Building Courage, Strength, and Knowledge: Mindfulness Training Reduces Psychological Threat and Increases Engagement in College Physics

Many college students experience introductory physics as psychologically threatening. In a preregistered RCT, we applied the challenge-threat model to describe patterns of threat in introductory physics and test whether a five-day mindfulness training could reduce threat and increase engagement among undergraduates. Course-wide surveys (N = 954) screened students for the RCT and revealed roughly half of students experience psychological threat. Students identified with systemically excluded were more likely to experience psychological threat while systemically advantaged students were more likely to experience psychological challenge in their introductory physics course. In the RCT (N = 149), mindfulness training reduced psychological threat and fostered greater engagement in introductory physics. Importantly, reduced psychological threat mediated the positive effects of mindfulness training on physics engagement. The results demonstrate that mindfulness can help students manage stress more effectively by reducing psychological threat and fostering engagement in contexts like introductory physics.