Mindfulness and Cognitive Ease

The Watercooler
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Everyone tends to be right and feel certain about things and this helps us to experience a sense of cognitive ease(feel good mood :innocent: :relieved:).
We tend to believe what is easier to understand. Cognitive ease feels good, but it gives us a false sense of security because it makes us think we understand far more than we actually do. Cognitive Ease

Cognitive strain occurs when our brain is making multiple mental calculations, reading instructions in a poor or faint font, decoding complicated language or when we are in a bad mood (or even just frowning).
Cognitive Strain

Mindfulness is proven to help reducing chronic pain and relieve stress, treat heart disease, lower blood pressure. But when we consider the practice, mindfulness seems to be more intence.

Does mindfulness trigger cognitive strain or helps us to keep cognitive ease?

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Since this isnā€™t a question about a sutta or early EBT Iā€™m moving it to the Watercooler to collect responses.

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In my personal experience, developing mindfulness through meditation has definitely increased my cognitive ease. :slight_smile:

Of course my experience is singular, anecdotal, and subjective. :thinking: :wink:

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Congnitive ease is something that misleads our decisions, understandings, etc. But when someone is mindful he has the capacity to grasp even minor details. In fact developed level of mindfulness allows you to see paticcasamuppāda (present moment).
Thats why I have some confusion understanding the impact of mindfulness on cognitive ease.
Does mindfulness increase cognitive ease or reduce the bad impact of cognitive strain while keeping it working. :roll_eyes:

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The practice of mindfulness gives us a measure of cognitive ease to make difficult decisions without prejudice:

Four prejudices: making decisions prejudiced by favoritism, hostility, stupidity, and cowardice.

And with difficult decisions, we invariably discover a need for more practice and mindfulness. :meditation:

In other words, it does both.

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I agree with your point.
Cognitive ease is generally feeling good, but when we consider the definition in psycology, it seems this exactly is not the case.
@karl_lew, Read this for more information: What Is Cognitive Ease?

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Hmm, may be Iā€™m idealizing the education of an ordained one, but I really thought, that a Venerable could answer this from own experience instead of askingā€¦ ???

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Question is not about practice but about the definitions of cognitive ease and cognitive strain. Seems no one gets the idea.

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In that case it might be more helpful to ask a psychologist rather than mindfulness practitioners. Cognitive ease and strain seem like quite simple concepts and your link reflects this but, actually, they are new phrases for me so Iā€™m not qualified to explain them.

I would have guessed that they are the opposite ends of a continuum so that an increase in one necessarily involves a decrease in the other. But Iā€™d suggest a search in Google Scholar.

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Actually psycologists canā€™t correlate Mindfulness and Cognitive Ease. Since, this is a global forum, I thought there may be someone who has some knowledge on both.

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@Mat, can you help?

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