Dispositional mindfulness and the process of mindfulness cultivation: A qualitative synthesis and critical assessment of the extant literature on the Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ)

Background: Over the last decades, mindfulness has become an important concept and topic for many professions and interventional research. While the number of available self-report scales and empirical studies on the concept of mindfulness has increased in recent years, some questions regarding its theoretical underpinnings still remain.

Objective: The goal of this systematic review and qualitative synthesis was to investigate the distinction of cultivated and dispositional mindfulness. We focused on research with the Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ) as it is both comprehensive (building on and incorporating other important mindfulness scales) and widely used.

Data Sources: Journal articles and dissertations listed in Google Scholar, ProQuest, Scopus, Web of Science, and World Cat from January 2006 until January 2020.

Review Methods: 172 studies were identified and systematically analyzed in a two-step iterative qualitative coding framework with three main categories of interest: FFMQ and its facets, dispositional mindfulness, cultivated mindfulness.

Results: We offer a broad summary of the extant literature on the concepts of dispositional and cultivated mindfulness in terms of their definition, the practice of mindfulness, their state and trait aspects, and their assessment with self-report scales. Based on this evidence, inference on cultivated and dispositional aspects in the individual FFMQ facets is also presented and discussed.

Conclusion: Mindfulness cultivation is a process induced by mindfulness practice. Dispositional mindfulness functions as a baseline for this process. We argue that each FFMQ facet mixes cultivation and disposition, which might limit their usability in intervention studies or when comparing meditators and non-meditators. Future research should pay more attention on the cultivated and dispositional aspects of mindfulness, for which we offer venues and recommendations.