Mindfulness: Age and Gender Differences on a Bosnian Sample

Abstract The goal of this research was to examine age and gender differences in mindfulness on Bosnian general population. The study was conducted on a sample of 441 participants from the general population, from twelve cities in Bosnia and Herzegovina. As a measure of mindfulness we used Five Factor Mindfulness Questionnaire. Results showed that older participants’ scores were higher than for younger participants for all aspects of mindfulness. There was found a statistically significant difference between the three age groups on the subscales of Acting with awareness F(2, 435) = 7.39, p < .01 and of Non-judging of inner experience F(2, 428) = 5.67, p < .01. We found statistically significant difference for the Acting with awareness between 20-32 age group (M = 28.57, SD = 5.66) and 33-49 age group (M = 31.01, SD = 5.00, t(292) = -3.91, p < .001), and between 20-32 age group and 50+ group (M = 30.14, SD = 5,86, t(290) = -2.32, p < .05). Also, there was a significant difference for the Non-judging between 20-32 age group (M = 24.77, SD = 5.80) and 33-49 age group (M = 26.65, SD = 5.09, t(288) = -2.94, p < .01), and between 20-32 age group and 50+ group (M = 26.49, SD = 4.90, t(287) = -2,71, p < .05). According to the t-test results, there was statistically significant gender difference between the subscales Observing (t(432) = -2.259, p < . 05) and Acting with awareness (t(432) = 2.197, p < .05), women scored higher than men on the subscale Observing, while men exhibited higher scores on the subscale Acting with awareness. Results of this research showed that there were found significant age and gender differences for some aspects of mindfulness in the sample of Bosnian general population.

There is also very little research looking at whether males and females report similar or different levels of mindfulness.In most of the existing studies gender differences in mindfulness are not found (Brown & Ryan, 2003;Catak, 2012;De Petrillo, Kaufman, Glass, & Arnkoff, 2009;Feldman, Hayes, Kumar, Greeson, & Laurenceau, 2007;MacKillop & Anderson, 2007;Malcoun, 2008).But, there is some research about gender differences on emotional intensity showing that women generally experience both more positive and negative emotions (e.g.Diener, Sandvik, & Larsen, 1985).
Mindfulness has not been the subject of empirical research in Bosnia and Herzegovina, although it is applied as a technique in psychotherapy practice.Due to the recent war, transition period, poverty, unemployment, poor socio-economic status, people from Bosnian general population are usually focused on events in the past or are burdened by concern for the future, which means that usually a large number of Bosnian residents are not aware of the present moment, which is at the core of mindfulness.Awareness of the present provides insight into persons emotional state, unmet needs, and thus the awareness of own responsibility and possible choices a person can make to improve the quality of life.
Due to the limited research that has been conducted in this area, the goal of this study was to examine age and gender differences in mindfulness on a Bosnian sample.We were interested in mindfulness as a specific type of attention that is non-judgmentally focused on the present moment.
Since past research has shown that older adults have a greater tendency to focus on the present moment (Mogilner et al., 2011;Sturgess, 2012), our prediction is that older participants in Bosnian sample will have higher level of mindfulness.We also hypothesize that females will show higher levels of mindfulness than males, according to the results of previous research (Bryant, 2003;Tamres, Helgeson, & Janicki, 2002).

Participants and Design
The study was conducted on a sample of 441 participants from Bosnian general population (213 men and 228 women), from twelve cities in Bosnia and Herzegovina.The age range of participants was from 18 to 65 years, and the average age was M = 39.9 (SD = 13.33).We used a cross-sectional design in which we tested age differences in mindfulness between young (20-32), middle-aged (33-49) and older (50+) participants using oneway ANOVA.

Instruments
Five Factor Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ) was developed by Baer, Smith, Lykins, et al. (2008).FFMQ measures five components of mindfulness: observing ("I notice the aromas of things"), describing ("I am good at finding words to describe my feelings"), acting with awareness ("I find myself doing things without paying attention"), nonjudging of inner experience ("I think some of my emotions are bad and or inappropriate and I should not feel them"), and nonreactivity to inner experience ("I perceive my feelings and emotions without having to react to them").Participants give answer on 39 items on a 5-point Likert scale, ranging from 1 (very rarely or never true) to 5 (very often or always true).Baer et al. (2008) found an acceptable level of internal Mindfulness: Age and Gender Differences consistency within each of the five subfactors, with alpha coefficients ranging from .75 to .91.Alpha coefficients for Bosnian version of FFMQ (see Appendix) that we have used in this research were also satisfactory, ranging from .68 to .84.

