Exploring the past, present, and future of the mindfulness field: A multitechnique bibliometric review

Abstract

This paper provides an overview of the mindfulness literature up until the end of 2020 by (a) uncovering its underlying intellectual structure, (b) identifying the most influential and popular themes, and (c) presenting new directions for future research on mindfulness. To this end, a systematic quantitative review based on bibliometric methods was conducted, which is perhaps less prone to researcher bias and can complement existing meta-analyses and qualitative (narrative) structured reviews as an objective approach. Three bibliometric techniques—document co-citation analysis, co-word (co-occurrence and content) analysis, and bibliographic coupling—were applied to explore the past, present, and future of mindfulness research. The co-citation analysis showed that measurement, mechanisms, mindfulness-based interventions, and examinations of the efficacy of mindfulness interventions are among the key theoretical knowledge bases from which the field of mindfulness is derived. The content analysis demonstrated the beneficial effects of mindfulness meditation for physical and mental health conditions. The bibliographic coupling revealed novel directions in cognitive behavioral therapy, emotion regulation, the application of mindfulness practice to children and adolescents, mindfulness at work, and the role of mindfulness in positive psychology. The large sample of articles that was analyzed allowed us to provide a broader and more objective overview than possible with other forms of literature reviews. The combination of the three bibliometric techniques granted deeper insights into the complex multidisciplinary field of mindfulness, along with specific suggestions for future research.

Full text

TYPE Systematic Review
PUBLISHED 26 July 2022
DOI 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.792599
OPEN ACCESS
EDITED BY
Radha R. Sharma,
New Delhi Institute of
Management, India
REVIEWED BY
Maggie Lawrence,
Glasgow Caledonian University,
United Kingdom
Isabel Mercader Rubio,
University of Almeria, Spain
*CORRESPONDENCE
Aldijana Bunjak
aldijana.bunjak@unisg.ch
SPECIALTY SECTION
This article was submitted to
Organizational Psychology,
a section of the journal
Frontiers in Psychology
RECEIVED 10 October 2021
ACCEPTED 06 July 2022
PUBLISHED 26 July 2022
CITATION
Bunjak A, ˇ
Cerne M and Schölly EL
(2022) Exploring the past, present, and
future of the mindfulness field: A
multitechnique bibliometric review.
Front. Psychol. 13:792599.
doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.792599
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Cerne and Schölly. This
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does not comply with these terms.
Exploring the past, present, and
future of the mindfulness field: A
multitechnique bibliometric
review
Aldijana Bunjak1*, Matej ˇ
Cerne2and Emilie Lara Schölly1
1Institute for Leadership and Human Resource Management, University of St. Gallen, St. Gallen,
Switzerland, 2School of Economics and Business, University of Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia
This paper provides an overview of the mindfulness literature up until the end
of 2020 by (a) uncovering its underlying intellectual structure, (b) identifying
the most influential and popular themes, and (c) presenting new directions for
future research on mindfulness. To this end, a systematic quantitative review
based on bibliometric methods was conducted, which is perhaps less prone
to researcher bias and can complement existing meta-analyses and qualitative
(narrative) structured reviews as an objective approach. Three bibliometric
techniques—document co-citation analysis, co-word (co-occurrence and
content) analysis, and bibliographic coupling—were applied to explore the
past, present, and future of mindfulness research. The co-citation analysis
showed that measurement, mechanisms, mindfulness-based interventions,
and examinations of the ecacy of mindfulness interventions are among the
key theoretical knowledge bases from which the field of mindfulness is derived.
The content analysis demonstrated the beneficial eects of mindfulness
meditation for physical and mental health conditions. The bibliographic
coupling revealed novel directions in cognitive behavioral therapy, emotion
regulation, the application of mindfulness practice to children and adolescents,
mindfulness at work, and the role of mindfulness in positive psychology. The
large sample of articles that was analyzed allowed us to provide a broader and
more objective overview than possible with other forms of literature reviews.
The combination of the three bibliometric techniques granted deeper insights
into the complex multidisciplinary field of mindfulness, along with specific
suggestions for future research.
KEYWORDS
mindfulness, bibliometric review, document co-citation analysis, co-word analysis,
bibliographic coupling
Mindfulness is defined as the awareness that arises through the practice of paying
attention in the present moment (Kabat-Zinn, 2003). Mindfulness-based interventions
have been used in the last decades, mostly in the fields of psychiatry and clinical
psychology, to treat a wide variety of mental disorders and in clinical contexts to
help alleviate chronic pain. In recent years, practicing mindfulness in the form of
meditation has also become increasingly popular among non-clinical populations who
are looking to reduce stress and improve their wellbeing (Chiesa and Serretti, 2009).
During mindfulness practice, the individual directs their focus to internal (e.g., their
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thoughts, feelings, and bodily sensations) and external (e.g.,
visual events and sounds) experiences that are occurring,
without automatically reacting to or judging them (Segal
et al., 2002). In addition to reducing stress and improving
psychological wellbeing, regular mindfulness practice has been
shown to lead to positive outcomes such as increased life
satisfaction, better sleep, and higher self-awareness (Kabat-Zinn,
2003; Baer et al., 2004; Fredrickson et al., 2008). Mindfulness
meditation also reduces anxiety and depression symptoms
significantly (Teasdale et al., 2000; Hofmann et al., 2010; de Jong
et al., 2016).
To date, published research has focused largely on
measuring mindfulness, developing assessment scales (Brown
and Ryan, 2003; Baer et al., 2004, 2006), and evaluating the
effectiveness of mindfulness-based interventions, such as the
mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) program (Kabat-
Zinn et al., 1992; Grossman et al., 2004) and mindfulness-based
cognitive therapy (MBCT; Teasdale et al., 2000). Furthermore,
researchers have investigated the mechanisms of mindfulness to
explain the underlying processes that link mindfulness practice
to the resulting positive changes (Shapiro et al., 2006; Hoelzel
et al., 2011).
Several qualitative and meta-analytic reviews that provide
an overview over the mindfulness field already exist, but
are mostly partial and focused on a specific subfield of
mindfulness research. For example, reviews have been published
on mindfulness-based interventions performed on clinical
and non-clinical populations (Mason and Hargreaves, 2001;
Grossman et al., 2004; Chiesa and Serretti, 2009; Hofmann
et al., 2010; Khoury et al., 2013), mindfulness-measurement
scales (Goodman et al., 2017), mindfulness for children
and adolescents (Carsley et al., 2018), and mindfulness in
organizations (Sutcliffe et al., 2016).
Recently, bibliometric analysis has become popular among
researchers due to the review comprehensiveness and objectivity
it enables (Zupic and Cater, 2015; Donthu et al., 2021). However,
very few bibliometric reviews of mindfulness research have
been conducted to date. For example, a bibliometric analysis
conducted by Valerio (2016) (on research published up to
2014) showed that the conceptualization of mindfulness is
evolving quickly across disciplines (e.g., education, nursing,
and economics), confirming the rapid growth and importance
of mindfulness in fields beyond psychology and medicine.
Similarly, Chiesa et al. (2017) conducted a citation analysis
of mindfulness literature (on research published up to 2016)
and classified the papers by focus (e.g., clinical/non-clinical
effects and type of intervention), indicating potential topics
about which researchers could make future contributions. Kee
et al. (2019) applied a scoping review (on research published
up to 2017), indicating the range of the topics researched in
the field of mindfulness based on topic modeling—that is, by
combining fields based on titles and abstracts. Ma et al. (2021)
have taken into account only one aspect of mindfulness, i.e.,
describing overarching trends in the publications of randomized
controlled trials (RCTs) in their bibliometric analysis over
2000–2019. Further, Wang et al. (2021) in their bibliometric
analysis use keywords referring to mindfulness and meditation.
