The Relationship Between Dispositional Mindfulness and Grit Moderated by Meditation Experience and Culture

Objectives The present study was designed to examine the relationship between dispositional mindfulness and grit in community samples and to explore the potential moderating role of culture and meditation experience across the USA and Thai cultures. Methods American and Thai participants completed a questionnaire which included measures of trait mindfulness and grit, CFA. Invariance tests were first conducted, and then the relationships between components of mindfulness and grit were examined within and across the two cultural groups. Lastly, a 3-way interaction regression analysis was conducted to examine and compare the moderating effect of meditation experience on the relationship between mindfulness and grit across the two cultures. Results Both the FFMQ-R and the Grit Scale demonstrated configural and metric invariance, but not scalar, across the two cultural groups. Path analyses revealed similar positive relationships between the five facets of mindfulness and grit across the two cultural groups. Contrary to prediction, meditation experience was found to be a non-significant moderator of the relationship between mindfulness and grit, which also did not differ across the two cultural groups. Conclusions Measurement invariance findings suggest that the FFMQ-R and the Grit Scale in Thai samples possess utility. Results from the path analyses and moderation suggest that mindful individuals tend to also be gritty regardless of cultural backgrounds or meditative experience.