Abstract
Objectives
This study explores the evolution of the concept of mindfulness over the last 104 years in terms of the content, practice, and research development of all relevant studies reported in the academic literature.
Methods
We identified 15,764 mindfulness-related papers published between 1916 and 2019, and analyzed the frequency of publications, types of journals, keywords, and included disciplines. Using topic modeling methodology, hidden semantic structures were discovered in the collection of papers allowing the development of sets of topics.
Results
The results revealed a sharp increase in mindfulness research since 2000, a trend suggesting that research in this area has increased exponentially and may continue to do so for some time. The research was published in academic journals across a variety of subjects, from psychology to medicine. Three epochs of published studies emerged, these being epoch 1 (E1) (1916–1999), epoch 2 (E2) (2000–2009), and epoch 3 (E3) (2010–2019)—with the studies within each epoch containing different sets of frequently used keywords and research topics. In E1, publications largely reflected a theoretical or spiritual approach in their conceptualization of mindfulness that gradually shifted to more generalized pragmatism. This then evolved into more specific inquiry into a variety of mindfulness-based interventions in E2. In E3, the research moved towards more robust validation approaches for establishing the efficacy of therapeutic mindfulness programs and professionalizing those who deliver them.
Conclusions
Our analysis suggests that future research could move towards a more in-depth examination of long-term, lifespan experiences with mindfulness. In addition, we propose that content experts from various fields need to work together to integrate diverse perspectives on mindfulness, thus deepening our knowledge of its fundamental nature, attributes, and potentialities.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Abuhay, T. M., Kovalchuk, S. V., Bochenina, K., Mbogo, G.-K., Visheratin, A. A., Kampis, G., et al. (2018). Analysis of publication activity of computational science society in 2001–2017 using topic modelling and graph theory. Journal of Computational Science, 26, 193–204. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jocs.2018.04.004.
Baer, R. A. (2007). Mindfulness, assessment, and transdiagnostic processes. Psychological Inquiry, 18(4), 238–242. https://doi.org/10.1080/10478400701598306.
Bishop, S. R., Lau, M., Shapiro, S., Carlson, L., Anderson, N. D., Carmody, J., et al. (2004). Mindfulness: a proposed operational definition. Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice, 11(3), 230–241. https://doi.org/10.1080/10478400701598306.
Blei, D. M. (2012). Probabilistic topic models. Communications of the ACM, 55(4), 77–84. https://doi.org/10.1145/2133806.2133826.
Blei, D., & Lafferty, J. (2006). Correlated topic models. In Y. Weiss, B. Schölkopf, & J. Platt (Eds.), Advances in neural information processing systems 18 (pp. 147–154). Cambridge: MIT Press.
Charoensukmongkol, P. (2016). Mindful facebooking: the moderating role of mindfulness on the relationship between social media use intensity at work and burnout. Journal of Health Psychology, 21(9), 1966–1980. https://doi.org/10.1177/1359105315569096.
Cullen, M. (2011). Mindfulness-based interventions: an emerging phenomenon. Mindfulness, 2(3), 186–193. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12671-011-0058-1.
Dürscheid, C., Frehner, C., Herring, S. C., Stein, D., & Virtanen, T. (2013). Email communication. Handbooks of Pragmatics [HOPS], 9, 35–54.
Fylstra, D., Lasdon, L., Watson, J., & Waren, A. (1998). Design and use of the Microsoft Excel Solver. INFORMS Journal on Applied Analytics, 28(5), 29–55. https://doi.org/10.1287/inte.28.5.29.
Germer, C. (2004). What is mindfulness. Insight Journal, 22(3), 24–29.
Greene, D., & Cross, J. P. (2017). Exploring the political agenda of the European parliament using a dynamic topic modeling approach. Political Analysis, 25(1), 77–94. https://doi.org/10.1017/pan.2016.7.
Hanley, A. W., Abell, N., Osborn, D. S., Roehrig, A. D., & Canto, A. I. (2016). Mind the gaps: are conclusions about mindfulness entirely conclusive? Journal of Counseling & Development, 94(1), 103–113. https://doi.org/10.1002/jcad.12066.
Harrington, A., & Dunne, J. D. (2015). When mindfulness is therapy: ethical qualms, historical perspectives. American Psychologist, 70(7), 621–631. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0039460.
