Meditation and Life Satisfaction among College Students: The Dual Mediating Role of Emotion and Behavior

Meditation

Quinn et al. (2019) outlined several potential mechanisms through which meditation training can improve telomere biology by altering habitual and acute stress processes. This model may help explain why various meditation interventions, as well as other mind-body interventions, have been found to positively impact telomere biology and other stress-sensitive biological outcomes. As methods for measuring telomere biology become more reliable and accessible, the next generation of research will be able to more definitively determine whether meditation interventions meaningfully affect telomere biology. Understanding how these practices impact telomere biology requires a more systematic investigation of the various dimensions that constitute meditation interventions, as well as better methods to capture the phenomena and psychological changes that may occur.Arnaud et al. (2019) conducted research on mind-wandering and meditation, showing that meditation may help reduce the frequency of mind-wandering. Therefore, assessing the quality of meditation should be based not only on the depth of meditation but also on the valence of mind-wandering and its ability to attract attention during meditation, which will benefit future meditation research. Additionally, physiological responses to these thoughts, such as muscle tension, are also important. These measurements could be used to predict the potential harmful effects of intensive meditation practice on certain individuals.

Life Satisfaction

Jia Yifan et al. (2021) and Chu Shuya et al. (2021) argue that when college students receive more social support, they can enhance their social-emotional skills and indirectly improve their life satisfaction through a sense of security and positive psychological capital, thereby increasing their overall life satisfaction. Niu Xueting et al. (2021) found that female college students with lower levels of social support tend to accumulate stress due to insufficient psychological resources when coping with stressful situations or negative events. Good social support can effectively reduce female college students' perception of stressful events, decrease the impact of negative emotions, and play a crucial protective role in their mental health. Zhu Yangli and Tao Yun (2021) conducted a study on the life satisfaction and social exclusion of 2,297 college students, confirming that social exclusion is significantly negatively correlated with life satisfaction among college students. The more severe the social exclusion, the lower the students' subjective evaluation of their life satisfaction. To mitigate the negative impact of social exclusion events, psychological educators need to guide students to positively and actively evaluate the psychological aspect of these events and adopt positive cognitive and behavioral coping strategies to alleviate the negative effects brought by such stressors (social exclusion).

Emotion and Behavior

Julia et al. (2022) found that there is an important and complex relationship between aggressive script rehearsal, difficulties in emotion regulation, and aggressive behavior. The results indicate that, in addition to the initiating effect of emotions on script rehearsal, aggressive script rehearsal may also play a regulatory role in emotions. Assessing an individual's tendency to rehearse aggressive scripts, their emotion regulation abilities, and the relationships between these variables and aggression is essential for matched treatment. However, these conclusions and recommendations are tentative; further research is needed to better understand the directional relationships among emotions, difficulties in emotion regulation, aggressive script rehearsal, and aggression, as well as to test the intervention strategies proposed in this paper. Judith et al. (2012) conducted a longitudinal study on the relationship between emotion regulation in childhood and aggressive/externalizing behaviors published in the past five years. The findings show that emotional dysregulation in children is significantly related to externalizing problems such as aggression, making it an important risk factor. Since researchers frequently claim a lack of longitudinal studies in examining emotion regulation and psychopathology, this paper focuses solely on current research using this design. Although the number of existing longitudinal studies is limited, the hypothesis that emotion regulation problems lead to or contribute to aggressive behavior appears to be supported. So far, there has been little research on this connection in infants and adolescents. Therefore, future studies should employ emotional questionnaires and simple coping behavior scales to collect data on adolescents' emotions and behaviors, exploring the causal relationships between emotion and behavior.

Current Research Deficiencies

There is considerable theoretical research on meditation both domestically and internationally, with consistent conclusions indicating that meditation training can effectively reduce anxiety levels and improve concentration. However, research on life satisfaction has mainly focused on the factors influencing college students' life satisfaction. The main deficiency is the lack of empirical studies confirming that meditation can predict college students' life satisfaction. Additionally, few studies explore the relationships between emotions, behavior, meditation, and life satisfaction. This gap in research poses challenges for universities in finding ways to further enhance students' life satisfaction. Furthermore, the relationship between emotions and behavior is quite complex, with emotional dysregulation being a significant risk factor for mental health problems. Therefore, it is particularly important to understand how to maintain a balanced emotional state, which is a key area that future research needs to address.