Annotated Bibliography

Garland, E. L., Farb, N. A., Goldin, P. R., & Fredrickson, B. L. (2015). Mindfulness Broadens Awareness and Builds Eudaimonic Meaning: A Process Model of Mindful Positive Emotion Regulation. Psychological Inquiry, 26(4), 293-314.

This source proposes that participating in mindfulness can enable a person to reflect on how they interpret their experiences. If we appraise our experiences as threats we often experience negative emotions when recalling them, whereas if we appraise our experiences as navigable or manageable we experience emotions of “self-efficacy and positive affect.” It is the hope of this project to prompt users to participate in mindful reflection on compassion and then write a post about what that reflection sparked for them. It is the goal to create positive mental health outcomes for those who participate in this reflection.

Williams, S.E., Ford, J.H. & Kensinger, E.A. The power of negative and positive episodic memories. Cogn Affect Behav Neurosci 22, 869–903 (2022).

This theoretical review explains that negative episodic memories are much easier for our brain to remember and recall. Participating in recollection of negative episodic memories has been shown to increase stress hormones and trigger stress responses. Additionally, our memory prioritizes negative memories and creates a heightened sense of recollection, and overall negatively impacts stress levels and overall health if done habitually. The act of intentionally recalling positive memories can help our brain access positive emotions and, with practice, generate a higher likelihood of remembering positive memories resulting in improved affect outcomes. It is so easy to get caught up in negative thoughts, and it is the hope that this project will offer the opportunity to break those cycles and/or engage with positive episodic memories.

Jennifer S. Mascaro, James K. Rilling, Lobsang Tenzin Negi, Charles L. Raison, Compassion meditation enhances empathic accuracy and related neural activity, Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, Volume 8, Issue 1, January 2013, Pages 48–55,

This study investigates the effect of a compassion meditation program called cognitive-based compassion training (CBCT) on empathic accuracy and related brain activity and found that CBCT may be a viable behavioral intervention for enhancing empathic accuracy. Empathy is a key cornerstone of compassion and, as stated previously, it is the goal for this meditation to increase a users ability and likelihood of participating in compassionate behaviors, both internally and externally, with the overall goal of improving community engagement and wellbeing.

Each of these sources comes from reputable, peer-reviewed sources found through google scholar and double checked as accredited academic sources, two with good impact ratings over 4 and one with an impact rating of approx 1.3.