Psychological Processes Underlying Practice Effects
With regard to the potential underlying psychological processes of the observed practice effects, we indeed found changes in various weekly measured variables during the 10-week intervention periods. Specifically, taking each intervention group alone, mindfulness-based practice significantly decreased empathic distress and increased acceptance and mindfulness over the 10 weeks of training, whereas the partner-based Affect Dyad significantly increased interoceptive awareness and mindfulness in both the socioemotional and waitlist socioemotional groups and increased empathic listening on trend in the waitlist socioemotional group, yet not statistically significant.Furthermore, mediation analyses revealed that a decrease in empathic distress mediated the observed increase in self-compassion after mindfulness-based training. It has long been argued that mindfulness training can enable individuals to better regulate their emotions and become more equanimous and less reactive to external emotional triggers [In contrast to the effects of mindfulness-based training and our expectations, empathic distress did not decrease during socioemotional dyadic training. A reduction in empathic distress is certainly a desirable training target, particularly in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic [However, more importantly, and in line with our hypotheses, we observed that an increase in acceptance could differentially predict levels of self-compassion at postintervention assessment in the socioemotional group compared with the mindfulness-based intervention group. Thus, cultivating acceptance of difficult emotions and gratitude in daily life through the Affect Dyad can foster a care system that relates not only to feelings of nurturing and love for others [