Hidaka, B. H. (2012). Depression as a disease of modernity: explanations for increasing prevalence. Journal of Affective Disorders, 140(3), 205–214. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2011.12.036.
Hu, G., Wilcox, H. C., Wissow, L., & Baker, S. P. (2008). Mid-life suicide: an increasing problem in U.S. whites, 1999–2005. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 35(6), 589–593.
Kabat-Zinn, J. (2012). Mindfulness for beginners: Reclaiming the present moment—and your life. Boulder: Sounds True, Inc..
Kee, Y. H., Li, C., Kong, L. C., Tang, C. J., & Chuang, K. L. (2019). Scoping review of mindfulness research: a topic modelling approach. Mindfulness, 10, 1474–1488. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12671-019-01136-4.
Kim, Y.-H., Seo, S., Ha, Y.-H., Lim, S., & Yoon, Y. (2013). Two applications of clustering techniques to twitter: community detection and issue extraction. Discrete Dynamics in Nature and Society, 2013. https://doi.org/10.1155/2013/903765.
Kinser, P., Braun, S., Deeb, G., Carrico, C., & Dow, A. (2016). “Awareness is the first step”: an inter-professional course on mindfulness and mindful-movement for healthcare professionals and students. Complementary Therapies in Clinical Practice, 25, 18–25. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ctcp.2016.08.003.
Kostanski, M., & Hassed, C. (2008). Mindfulness as a concept and a process. Australian Psychologist, 43(1), 15–21. https://doi.org/10.1080/00050060701593942.
Kuhlmann, F. (1916). Mentality tests: a symposium. Journal of Educational Psychology, 7(5), 280–282. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0066895.
Lee, D. D., & Seung, H. S. (1999). Learning the parts of objects by non-negative matrix factorization. Nature, 401(6755), 788–791. https://doi.org/10.1038/44565.
O’Callaghan, D., Greene, D., Conway, M., Carthy, J., & Cunningham, P. (2013). Uncovering the wider structure of extreme right communities spanning popular online networks. In Proceedings of the 5th Annual ACM Web Science Conference (pp. 276-285). https://doi.org/10.1145/2464464.2464495
O’Callaghan, D., Greene, D., Carthy, J., & Cunningham, P. (2015). An analysis of the coherence of descriptors in topic modeling. Expert Systems with Applications, 42(13), 5645–5657. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eswa.2015.02.055.
Saridakis, G. (2004). Violent crime in the United States of America: a time-series analysis between 1960–2000. European Journal of Law and Economics, 18(2), 203–221. https://doi.org/10.1023/b:ejle.0000045082.09601.b2.
Vago, D. R., & Silbersweig, D. A. (2012). Self-awareness, self-regulation, and self-transcendence (S-ART): a framework for understanding the neurobiological mechanisms of mindfulness. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 6, 296. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2012.00296.
Van Dam, N. T., van Vugt, M. K., Vago, D. R., Schmalzl, L., Saron, C. D., Olendzki, A., et al. (2018). Mind the hype: a critical evaluation and prescriptive agenda for research on mindfulness and meditation. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 13, 36–61. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691617709589.
Weaver, J. L., & Swank, J. M. (2019). Mindful connections: A mindfulness-based intervention for adolescent social media users. Journal of Child and Adolescent Counseling, 5(2), 103–112. https://doi.org/10.1080/23727810.2019.1586419.
Wilson, J. (2014). Mindful America: meditation and the mutual transformation of Buddhism and American culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199827817.001.0001.
Funding
This study is funded by Dental Research Institute, School of Dentistry, Seoul National University, and the Basic Science Research Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded by the Ministry of Science and ICT (NRF-2017R1C1B2010469).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Contributions
JL designed and executed the review, analyzed data, and wrote the initial draft. KHK assisted with analyzing the data and with the writing of the initial draft. CSW contributed to the critical revision of the draft. MH collaborated on the writing of the initial draft and the critical revision of the draft. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Ethics Approval
This article does not contain any studies with human participants or animals performed by any of the authors.
Conflict of Interest
The authors declare no competing interests.
Additional information
Publisher’s Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Supplementary Information
ESM 1
(DOCX 22 kb)
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Lee, J., Kim, K.H., Webster, C.S. et al. The Evolution of Mindfulness from 1916 to 2019. Mindfulness 12, 1849–1859 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12671-021-01603-x
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12671-021-01603-x