Investigating Differential Effects of Online Mental Training Interventions on Mental Well-being and Social Cohesion

Core practice: Affect Dyad. In the Affect Dyad (AD), participants perform a 12-minute partner-based exercise which involves contemplating over one difficult situation and one situation which incurred gratitude in the past 24 hours. Both partners take turns speaking about the two situations while the other partner listens in a non-judgmental manner. While the participants elaborate on the situations, they are asked to focus on the bodily experience of the emotions generated during the situation. The goal of the exercise is to enhance coping with difficult emotions, empathic listening, social sharing, acceptance, and gratitude.

Core practice: Breathing Meditation. In this intervention, participants will practice 12-minute basic attention-based mindfulness meditation such as the Breathing Meditation (BM). BM is a 12-minute individual exercise that requires participants to focus their attention on the sensations of breathing. Participants have to sustain their attention to breath for long stretches of time, and have to return their attention to their breath when their mind wanders. The key focus is on training attention and interoceptive body awareness. Other practices participants will be taught is mindfulness on sounds (here the object of attention is not the breath but sounds in the environment).