of experience moment to moment.”

   Hope theorists consistently note that hopeful thinking has an important mindful element, namely that hopeful thinking involves focusing attention on positive future outcomes. Thus, because mindfulness is thought to be a state of attention control and attention control is an important driver of hope, we hypothesized and tested causal model with mindfulness as an exogenous driver of hope that ultimately leads to psychological flourishing which measure of social-psychological prosperity.

   Data was collected from a cross sectional sample of people (N = 103) over 18 years of age (M = 41.51, SD = 14.618). The survey was conducted online and included scales to measure the latent variables of mindfulness, hope, and flourishing.  Partial Least Squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) was used to test a path model with mindfulness as the causal driver of hope,  with hope serving as a mediator between mindfulness and the endogenous variable of flourishing. PLS-SEM is a non-parametric variance based SEM that provides greater power with smaller samples than covariance based SEM (CB-SEM). Measurement models with PLS-SEM are evaluated by factor loadings of items on latent variables along with composite reliability and average variance extracted scores (AVE).  Structural models are evaluated according to the predicted variance in the endogenous variables and the variance accounted for (VAF) of proposed mediators within the model. To test for statistical significance of the paths within the model, PLS also incorporates bootstrapping techniques to developed point estimates of the parameters of the model to develop confidence intervals [CI] for those parameters within the population.

   For the measurement model, the composite reliabilities of all the measures exceeded the recommended threshold value of 0.70.   Adjustments were made to the mindfulness scale until thresholds were met, while hope and flourishing met thresholds as written and resulted in item loadings greater than .40, and AVE scores met Fornell-Larcker criteria for acceptability. Taken together, results suggest the measurement of the latent variables of mindfulness, hope, and flourishing.  The evaluation of the structural model indicated that the model accounted for an R²_adj  = .581 in variance in the endogenous variable of flourishing, considered a large effect according to the heuristics of social sciences.  Bootstrapping (n = 5000) indicated all proposed path scores were significant, with the bootstrapped VAF score (0.739) indicating hope was a robust partial mediator of the relationship between mindfulness and flourishing.

   Results suggest the importance of mindfulness as driver of hope and flourishing among an adult population.  Results are consistent with hope theory that suggests hopeful thinking focuses attention on positive future outcomes leading to overall flourishing, which provides further support for the importance of interventions designed to increase mindfulness.