However, mindfulness and mediation may not necessarily be the
synonyms (e.g., Phelan, 2010; Hanley et al., 2015). These studies
merely focus on the influences of specific studies and topics
without explaining the evolution of the field’s development or
highlighting how different but thematically similar documents
cluster together in networks and thus visually portraying
the field.
Recent bibliometric analysis by Baminiwatta and
Solangaarachchi (2021) is focused on publications, research
areas, journals authors, collaboration among authors,
organizations, and countries in mindfulness research. Therefore,
our work is corroborating Baminiwatta and Solangaarachchi’s
(2021) co-citation and co-word analysis by providing an
extensive overview of publications in relevant research clusters,
and advancing it by presenting the development of the field over
time using the invisible colleges framework and providing a
more objective take on the future trends based on bibliographic
coupling. Finally, paper by Daniel et al. (2022) focused on the
very definition and constituents of the mindfulness construct.
This theory-driven review is highly profiled in specific topics
of mindfulness (e.g., mindfulness processes, dimensions and
development) and based on articles published between 2012
and 2020. Similarly, as with a previous review, we advance
the existing study by including co-word (co-occurrence
and content) analysis and the interpretation of the field’s
development that could additionally inform mindfulness
research. Therefore, mindfulness research could benefit from
a comprehensive review that provides a coherent, holistic,
all-inclusive, and multidisciplinary overview by applying an
empirically sound methodological approach.
We conducted a quantitative systematic review based on
bibliometrics, covering the period until the end of 2020, to
complement these studies and contribute a wider perspective,
using a combination of three techniques: document co-citation
analysis, co-word analysis, and bibliographic coupling (Porter
et al., 2002). We are complementing the existing mindfulness
literature reviews by applying some of the most advanced
bibliometric techniques to tap into the historical development
of mindfulness research (past), reveal the most influential topics
at present, and indicate future directions in the field.
In essence, bibliometric analysis is a quantitative method
of using bibliographic data—that is, the reference lists of
documents—to describe, evaluate, and monitor published
research in a chosen scientific field (Zupic and Cater, 2015).
Bibliometric methods have the power to discern an article’s
importance in relation to other articles in the field and
show how the different articles cluster together in a network.
Thus, connections between publications are made visible, and
certain patterns or trends that remain hidden to meta-analyses
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or structured reviews can be uncovered. Further advantages
of bibliometric methods include the rigor and the level of
objectivity they introduce into evaluations of scientific literature
(Zupic and Cater, 2015). Researcher bias is typically not as
present as it is in other types of review studies. Examples of
such biases include an exaggerated focus on one specific author
and frequent self-citation (Wallin, 2005). Finally, and most
importantly, a much larger sample size of documents can be
evaluated when applying bibliometric methods (Batistiˇ
c et al.,
2017). Such an analysis can easily be conducted with several 100
articles; it would be extremely cumbersome to process the same
number of documents in a meta-analysis.
The attempted contribution of this paper is two-fold. On
one hand, we aim to contribute to the existing mindfulness
literature by providing a comprehensive (aerial) and objective
review of it. On the other hand, this bibliometric review reveals
the documents with the most impact on the field, their main
topics of investigation, and current research trends and proposes
promising directions for future research. More specifically,
this paper looks for answers to three research questions: (a)
What is the underlying intellectual structure of the mindfulness
literature, and how has it developed over time (addressed by
co-citation analysis, in combination with temporal analysis, by
applying the invisible colleges framework)? (b) What are the
central topics in the research field (tackled by co-word/co-
occurrence analysis)? (c) What is the current state-of-the-art,
and which future directions for mindfulness research are the
most relevant (answered by bibliographic coupling)?
First, we provide the theoretical background of the
mindfulness construct, including definitions, explanations of
the underlying concept, mindfulness practices, and a range of
interventions. Second, we selected and analyzed data for each
of the three bibliometric techniques and present the results here.
Third, we summarize the results in a general discussion and then
lay out the recommendations for future research in the field of
mindfulness and the potential limitations stemming from our
use of bibliometric techniques.
Theoretical background
Origins and early research
The roots of mindfulness can be found in Eastern
spiritual practices, which encourage the regular cultivation
of mindfulness (Brown and Ryan, 2003). In the 1960s and
1970s, Western researchers started to translate mindfulness
practices from Buddhist traditions, with the objective of making
mindfulness available to a larger society (Baer, 2003; Kabat-
Zinn, 2003; Shonin et al., 2013). In 1979, Kabat-Zinn achieved
a breakthrough with the invention of the mindfulness-based
stress reduction (MBSR) program, and soon after, in 1982,
he published the first article to demonstrate the efficacy of
MBSR (Kabat-Zinn, 2003). Researchers in the early 2000s
concentrated on establishing valid and reliable measurement
scales for mindfulness. Since then, studies have confirmed
the salutary effects of mindfulness, and mindfulness research
has kept growing exponentially, investigating various facets of
mindfulness and its application in a wide variety of contexts.
Definitions and measurements
Researchers have not yet reached a consensus on a
single, clear definition of mindfulness (Bishop et al., 2004).
Brown and Ryan (2003) provided perhaps one of the
one of the most widely accepted and used definitions
of mindfulness, calling it “the state of being aware and
attentive to what is happening in the present” (p. 822).
Different authors have conceptualized mindfulness in different
manners and have developed and validated measurement scales
accordingly (Levinson et al., 2014). The qualitative review of
Glomb et al. (2011) offers an overview of frequently used
mindfulness definitions.
A frequently debated question in the mindfulness literature
is whether mindfulness is a trait or a state. A trait refers to an
inherent characteristic, whereas a state describes a momentary
mode of being that lasts only for a limited amount of time
(Brown and Ryan, 2003). According to Baer et al. (2006),
the two are not mutually exclusive, and mindfulness can be
considered a concept with both trait-like and state-like qualities.
In accordance with this, Brown and Ryan (2003) found that
mindfulness exhibits both inter- and intrapersonal variations.
This means that some people are just inherently higher in
mindfulness than others, but simultaneously, a person does not
display the same level of mindfulness at all times. Mindfulness
also commonly has been looked at as a set of skills that can
be developed with regular practice (Baer et al., 2006). Thus,
although some people inherently have a higher capacity for
mindfulness than their peers do, one can become more mindful
with training.
Similarly, different mindfulness measurement scales have
been developed over the years. Some of the mindfulness
measurement scales that have been developed and employed in
psychological research over the last decade include the Freiburg
Mindfulness Inventory (FMI; Walach et al., 2006), the Mindful
Attention Awareness Scale (MAAS; Brown and Ryan, 2003), the
Kentucky Inventory of Mindfulness Skills (KIMS; Baer et al.,
2004), the Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ; Baer
et al., 2006), and the Toronto Mindfulness Scale (TMS; Lau et al.,
2006). The FFMQ is thought to provide the most comprehensive
coverage of the different aspects of mindfulness, especially for
assessing levels of mindfulness among the general population
(Bergomi et al., 2013). A comprehensive review by Sauer et al.
(2013) summarizes the different mindfulness measurements.
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Mindfulness-based interventions and
practices
Regarding mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs),
a distinction must be made between interventions that
have mindfulness at the center—which is the case for the
MBSR MBCT programs—and interventions that incorporate
mindfulness training but also comprise behavior-change
strategies (Baer, 2003). Different interventions may be applied,
depending on the patient’s situation or condition. For instance,
a meta-analysis by Eberth and Sedlmeier (2012) argued that
MBSR may have the most powerful effect on attaining higher
psychological wellbeing, whereas pure mindfulness meditation
showed the greatest effects on variables associated with the
concept of mindfulness.
Mindfulness is often practiced through meditation exercises.
Kabat-Zinn (1982) defined meditation as “the intentional
self-regulation of attention from moment to moment” (p.
431). Mindfulness meditation must be differentiated from
transcendental meditation and other types of concentration-
based approaches (Kabat-Zinn, 1982). However, mindfulness
practice is not limited to meditation. One can also practice being
attentive and aware in the present moment during everyday
activities such as eating, walking, standing, or even washing the
dishes (Hanley et al., 2015).
