A brief nonattachment intervention based on the three marks of existence: development, rationale, and initial evidence.

Abstract

Background: The practices described in Buddhist philosophy are essentially a suite of non-theistic cognitive and behavioral interventions designed to induce nonattachment (N-A), which can be defined in terms of the absence of a need for one's personal reality to be other than it is. Although meditative practices have received attention in multiple literatures, the cognitive analogs to these behaviorally-oriented practices have not.

Design: Two experiments involving undergraduate participants (total N = 239; M age = 19.04) investigated whether the provision of wisdom related to the Three Marks of Existence (i.e., some degree of suffering is inevitable, there is impermanence, and many events are not in our control) could result in (1) higher nonattachment attitudes, (2) lower threat appraisals, (3) lower stressor reactivity, and (4) shorter emotion reaction durations.

Results: With moderate to large effect sizes, the Three Marks trainings (relative to placebo or control conditions) resulted in (1) higher nonattachment attitudes, (2) lower threat appraisals, (3) no differences in negative emotional intensity, but 4) shorter emotion durations.

Conclusions: These results provide preliminary evidence that enduring cognitive trainings such as the Three Marks can be an effective tool to increase acceptance-related attitudes while attenuating negative reactivity.