Mend the Gap! Testing Whether Mindfulness Compensates for Insecure Attachment in Promoting Forgiveness of Close Others.

This quasi-experimental study investigates whether mindfulness can compensate for the negative effects of more insecure attachment on forgiveness toward close others (e.g., family members, partners, friends) after a difficult moment or hurtful incident, such as a broken promise. Participants will be attending either a 60-minute mindfulness session or a 60-minute active control stretch class at the Radboud University Sports Centre, to which they have independently signed up before recruitment. At the class, they will be informed of the study and asked to participate and complete questionnaires before and after the session of each around 5 minutes. In the pre-class questionnaire, participants start by answering some demographic information (gender and age) and indicating which sports class they are following. They then fill in a 4-item state mindfulness measure by van der Gucht et al. (2018), after which a questionnaire on attachment, namely the Experience in Close Relationships Short Form (ECR-S) by Wei et al. (2007) follows, whose items have been adjusted to fit a broader definition of close relationships rather than just partners. They are then asked to recall a hurtful incident or difficult moment they had with a close other, describing it shortly. After that, they indicate how severely they currently experience this incident, how long ago it approximately happened, what their relation to the close other is (e.g. siblings), and how close they feel, by filling in the Self in Other questionnaire by Aron et al. (1992). Lastly, they rate their forgiveness of the offense by filling in the state forgiveness questionnaire by Brown and Phillips (2004). After the class ends, the second part is filled in, consisting of the state mindfulness measure, a check whether they remember the offence they previously described, another rating of the currently experienced severity, and lastly the forgiveness measure again. The central objective is to test whether a mindfulness session leads to a greater increase in forgiveness compared to the active control stretch class condition and whether this effect is especially strong among more insecurely attached individuals scoring high in attachment anxiety or avoidance, suggesting that there is indeed a compensatory effect of mindfulness for more insecure attachment.