Bibliometric methods and
techniques
Bibliometric analysis is not necessarily a new method
(Kessler, 1963), but it has gained scholarly interest in
the recent past due to easily accessible online databases,
which contain nearly all documents that have ever been
published. This development has also been supported by new
and improved bibliometric software (e.g., VOSviewer and
BibExcel), which facilitate the data structuring and analysis
processes significantly.
Bibliometric techniques are instruments to evaluate and
analyze scientific literature and are considered a form of science
mapping, which is defined as “a combination of classification
and visualization” that “aims to reveal the structure and
dynamics of scientific fields” (Zupic and Cater, 2015, pp. 429,
431). The main objective of bibliometric methods is to uncover
the relationships between publications. These relationships are
based on the coupling of items in bibliographic records, with
the coupling strength measured by the number of connections
between the items (Wallin, 2005). The essential idea is that we
can speculate about topical similarities based on citations and
collaborations in the scientific literature (Zupic and Cater, 2015).
It is important to differentiate between primary and secondary
documents. Primary documents form the basis of bibliometric
reviews. They are the publications yielded by a keyword search
in a database. Secondary documents are the documents cited by
the primary documents and thus do not necessarily appear in the
keyword search results (Vogel et al., 2020).
Document co-citation
Document co-citation refers to the frequency at which two
documents, authors, or journals are cited together (Small, 1973).
Simply put, if two cited articles (secondary documents) appear
in the same reference list of a citing article (primary document),
they are co-cited (Batistiˇ
c et al., 2017). A fundamental
assumption of co-citation states that the more often two
documents are cited together, the more likely their content and
key concepts are to be related (Wallin, 2005; Zupic and Cater,
2015). The more frequently a pair of co-cited documents appears
in a data set, the stronger their connection, or link strength, is
(Batistiˇ
c and Kaše, 2015).
Co-word (co-occurrence)
Co-word analysis, also termed co-occurrence, originally
introduced by Callon et al. (1983), is used to study a document’s
content. In fact, it is the only bibliometric method that uses
the actual content of documents to construct a similarity
measure. It involves using the important words or keywords
in the documents, which Web of Science extracts from the
abstract and title, to establish relationships and thus provides
an overview of a field’s conceptual structure (Zupic and Cater,
2015). Consequently, co-occurring words are a good indicator
that documents are related in their key topics. The rule states that
the higher the number of publications in which two keywords
appear, the stronger the connection between the two concepts
that those keywords describe. This is indicated by how closely
keywords are located near one another on a map.
Bibliographic coupling
Bibliographic coupling measures the similarity between
two documents by using the number of references they share
(Kessler, 1963). Consequently, the more similar the items
contained by two coupled reference sections, the stronger
their connection. As stated previously, the difference between
bibliographic coupling and document co-citation is that
the former focuses more on the citing document (primary
document) rather than on the cited documents (secondary
documents). Thus, bibliographic coupling is a useful method
for analyzing the research front or smaller subfields that are not
necessarily cited often enough to establish relevant connections
in co-citation analysis. Zupic and Cater (2015) stated that
this is especially the case for research areas that have recently
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experienced exponential growth, as the mindfulness field has.
Bibliographic coupling is also better suited than co-citation is for
detecting current trends and future directions in a research area
because citing documents, by definition, are more recent than
the publications they cite.
Methods
To obtain answers to the research questions stated in the
introduction, we employed three bibliometric techniques:
(a) document co-citation, to investigate relationships
between the authors of the most impactful publications
and uncover the intellectual structure of the mindfulness
field; (b) co-word analysis, to identify key clusters of
content and their relations; and (c) bibliographic coupling,
to distill current hot topics and potential directions for
future research.
We were also interested in the field’s development
across three time periods—up to 2000, 2001–2010,
and 2011–2020. We interpreted changes in the field’s
development over time by building on the conceptual
framework of “invisible colleges” (cf. de Solla Price,
1965; Vogel, 2012), which we used to explore scientific
communication between scholars to elucidate the dynamic
change across the three time periods of the field’s evolution.
This framework is applied to interpret the academic
communication between researchers to elucidate the past
of the mindfulness field. Exploring this allows us to present
the changing perspective of emerging and shifting colleges
of literature that mindfulness studies have cited in a specific
time period.
Vogel (2012) proposed seven patterns by which invisible
colleges evolve: college appearance, transformation, drift,
differentiation, fusion, implosion, and revival. College
appearance is the emergence of a new college without
predecessor in the same field, even though its foundations
may be long-standing. College transformation is the gradual or
sudden change of an existing college, which may result in the
formation of a new college. To some extent, this evolutionary
pattern is universal because all colleges change over time.
This is true even for colleges that show a high degree of
continuity. College drift is the process by which parts of one
college become incorporated into another. Although there
is a degree of constant mobility within the socio-cognitive
structure, especially in fragmented adhocracies, whole clusters
of significant documents sometimes change their home college.
College differentiation describes the process by which a broadly
defined college splits up into several new colleges with a
higher degree of specialization. It is thus a pattern of divergent
evolution. College fusion occurs when two or more previously
independent colleges merge into a single college.
Co-citation analysis of the mindfulness
field: Its intellectual structure
Our main objective for applying co-citation analysis was
to provide the structure of the knowledge base of mindfulness
literature—that is, the past of mindfulness—by determining the
most influential works in the field.
Co-citation data and analysis
To identify the sample of primary documents, a keyword
search for “mindfulness” was conducted in the Web of Science
Core Collection database—the most frequently used database
for this purpose (Zupic and Cater, 2015). The search imposed
only one additional criterion—that the documents be published
in English—which yielded 18,342 primary documents. Some of
the main research areas featuring mindfulness literature were
psychology (8,550 documents), psychiatry (4,002), neuroscience
(1,534), education (1,032), public environmental health (790),
and nursing (703). A closer look at the documents’ publication
dates revealed that the field recently has achieved exponential
growth. Whereas, only 140 articles were published before
2000, more than 3,000 new publications were released in
2020 alone. The journal Mindfulness has published the most
research in the field by far (with 1,216 documents), followed
by Frontiers in Psychology (371), Annals of Behavioral Medicine
(246), Personality and Individual Differences (198) and PLOS
One (166). Eric L. Garland (102 publications), Javier Garcia
Campayo (86), and Nirbhay N. Singh (72) are the most
published authors in the field. The USA (8,513), the UK (1,819),
and Australia (1,374) are the most represented countries (in
terms of the first author’s affiliation location). The University
of Toronto (253), Harvard University (240), Harvard Medical
School (230), and the University of Washington (230) are the
most represented institutions.
Due to the high number of secondary documents that
the search produced, a cutoff point, or citation threshold, was
applied, which refers to the minimum number of citations by
primary articles that a cited reference must have to be included
in the analysis. Our main goals of employing a cutoff point were
to select only the most influential documents and to limit the
document set to a manageable size (Zupic and Cater, 2015). The
general rule of thumb that is frequently applied in bibliometric
visualizations (Caputo et al., 2021; Premru et al., 2022) is
that one tries to plot the ca. 100–400 most important units;
this provides optimal complexity while still being interpretable.
For the co-citation analysis of the mindfulness literature, the
3,000 most relevant publications according to the Web of
Science database were identified, and they were connected to
93,052 secondary articles. The citation threshold was set at a
minimum of 33 citations, leaving 410 articles in the sample. The
bibliographic data was imported into the software VOSviewer
(Van Eck and Waltman, 2010).
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Co-citation results
VOSviewer allocated each of the 410 articles in the analysis
to one of six clusters. An illustration of the network is
shown in Figure 1. In illustrations pertaining to co-citation
and bibliographic coupling results, each node represents one
document (only first authors are named), and edges represent
co-citations of two documents. Thicker edges indicate more co-
citations. Node size indicates the number of other documents
along which this node is co-cited (i.e., its degree), and darker
color indicates greater strength (i.e., the sum of the weights of all
edges to which a node is connected).
