BIG FIVE PERSONALITY TRAITS AS PREDICTORS OF MINDFULNESS: A STUDY ON A BOSNIAN SAMPLE

Since the early 2000s, research on mindfulness has been expanding rapidly. Mindfulness can be defined as the degree of awareness that is achieved by purposefully paying attention to the present moment, without judging it (Kabat-Zinn, 1994). The main aspects of mindfulness, awareness and nonjudgmental acceptance of one's moment-to-moment experience, are regarded as potentially effective antidotes against common forms of psychological distress: rumination, anxiety, worry, fear, anger, and so on—many of which involve the maladaptive tendencies to avoid, suppress, or over-engage with one's distressing thoughts and emotions. Many researches also examine how personality traits can be related to mindfuless. One of the most empirically researched models of personality in this field is the Big five model which consists of five personality traits: Neuroticism, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, and Openness to Experience. Relationship between these constructs has not been the subject of empirical research in Bosnia and Herzegovina, therefore the goal of present study is to examine relationship between mindfulness and Big five persionality traits on Bosnian sample. According to the results, there is moderete and inverese correlation between mindfulness and Neuroticism, and small to moderate positive correlations with other Big five personality traits (Openness, Conscientiousness, Agreeableness and Extraversion). Results of multiple regression analysis showed that Big five personality traits explain significant proportion of the variance for the criterion variable mindfulness and that the significant predictors for mindfulness were Neuroticism, Conscientiousness and Openness. More research is needed to explore this multi-faceted nature of both Big five personality traits and mindfulness.