Mind Over Matter? Mindfulness Matters in Big Five Traits Predicting Resilience

Mindfulness is paying attention to the present moment on purpose and without judgment (Kabat-Zinn, 1994). Conscientiousness displays a strong, positive relationship with mindfulness. Of the Big Five personality traits, conscientiousness is the least likely to be investigated with respect to mindfulness (Gulik, 2009). Mindfulness is expected to be positively related to agreeableness with both constructs holding similar tendencies such as care, empathy, and understanding towards others. Resilience has been found to be negatively correlated to neuroticism and positively correlated to the rest of the Big Five traits (openness to experience, conscientiousness, agreeableness, and extraversion) (Oshio, Taku, Hirano, & Saeed, 2018). Mindfulness is a beneficial way to relate to events and conditions. This view overlaps with resilience or inner strength requiring an investigation of the unique aspects of mindfulness. Resilience highlights aspects of personality that are beneficial for one’s health (Grevenstein, Aguilar-Raab, & Bluemke, 2018). This study focuses on how Big Five personality traits, resilience, and mindfulness are related. H1: We expect conscientiousness, agreeableness, and extraversion to be positively associated—and neuroticism negatively associated—with resilience. H2: We expect mindfulness to be positively related to resilience. H3: We expect associations between Big Five and resilience to be different based on mindfulness levels, such that they will be stronger when people are highly mindful