As Figure 1 shows, the research field is relatively densely
arranged, except for the dark blue cluster, which seems to
separate itself a bit from the rest of the research. This indicates
a low level of fragmentation and strong cohesion between the
subfields and authors of the respective articles of all other
clusters. Furthermore, a fair amount of overlap exists between
the green, red, yellow and purple clusters, where the clusters’
borders were not as clear. Only the light blue and purple clusters
were somewhat scattered throughout the network. Below, we
describe each cluster in more detail.
Green cluster: Definition, measurement, and
assessment of mindfulness
The first co-citation cluster, composed of 108 articles, was
the most influential by far, as it contained three of the top
five most cited articles in mindfulness research: Brown and
Ryan (2003) with 13,806 citations, Bishop et al. (2004) with
11,203 citations and Baer et al. (2006) with 10,996 citations.
The number of citations is likely so high because those articles
documented the development of crucial measurement scales,
among which are the MAAS (Brown and Ryan, 2003; Shapiro
et al., 2007), the FFMQ (Baer et al., 2006), and the KIMS
(Baer et al., 2004). An examination of the various questionnaires
confirmed that authors have yet to agree on one definition
of mindfulness, clarify it, or understand its operation (Brown
et al., 2007). The KIMS identifies observing, describing, acting
with awareness, and accepting without judgment as the four
mindfulness skills (Baer et al., 2004), whereas the FFMQ also
includes non-reacting as a facet of the construct (Baer et al.,
2006).Bishop et al. (2004) and Brown et al. (2007) were
motivated by this lack of clarity to propose a clear and consistent
operational definition of mindfulness. The main challenge of
the topic was to develop theoretically and empirically grounded
models that link various aspects of mindfulness—that is,
expression of mindfulness, processes underlying mindfulness
effects, trait and state mindfulness relevant outcomes, and
mindfulness interventions (Brown et al., 2007; Shapiro et al.,
2007). We concluded that the articles in the green cluster
constitute a foundational background for understanding the
concept of mindfulness and its relationship to other variables
(Baer et al., 2006; Fredrickson et al., 2008).
Yellow cluster: The mindfulness-based stress
reduction program
The yellow cluster contained a total of 67 articles. Here,
probably the most groundbreaking emerging work in the field
of medicine and psychology refers to Kabat-Zinn’s (1982, 1990)
Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program. As a
pioneer in the mindfulness field, he aimed to transfer the
Buddhist mindfulness practice into Western culture and apply it
as a complementary treatment for chronic pain patients through
self-regulation processes (Kabat-Zinn, 1982). The results of his
study showed a drastic reduction in perceived pain and mood
disturbance. The MBSR program’s ultimate goal has remained
the same since its introduction: to reduce suffering and increase
health and wellbeing. Because the program was not intended for
the treatment of a specific condition, it has been applied to treat a
wide range of conditions. For instance, it is used to reduce stress
and mood disturbances, increase positive states of mind, and
improve overall quality of life in cancer outpatients (Speca et al.,
2000; Baer, 2003; Carlson et al., 2003; Grossman et al., 2004).
Red cluster: Mindfulness-based interventions
Analysis of the third cluster (112 articles) revealed
which mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) exist and which
conditions they are used to treat. Two decades after the
introduction of MBSR, Teasdale et al. (2000) introduced
mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) based on a
combination of MBSR and cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT)
strategies. This therapy was aimed at reducing relapse and
recurrence in depressive patients. To assess MBCT’s efficiency,
Segal et al. (2002) proposed the Mindfulness-Based Cognitive
Therapy Adherence Scale. Another popular intervention,
developed by Hayes et al. (2006), is acceptance and commitment
therapy (ACT), which is commonly used to treat post-traumatic
stress disorder (PTSD) and substance abuse. Empirical research
on mindfulness-based interventions has made a significant
contribution to mindfulness research because such studies
provide the instruments for the practical application of
mindfulness. Moreover, mindfulness meditation significantly
reduces anxiety and depression symptoms (Teasdale et al., 2000;
Hofmann et al., 2010). The general consensus is that these
interventions are beneficial and that their effects are rather
robust and strong (Hofmann et al., 2010).
Dark blue cluster: Mindfulness mechanisms
The dark blue co-citation cluster, which contains 93 articles
and is spatially more distant from the others, indicating a
potential disconnection from an otherwise closely connected
network of clusters, relates to the examination of underlying
processes between mindfulness practice and its effects. The
works of Jha et al. (2007),Lutz et al. (2008), and Hoelzel
et al. (2011) represent the main publications of this cluster.
These researchers tried to explain how mindfulness and MBIs
really work using neuroimaging techniques such as functional
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FIGURE 1
Network visualization of co-citation analysis.
magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine the effects of
meditation on brain activity. Hoelzel et al. (2011) explored four
mediators that could explain mindfulness outcomes: attention
regulation, emotion regulation (ER), body awareness and change
in perspective on the self. Lutz et al. (2008) and Chambers
et al. (2009) explored how mindfulness meditation exerts its
effects through ER. Another stream of research that evolved
in the dark blue cluster related to linking mindfulness training
and brain activity (Farb et al., 2007; Lutz et al., 2008; Hoelzel
et al., 2011). The researchers aimed to explain how mindfulness
interventions work by using neuroimaging to examine the
effects of meditation on brain activity.
Purple cluster: Mindfulness for children
and adolescents
A small and still fragmented cluster with 16 articles formed
around the emerging field of mindfulness for children and
adolescents. The research area is still in its infancy and requires
more high-quality research and well-designed methodologies
(Greenberg and Harris, 2012). Preliminary studies showed that
school-based mindfulness programs that applied mindfulness
and yoga interventions seem to have a positive impact on
problematic responses to stress, such as rumination or emotional
arousal (Mendelson et al., 2010). In addition, they help helping
to build resilience (Greenberg and Harris, 2012) and assist with
treating psychological disorders (Biegel et al., 2009). Similarly,
Zylowska et al. (2008) showed that mindfulness training
improved self-reported attention deficit hyperactivity disorder
(ADHD) symptoms and performance on tasks measuring
attention in adolescents.
Light blue cluster: Mindfulness and substance abuse
The light blue cluster is very small (14 articles) and relatively
fragmented, and it mainly shows mindfulness practice as a
treatment for substance use disorders (Witkiewitz et al., 2005;
Bowen et al., 2006, 2009). Initial results indicate that the use
of substances such as alcohol, marijuana, or crack cocaine is
reduced after mindfulness-based treatment (Bowen et al., 2006).
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FIGURE 2
Development patterns of mindfulness research based on the invisible colleges framework.
The field’s development over time:
Applying temporally-delineated
co-citation analysis against the backdrop
of the invisible colleges framework
To examine the field’s development across time, we
also conducted three co-citation analyses for the following
time periods: up to 2000, 2001–2010, and 2011–2020 (see
Appendix 1). We summarized the clusters identified this way in
Figure 2, which is all-inclusive and stems from the application of
the “invisible colleges” framework to the temporally-delineated
co-citation results. The invisible colleges correspond to the
clusters that were identified by the co-citation analysis. The
invisible colleges are theories/backgrounds from the co-citation
analyses across the time periods, but in the process of
summarizing the invisible colleges, the clusters were condensed
(merged) thematically further into a figure that would be more
parsimonious and clearer.
Our results (see Figure 2) indicate that mindfulness research
began in the following three invisible colleges: (1) theoretical
foundations and measurement of mindfulness; (2) mindfulness
clinical integration; and (3) mindfulness-based interventions.
Key theoretical foundations in the first time period can be found
in disciplines of psychiatry, psychology, and nursing. The first
cluster can be considered a predominant research stream that
has transformed into further clusters that retain the original
focus, with some influxes from mindfulness treatment and
education (which emerged during the second time period) in the
final time period.