Procedure
In collection of data we had assistance of psychology students who asked persons they know from general population (their friends, neighbours and family members) to complete FFMQ and a social-demographic questionnaire.Each student was asked to find eight persons from each age group of both sexes.Participation in the survey was voluntary and anonymous.

Results
According to the results in Table 1, older participants (33-49 and 50+ age groups) scores were higher than for younger participants for all aspects of mindfulness.For the total score on FFMQ there was no significant age difference F(2, 426) = 1.801, p = 0.166.There was statistically significant difference between the three age groups on subscales Acting with awareness F(2, 435) =  2).Although there was statistically significant difference on this subscales, the amount of this difference between groups was small (eta-squared for both subscales was η 2 = 0.03).These results showed that in general older participants scored higher on these scales (Table 1).In Table 4 we presented the results of t-test for examining gender differences for FFMQ.According to the results, there was statistically significant gender difference for the subscale Observing (t(432) = -2.259,p < .05) and for the subscale Acting with awareness (t(432) = 2.197, p < .05).Women scored higher than man on the subscale Observing, while men had higher scores on the subscale Acting with awareness.

Discussion
According to the results of this research, we found that older participants' scores on FFMQ were higher than for younger participants.Results also showed that there was small but statistically significant difference for the subscales Acting with awareness and Nonjudging of inner experience for 20-32 and 33-49 age groups, and between 20-32 and 50+ age groups.
Results reflect previous research suggesting that older adults demonstrate a higher degree of emotional control (Gross et al., 1997), as well as a greater tendency to focus on the present moment (Mogilner et al., 2011;Sturgess, 2012).Possible explanation for our results concerning the age differences is maturational change/ developmental interpretation which posits that as individuals age, they develop increasingly adapt ways of managing their emotions, and therefore are less judging about themselves and others.It means that older adults are able to be more present "here and now", because they are not interrupted by intensity of their emotions.This is also supported by the results of a longitudinal study of 2.704 participants in four generations of families (Charles, Reynolds, & Gatz, 2001) where they found that negative affect decreased with age, and that older people had a tendency to regulate their emotions more effectively.Savouring is another psychological construct that can be used to explain mindfulness (Sturgess, 2012): because older adults have greater tendency to savour the moment, control emotions, and remain focussed on the present, they tend to be more mindful, which can be one of explanations for our results.
In this research we also wanted to examine gender differences in mindfulness.Results of t-test showed that there was small but statistically significant gender difference for the subscales Observing, where females scored higher than men, and Acting with awareness, where males had higher scores than their counterparts.
This result is consistent with previous data (for example, Sturgess, 2012).Gender differences could be explained with different cognitive functioning of females and males.According to the previous research, women in general are much better in observing details than men, and also in multitasking -doing several things at the same time, while men in general having a tendency to focus on one task at the time, and be more aware while doing it (Stoet, O'Connor, Conner, & Laws, 2013).
Our study was the preliminary research about age and gender differences in mindfulness in Bosnia and Herzegovina, so we hope that it will be only the beginning of empirical research about this topic.This study also has some limitations.For example, we collected self-report measures of mindfulness.Despite this, our study showed for the first time in our country some important evidence about age and gender differences in mindfulness that should be considered in future research.Our results revealed that in Bosnian general population, older adults were more mindful and that there were gender differences in mindfulness.These results provide basis for more extensive future research about mindfulness not only in general but also in clinical population.____5.Kada nešto radim, moje misli odlutaju, i lako me je omesti.

Table 1
Descriptive Statistics for FFMQ Subscales for Three Age Groups

Table 3
Tukey HSD Post Hoc Test for FFMQ Age Differences

Table 4
Results of t-Test: Gender Differences for FFMQ