The second initial cluster (mindfulness clinical integration)
differentiated into three separate ones during the second
examined period: (a) health benefits of mindfulness, (b)
MBIs, and (c) stress-reduction and mindfulness. The health
benefits of mindfulness college fused with part of the stress
reduction and mindfulness college to constitute mindfulness-
based stress reduction and cognitive therapy in the final
time period. The MBIs college has transformed further in a
straightforward manner and retaining its original focus, whereas
part of the health benefits of mindfulness college drifted into
mindfulness, mind-wandering, and neuroscience. Part of the
stress reduction and mindfulness college also differentiated
into mindfulness and attention regulation, with a particular
focus on clinical settings. In the final time period, disciplines
of neuroscience and public environmental health also became
important in providing theoretical bases for new influxes into
the field.
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FIGURE 3
Network visualization of co-word analysis.
Co-word analysis: Key themes in
mindfulness research
This technique was aimed at identifying key themes in the
mindfulness field. The various clusters in the bibliographic map
corresponded with the subfields of the mindfulness research area
(Van Raan, 2014).
Co-word data and analysis
For co-word analysis, we used the same data set of 3,000
primary documents as for document co-citation. Because of the
high number of primary documents, a cutoff point was applied
to limit the number of keywords in the semantic map. Finding
the right threshold (i.e., the frequency of keywords that end up
making the final figure) in the co-word analysis required some
trial and error. Initially, the idea was to set the threshold at a
minimum of three citations, but that produced eight clusters,
which would have been rather difficult to interpret. Finally, a
cutoff point of 45 frequencies was chosen, such that out of 7,833
keywords, 112 different keywords met the threshold.
Co-word results
In this section, we present the results of the co-word analysis,
which produced four clusters. As in the document co-citation
analysis, each of the 112 keywords that met the minimum
threshold of 45 citations was allocated to one of the clusters
by VOSviewer. As shown in network illustration (Figure 3), the
clusters are relatively clearly separated from each other. The two
most connected keywords, and thus those displayed with the
biggest circles, were “mindfulness” and “meditation.” Although
allocated to the yellow cluster, they are actually central to the
whole research field and cannot really be observed as pertaining
to only one cluster. Meditation is central because it represents
the main approach with which mindfulness is practiced in all
the mentioned interventions.
In the next section, we examine every cluster in
further detail.
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FIGURE 4
Network visualization of bibliographic coupling.
Blue cluster: Benefits of mindfulness
The blue cluster, which is composed of 25 keywords, laid
out some of the positive effects of engaging in mindfulness,
which can increase wellbeing significantly (Chiesa and Serretti,
2009). This can be achieved by reducing symptoms of a physical
illness or mental disorder in a clinical population or by directly
reducing stress in a non-clinical population. “Satisfaction,”
“happiness,” “self-compassion,” “resilience,” and “mental health”
were other keywords that appeared in the cluster, representing
the benefits mindfulness can provide for an individual. It is
self-explanatory that increased physical and mental wellbeing
lead to improved satisfaction and happiness. Self-compassion
results from mindfulness through heightened awareness and
acceptance and is complemented with kindness toward oneself
aimed at easing suffering (Neff, 2003). Interestingly, the cluster
also contained the keywords “adolescents,” “children,” and
“students,” which could be considered a small subcluster of the
blue cluster. This demonstrated the relevance of recent studies
that investigated if and how mindfulness practices could be used
in schools (e.g., Diamond and Lee, 2011).
Red cluster: Physical health conditions
The red cluster (containing 35 words) indicated how MBIs
can effectively improve physical health conditions. This content
relates, for example, to the Stress Reduction and Relaxation
Program, which later became the MBSR program, took shape.
Kabat-Zinn’s (1982) research, for example demonstrated that
mindfulness has significant power in decreasing perceived
suffering. In many cases, the pain reduction amounted to more
than 50% (Kabat-Zinn, 1982). In addition, mindfulness can also
be beneficial for patients undergoing cancer treatment (Speca
et al., 2000; Carlson et al., 2003). In addition to the keywords
“cancer,” “breast cancer,” and “chronic pain,” the cluster also
features terms such as “symptoms,” which could refer to any
bodily symptom, and “sleep,” which might be connected to the
fact that patients experiencing severe pain often report trouble
sleeping. Thus, mindfulness can improve sleep quality (Carlson
and Garland, 2005) and overall quality of life.
Green cluster: Mental disorders
Mental disorders might be the area to which MBIs are
most commonly applied. In the green cluster (29 keywords), the
network clustered the terms “depression,” “anxiety,” “generalized
anxiety disorder,” “post-traumatic stress-disorder,” and “relapse
prevention” connected to patients suffering from substance
abuse. The empirical evidence that mindfulness produces
improvements in these domains is very strong (Kabat-Zinn
et al., 1992; Teasdale et al., 2000; Hofmann et al., 2010). The
cluster also featured keywords that describe the behavior of an
individual suffering from a certain disorder. “Rumination” is
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very common in patients with depression, as is “experiential
avoidance,” even though such patterns create harm in the long
term (Baer et al., 2004). “Acceptance and commitment therapy”
and “mindfulness-based cognitive therapy,” other terms in this
cluster, are well-established interventions used to treat the
mental disorders mentioned above.
Yellow cluster: Mindfulness mechanisms
The yellow cluster is made up of 23 keywords and addresses
the mechanisms of mindfulness. This is a topic of current
investigation, and no clear answer has yet been found to
the question “How does mindfulness work?” Shapiro et al.
(2006) proposed that mindfulness arises when, in addition to
intention, “attention” and “awareness,” two keywords in this
cluster that are part of the larger concept of “consciousness,” are
activated simultaneously. Another branch of research has looked
into how mindfulness is connected to “emotion regulation”
and “self-regulation,” other important terms in this cluster.
Researchers have agreed that ER is a central part of mental
health and that many forms of psychopathology are attributable
to dysfunctional ER (Hayes and Feldman, 2004). If mindfulness
heightens emotional awareness, it can help an individual take
notice of their emotions earlier and regulate them more easily
(Price and Hooven, 2018). Mindfulness also facilitates choosing
appropriate responses to one’s emotions (Brown and Ryan,
2003).
Another topic that appears in the content analysis is the
measurement of mindfulness, but this is scattered a bit among
the clusters. This essential part of any research field groups
keywords such as “questionnaires,” “validity,” “reliability,” and
“psychometric properties.” Several mindfulness questionnaires
have been developed in the past (e.g., MAAS, KIMS, FFMQ),
and fellow researchers have thoroughly tested them for validity
and reliability, demonstrating that they have good psychometric
properties (Baer et al., 2006).
Bibliographic coupling: The current state
of the art of mindfulness research
Bibliographic coupling analysis was applied to evaluate
current trends in the mindfulness field, detect popular
topics, and identify opportunities for future research. This
interpretation is done in two ways: (1) using identified
popular streams based on trends highlighted in recent
years or (2) by pointing out opportunities for additional
connections among subfields that are not sufficiently connected,
but could or should be, based on their content (e.g.,
because of thematic or semantic similarity, complementarity or
theoretical connectedness).
Bibliographic coupling data and analysis
We applied the same data set used for document co-citation
and co-word analysis in bibliographic coupling, this time to
consider the future orientation of mindfulness research. The
citation threshold was set at 160, and 363 out of 3,000 primary
documents met this threshold. We chose this cutoff point to
capture the most relevant publications and reduce the data set so
it was small enough to be interpretable. The same procedure as
described above was employed, yielding nine clusters, as shown
in Figure 4.
Bibliographic coupling results
In the bibliographic coupling analysis, the cluster labels were
not based exclusively on the clusters’ biggest circles because a
significant share of them were among the 25 most cited articles,
which do not necessarily represent the research front, but rather
its knowledge base. Instead, newer articles with smaller nodes
were also considered, which helped us derive the cluster labels.
This section presents the results of the five biggest clusters
(i.e., most impactful). The brown and pink clusters—the latter
of which is not visible in Figure 4, as it is located under the
green cluster—were treated as outliers because they contained
only two documents each, and these exhibited no similarity
in terms of content. Also, the orange and light blue cluster
were not taken into account in this analysis due to the small
number of articles in those clusters. Interestingly, in the network
illustration, all the articles were clustered extremely densely
together, especially in the center of the illustration. However, to
the right and left sides, the clusters included a few articles at the
periphery of the network. Two documents, Diamond and Lee
(2011) and Qaseem et al. (2017), had a high citation count–755
and 1,219, respectively—but very low link strengths of 68 and 59,
respectively. This indicated a relatively weak relation regarding
the similarity in content between these articles and the rest of the
cluster or even the bibliographic coupling network.
Red cluster: New directions in cognitive behavioral
therapy and emotion regulation
Until the middle of the twentieth century, psychological
disorders were managed mainly with medication and physical
treatments. However, with the rise of behavior therapy (BT)
in the 1950s, the focus shifted to eliminating non-adaptive
behavior and promoting adaptive behavior (Rachman, 2015).
Cognitive therapy (CT) emerged in the 1960s because BT did
not show the desired effects in the treatment of depression. CT
deals with maladaptive cognitions and, as a remedy, instead
of trying to eliminate the maladaptive cognitions completely,
introduces an approach aimed at correcting and adapting them
(Rachman, 2015). Finally, the two approaches merged into CBT
in the 1980s, which is now recommended for the treatment
of anxiety disorders, PTSD, and obsessive-compulsive disorder
(OCD) (Rachman, 2009). In recent years, a third generation
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of BT has evolved, which consists of contextual approaches
from BT and CT (Hayes et al., 2011). According to Hayes
et al. (2006), the central difference between CBT and these
newer approaches is that CBT promotes changing psychological
events, whereas contextual approaches are aimed at changing
the function of these events and an individual’s relationship
with them. The main strategies for achieving this objective
are acceptance, mindfulness, and cognitive defusion (Masuda
et al., 2004). Among the interventions that are part of the third
generation, MBCT shows effectiveness in preventing depressive
relapse and recurrence (Teasdale et al., 2000; Ma and Teasdale,
2004; Piet and Hougaard, 2011).Zautra et al. (2008) drew a
direct comparison between CBT and mindfulness meditation
in treating arthritis patients with depression and found that
patients with recurrent depression benefited most from the
mindfulness meditation intervention. Furthermore, the cluster
included publications in which MBIs were applied to treat
anxiety disorders (Roemer and Orsillo, 2007; Vøllestad et al.,
2012), chronic pain (McCracken and Vowles, 2014; Veehof et al.,
2016), and substance use disorders (Chiesa and Serretti, 2014).
Finally, we identified a small emotion regulation subcluster
within the red cluster. Hayes and Feldman (2004),Feldman
et al. (2007),Chambers et al. (2009), and Webb et al. (2012)
investigated how mindfulness and ER are connected. In general,
ER is referred to as the adaptation of one or more elements
of emotional experience or response (Chambers et al., 2009).
Chambers et al. (2009) showed that the majority of psychological
disorders have deficient ER at their core. Mindfulness has used to
successfully treat a range of psychological disorders, and it seems
to promote adaptive ER. Both mindfulness and ER, are relatively
new fields of psychological investigation, and consensus is still
lacking on clear operational definitions (Chambers et al., 2009).
The red cluster, which was made up of 90 articles in total,
consisted mainly of explorations of MBIs and acceptance-based
interventions that form part of the new generation in CT and BT,
as well as a small subcluster of ER literature.
Green cluster: Beneficial eects of
mindfulness-based interventions
The green cluster (84 articles) comprised some of the
most foundational works in the mindfulness field. Many of
the articles in this cluster were published around 2004 or
earlier. Influential studies included definitions of mindfulness
(Kabat-Zinn, 1982; Bishop et al., 2004), reviews of MBIs’
effectiveness (Baer, 2003; Grossman et al., 2004; Hofmann
et al., 2010), and the development of the MAAS (Brown
and Ryan, 2003). The beneficial effects of mindfulness include
improved psychological wellbeing, self-regulation, more positive
emotional states, reduced mood disturbance and stress, reduced
negative affect, improved coping and vitality, and improved
awareness of the moment-to-moment experiences of mental
processes and external events (cf. Garland et al., 2015). These
results have been confirmed by several meta-analyses, controlled
trials, and empirical studies (cf. Speca et al., 2000; Carmody and
Baer, 2008).
Yellow cluster: Positive psychology and mindfulness
The yellow cluster, composed of 62 articles, mainly
comprised research in two subclusters of positive psychology:
self-compassion and self-determination theory. The
foundational article of Neff’s (2003) pioneering self-compassion
theory was assigned to the purple cluster by VOSviewer, when it
actually fit perfectly into this yellow cluster. According to Neff,
self-compassion builds on three components: self-kindness,
common humanity, and mindfulness. Furthermore, Neff
and Beretvas (2013) examined the role of self-compassion in
romantic relationships, and Pace et al. (2009) drew a connection
between compassion meditation and stress reduction responses.
Fredrickson et al. (2008) found that loving-kindness meditation
can increase personal resources, such as purpose in life or
social support, when mediated by positive emotions. Deci
and Ryan’s (2008) article on self-determination theory—a
theory characterized by motivation, personality development,
and wellness—was also included in the yellow cluster.
However, it was located at the periphery of the bibliographic
coupling network; thus, it was not closely connected to the
mindfulness construct.
Dark blue cluster: The neuroscience of mindfulness
and mindfulness for children and adolescents
Most research in this cluster (70 articles) examined how
the practice of mindfulness can evoke changes in brain
structure and brain functioning (Tang et al., 2007, 2015;
Chiesa et al., 2011; Hoelzel et al., 2011; Vago and Silbersweig,
2012).Moore and Malinowski (2009) found that experience in
mindfulness meditation correlates positively with improvements
in attentional functions and cognitive flexibility. These effects
on attention can have a long-term impact on the brain (Lutz
et al., 2008). Many of the studies mentioned above were
supported by neuroimaging instruments used to detect which
brain regions activated during meditation and whether there was
a difference between meditating and non-meditating samples.
The neuroscientific study of mindfulness is still in its infancy,
and further research is needed to support the existing findings
(Tang et al., 2015).Lutz et al. (2008) proposed that the field could
benefit from a longitudinal study further exploring the long-
term neurological effects of mindfulness meditation on brain
functioning and structure.
The dark blue cluster also featured a small subcluster
in which several scientific papers related to mindfulness for
children and adolescents were clustered together. The central
research included studies on MBIs in schools (Zenner et al.,
2014) and meditation training for adolescents with ADHD
(Zylowska et al., 2008). Moreover, Diamond and Lee (2011)
found that in children aged 4–12 years, mindfulness can
foster executive functions (creativity, flexibility, self-control, and
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discipline), which are important aspects of cognitive control
and critical contributors to children’s performance. According to
Zoogman et al. (2015), overall, MBIs were beneficial for children
and adolescents. However, these studies mostly investigated
healthy youths; thus, future research could investigate the
efficacy of interventions for children and adolescents in
clinical settings.
Purple cluster: Mindfulness at work
In the last cluster, composed of 26 articles, a majority of
the documents were centered on the topic of mindfulness in
the workplace. Good et al. (2016), whose study was originally
assigned to the orange cluster, but fits in perfectly with the purple
cluster in terms of content and is surrounded by purple nodes
in the network, identified how the influence of mindfulness on
attention affects emotion, cognition, behavior, and physiology.
These, in turn, can have a positive effect on workplace outcomes
such as performance, wellbeing, and work relationships. Glomb
et al. (2011) suggested that improved workplace performance
and wellbeing stem from the self-regulatory characteristics
of mindfulness. By being more attentive and aware of their
thoughts, emotions, and behaviors, employees can adjust
better particular situations. The leading theory regarding task
performance is Dane’s (2011) contingency theory, which is
based on the assumption that wide attentional breadth induced
through mindfulness practice is positively related to task
performance. When employees reduce mind-wandering during
work hours with the help of mindfulness, their task performance
is likely to increase due to their heightened focus on the task at
hand. The field of research in mindfulness at work is still young,
but the beneficial effects of mindfulness appear to spill over into
the workplace environment.
More recently, research has begun exploring the benefits of
team and collective mindfulness. Sutcliffe et al. (2016) defined
collective mindfulness as “the collective capability to discern
discriminatory detail about emerging issues and to act swiftly in
response to these details” (p. 56). They also presented evidence
implying that collective mindfulness is linked not only to lower
turnover rates on the employee level, but also to higher customer
satisfaction, greater innovation, more effective allocation of
resources, and improved quality, safety, and reliability on the
organizational level. Particularly strong effects of this kind have
been found in complex and dynamic work environments.
General discussion
Mindfulness is gaining considerable interest not only from
researchers, but also from many employers and individuals. This
paper helps position mindfulness within the broader clinical
psychology and psychiatry field and provides an objective and
comprehensive overview of the existing mindfulness literature.
The use of three bibliometric techniques—document co-
citation, co-word analysis, and bibliographic coupling—allowed
us to tap into the past to reveal the underlying intellectual
structure of the field and its development over time, into the
present to identify the central mindfulness topics, and into the
future to identify relevant directions for future research.
Theoretical contributions
The document co-citation analysis shows that the articles
with the most international impact form a strong network with
high cohesion and relatively low fragmentation. Nevertheless,
the various subfields in the co-citation network can be clearly
identified. Studies that developed mindfulness assessment and
measurement scales constitute an important component of the
intellectual structure, as they are among the articles cited most
often. The FFMQ provides the most comprehensive coverage
of the various aspects of mindfulness in the general population
(Bergomi et al., 2013). In line with previous bibliometric reviews
(e.g., Wang et al., 2021; Daniel et al., 2022), our bibliometric
coupling results point out the importance of the development
of the MAAS (Brown and Ryan, 2003), probably one of the
most widely used mindfulness assessment scales in the research
to date. Moreover, the document co-citation analysis yielded a
subcluster with a range of MBIs and therapies that incorporate
mindfulness and studies that examine the efficacy of these
interventions. Researchers were able to demonstrate that the
application of mindfulness led to positive health outcomes
in many different contexts. Notably, our bibliometric review
showed that MBSR achieved a breakthrough among mindfulness
interventions (Grossman et al., 2004). The research confirmed
MBSR’s effectiveness as an intervention for the treatment of
psychological and physical symptoms (see Baer, 2003; Bishop
et al., 2004). The co-citation analysis also revealed that the
investigation of the mechanisms of mindfulness forms part of
the knowledge base. However, although these mechanisms have
been explored since the early days of mindfulness research,
this topic still poses many questions and requires further study
(Tang et al., 2015). Unlike previous bibliometric reviews we
indicate above, our co-citation analysis revealed a promising
and emerging field of mindfulness for children and adolescents,
and substance use. Perhaps this is not surprising as mindfulness
interventions are reinforced to be introduced in schools (Zenner
et al., 2014) and proven its efficacy in substance use disorders
treatment (Vinci et al., 2021).
In addition to conducting a static co-citation analysis, we
also explored the evolution of the mindfulness field, mapping
its trajectory and development by applying the invisible colleges
framework (Vogel, 2012). This enabled us to identify and
describe clusters of colleges of the field’s intellectual foundations
(i.e., studies researchers in the field have cited during specific
periods) and track how the predominant perspectives have
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changed over time. Document co-citation is indeed a dynamic
measure that evolves as older documents accumulate more
citations (Batistiˇ
c et al., 2017). Thus, co-citation frequencies
might shape a certain intellectual field and may be helpful when
detecting shifts in certain schools of thought (Pasadeos et al.,
1998). We portrayed evolutionary patterns of dynamic change
in the field, showing the developmental path of specific schools
of thought and how they have changed over time. This provides
interested researchers with a more nuanced understanding of
how various sub-sections of the field have developed over time
and where theoretical influxes into specific streams originated at
a specific point in time.
In the co-word analysis, the clusters overlap more within
the network than in co-citation. However, there is also overlap
between the co-citation and the co-word networks in that
both feature the cluster “mindfulness mechanisms.” Thus, in
comparison to previous co-word analyses (i.e., Baminiwatta
and Solangaarachchi, 2021; Wang et al., 2021), we found
that understanding the mechanisms of mindfulness plays a
significant role in advancing the mindfulness research overall.
In addition, the co-word network yielded a cluster that
encompasses the beneficial effects of mindfulness, which
range from stress reduction to improved psychological
wellbeing, satisfaction, happiness, resilience, self-compassion,
and mental health. Furthermore, similar to Baminiwatta and
Solangaarachchi (2021) and Wang et al. (2021), the co-word
analysis shows that mindfulness has been applied in relation to
treating mental health problems such as depression and anxiety.
In addition, our co-word analysis showed mindfulness training
to be also highlighted as a potentially successful treatment for
physical health conditions, such as cancer and chronic pain.
The documents in the bibliographic coupling network
cluster together relatively densely, except for a couple of
peripheral articles on one side of the network. This indicates
that the research front is relatively well-organized and that
scientists seem to work in the same direction to advance the
field as a whole. In the first cluster, the evolution from BT to
CBT to newer mindfulness- and acceptance-based approaches
was presented. Other clusters that the bibliographic coupling
revealed were “beneficial effects of MBIs,” which includes many
of the foundational works in the field, and “positive psychology
and mindfulness,” where a connection between the two domains
was made through the topics of self-compassion and self-
determination theory.
The analysis also revealed interesting and relatively under-
researched areas such as mindfulness for children and
adolescents. For example, a recent meta-analysis confirmed the
beneficial effects of mindfulness for non-clinical and clinical
youth (Zoogman et al., 2015), and there is emerging research
on the development of mindfulness scales for children and
the introduction of MBIs in school settings (Kuby et al.,
2015). Similarly, mindfulness continues to contribute to clinical
practice and medical research (Montero-Marin et al., 2015;
Qaseem et al., 2017; West et al., 2018). Similar to Daniel
et al. (2022) bibliometric coupling results that exclusively linked
domains of business management to mindfulness research, our
bibliometric review also revealed that the dominant domain of
the research frontier of the field highlights benefits of practicing
mindfulness at work (Glomb et al., 2011; Good et al., 2016) and
the benefits of the evolving concept of collective mindfulness
(Sutcliffe et al., 2016).
In addition to consolidating these detailed insights into
mindfulness research in one place, this paper contributes to the
field by complementing extant qualitative reviews and meta-
analyses. Analyzing such a large sample of articles allowed
us to provide a broader and more objective overview than
would have been possible with other forms of literature review.
This bibliometric review also offers a strong methodological
backbone, a property that a number of mindfulness studies
lack. Other relevant contributions are the network illustrations,
which offer the reader a graphical description of the research
field, facilitate understanding, and make comparisons easy
(Zupic and Cater, 2015). Finally, the combination of the three
bibliometric techniques facilitated deeper insights into the
complex multidisciplinary field of mindfulness.
Future research recommendations
One of the central strengths of this bibliometric approach is
its ability to uncover potential avenues for future research. This
section points out various areas of the mindfulness literature that
exhibit opportunities to deepen and clarify the current findings
and apply mindfulness to entirely new contexts.
Refining the mindfulness concept
Before anything else, however, the mindfulness concept
must be refined. Researchers call for methodologically sound
studies and randomized clinical trials with larger sample sizes
so that previous studies can be replicated and the beneficial
effects of mindfulness confirmed (Baer, 2003; Davidson et al.,
2003; Burke, 2010). Essentially, more evidence that is empirically
sound must be collected to create a firm research base.
Brown et al. (2007) also pointed out that one of the biggest
challenges is developing good theoretical models that examine
“the directional links between those conditions that support
the unfolding and expression of mindfulness (e.g., attitudes
like acceptance), mindfulness itself, processes explaining its
effects (e.g., insight), and relevant outcomes of mindful states,
traits, and interventions” (p. 231). Furthermore, Baer (2003)
and Carmody and Baer (2008) suggested that to distill the
effects of mindfulness, an MBI (e.g., MBSR) could be compared
to a stress reduction program. Such a study would allow
researchers to determine whether the effects identified are
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unique to MBSR or if the stress reduction program also leads
to increased mindfulness.
Mindfulness at work and collective mindfulness
In the last decade, researchers have begun investigating
whether mindfulness can also be beneficial in workplace
settings. Current research includes explorations of the effects
of mindfulness on task performance (Dane, 2011), job
performance, turnover intentions (Dane and Brummel, 2013),
workplace relationships (Glomb et al., 2011; Good et al.,
2016), working memory capacity, mind-wandering (Mrazek
et al., 2013), work engagement (Gunasekara and Zheng, 2019),
and job satisfaction (Hüelsheger et al., 2012). Because many
employers have taken interest in the topic of mindfulness
at work, the field could benefit from further large, well-
designed studies that verify these preliminary findings. Another
field worthy of a closer empirical look is that of collective
mindfulness, which could be investigated on the team and
organizational levels.
Mindfulness and relationships
Another potential avenue for future research is mindfulness
in relationships. This could include various kinds of
relationships, including workplace relationships (Good
et al., 2016), romantic relationships (Neff and Beretvas, 2013),
familial relationships, and friendships. Carson et al. (2004)
introduced the Mindfulness-Based Relationship Enhancement
program, which was adapted from the MBSR. The results of
their study indicate that the intervention increased relationship
satisfaction, acceptance of one another, and closeness and
reduced relationship distress (Carson et al., 2004). It would
be interesting to explore whether mindfulness facilitates good
communication. Overall, more research is needed in this
domain to validate the existing research findings and to explore
additional facets of mindfulness effects on relationships.
Mindfulness for children and adolescents
As described in the section on the yellow bibliographic
coupling cluster, initial studies found that mindfulness can have
beneficial effects on children and adolescents. However, because
MBIs were applied only to healthy children and adolescents
in these studies, future research should apply MBIs to young
clinical populations to see if the effects can be replicated in this
context. Another topic of potential investigation is determining
whether MBIs need to be adapted (e.g., by introducing a playful
aspect or gamification) to be more accessible to young children,
who will likely find it difficult to sit still and focus on something
as abstract as their minds during a meditation exercise.
Mindfulness in clinical practice
Mindfulness continues to contribute to clinical practice
and is gaining more popularity in medical research. For
example, research shows that non-invasive treatments such as
yoga and CBT practices are effective treatments for chronic
low back pain (Qaseem et al., 2017). However, researchers
have called for more evidence that can provide clinical
recommendations on the effectiveness of non-invasive low
back pain treatments. Similarly, more research is needed on
the effectiveness of mindfulness mediation for chronic pain
overall (Hilton et al., 2017).Veehof et al. (2016) concluded
that acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) was more
effective in treating depression in individuals with pain than
mindfulness-based treatments were. Another emerging research
front links mindfulness, physician wellbeing and the quality of
patient care. However, longitudinal studies of burnout’s effects
and the impact of mindfulness interventions for physician
burnout are needed (West et al., 2018). Finally, studies continue
to confirm the beneficial effects of mindfulness on mental health
and cognitive performance (Goyal et al., 2014; Tang et al.,
2015). However, this stream of research is relatively new, and
the underlying neural mechanisms and changes in the brain
remain unclear.
Limitations
Bibliographic methods have certain limitations, so they
cannot stand alone and should be complemented by other
review types, such as meta-analyses or narrative reviews. First,
the error rate in citation databases is estimated at about 7–
9%. If the data are not corrected and the errors not taken
into account, the results of the bibliometric review might be
distorted (Wallin, 2005). Moreover, citation patterns can vary
widely among document types (Wallin, 2005). For example, the
number of cited documents in a meta-analysis is many times
higher than that of an article in an emerging field where not
much literature exists yet. The results of a bibliometric analysis
can also be distorted through frequent self-citation by some
authors because this automatically increases the citation count
(Zupic and Cater, 2015).
It is also impossible to establish the exact reason a certain
publication was cited based solely on the bibliometric data.
Those reasons can even differ among researchers who cited
the same publication (Zupic and Cater, 2015). As Wallin
(2005) also observed, although bibliometric methods are actually
quantitative, they are sometimes used to make judgments about
research quality. When a document is cited frequently, it should
be regarded as an impactful publication with a high degree of
international visibility rather than an article of good quality
(Wallin, 2005). In addition, for newer publications, which
naturally have fewer citations, it can be difficult to keep up
with older, more frequently cited publications in bibliometric
Frontiers in Psychology 15 frontiersin.org

Bunjak et al. 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.792599
reviews, especially when applying the co-citation technique, as
mentioned previously.
However, low citation rates could also simply indicate that a
document pertains to a narrow field of study. Thus, they should
not be misinterpreted as evidence of poor quality (Wallin, 2005).
Once the bibliometric software produces the network output, the
author of a bibliometric review must interpret the clusters, and
they must be careful “not to try to fit the analysis to their existing
preconceptions” (Zupic and Cater, 2015, p. 448). Otherwise, the
analysis could lose its objectivity, which is a crucial advantage
of bibliometric techniques. Bibliometric software (in our case,
VOSviewer) does not provide the possibility for calculating
indexes, as would be the case in standard network analysis,
leaving the interpretation of the clusters to visual inspection.
The size and position of specific documents in the clusters are
included in specific figures, providing researchers with an idea
of the most impactful studies.
In addition, the clusters the bibliometric software generates
are not based on an exact science. This particularly goes
for the choice of thresholds, which ultimately decide on
the number of documents or keywords will be included on
the figures. However, regardless of the threshold, the most
important documents are included, and papers that are grouped
together strongly also will be grouped in another analysis, which
is the most important aspect of providing an accurate and
comprehensive depiction of the research field in question.
The temporal analysis of the field’s development over time
is also not without limitations. Although the division of the
observation period into three calendrical decades makes possible
contrasting comparisons that reveal significant changes in the
socio-cognitive organization of mindfulness research, other
choices might have led to the detection of colleges that have
remained invisible in this study. To gain a more fine-grained
understanding of mindfulness research that displays a greater
number of intermediate steps in the evolution of invisible
colleges, a study’s overall period could be divided into shorter
contrasted intervals, provided that the accumulated citations
are worth processing using bibliometric methods. Alternatively,
future studies could switch from a comparative static design
such as the one applied in this study to dynamic approaches to
network analysis.
Future research could also explore whether topics and
approaches taken by specific subsections of the field differ
based on researchers’ characteristics (e.g., gender, age, country,
institutions) or on characteristics of the fields of journals that
published this research, delving into specific disciplines and their
predominant theoretical and empirical approaches. This would
help researchers better understand the field, its development,
and current trends.
Data availability statement
The raw data supporting the conclusions of this article will
be made available by the authors, without undue reservation.
Author contributions
All authors listed have made a substantial, direct,
and intellectual contribution to the work and approved it
for publication.
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that the research was conducted in the
absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could
be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
Publisher’s note
All claims expressed in this article are solely those
of the authors and do not necessarily represent those
of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher,
the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be
evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made
by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by
the publisher.
Supplementary material
The Supplementary Material for this article can be
found online at: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/
fpsyg.2022.792599/full#supplementary-material
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