In the ancient military system of China, ten people cooked and ate together, named “huo ban” (Ministry of Education, 2021), which are now known as “coworkers” or “partners.” Whether in ancient times or today, harmonious and supportive relationships between coworkers are crucial for the success of organizational actions.

Studies pointed out that high-quality team-member exchange (TMX) has a positive impact on individual and team performance, such as improving job satisfaction (Banks et al., 2014), mental health (Schermuly & Meyer, 2016), organizational citizenship behavior (Farmer et al., 2015), or reducing turnover rates (Rutishauser & Sender, 2019). Today, we know less about what causes TMX (Chen, 2018).

Influenced by positive psychological trends, scholars have begun to pay attention to the impact of mental strengths on individuals. Trait mindfulness, which emphasizes the characteristics of concentration, non-judgmental acceptance, and decentralization, is regarded as a personal mental strength. Related studies indicated that trait mindfulness can promote friendships and intimate relationships (Eby et al., 2020). In the workplace, scholars also found that trait mindfulness of employees can regulate their workplace emotions, alleviate hostility and aggressive behavior (Liang et al., 2018), enhance more cooperative behavior (Kay & Skarlicki, 2020; Masters-Waage et al., 2021), and promote positive attitudes towards the relationships with other members of the team (Hawkes & Neale, 2020). Can trait mindfulness of individuals promote the development of their supportive interactions (i.e. TMX) with peers, and how do its internal operating mechanisms arouse our interest?

After reviewing relevant literature, we found that there are rare studies explored the antecedents of TMX from the perspective of an individual’s mental strengths. On the other hand, with the paradigm shift of mindfulness research, more and more scholars tend to expose the potential interpersonal benefits of mindfulness. However, our understanding of the relationship between employee mindfulness and TMX in the workplace is still limited. Although Hawkes and Neale (2020) had already researched the relationship between trait mindfulness, emotional regulation, and TMX. However, this study was conducted in a Western context. Will cultural differences have an impact on their research results? We are curious about this.

To fill the research gap and enhance our understanding of the interpersonal benefits of mindfulness in the context of Eastern culture, we took officers and soldiers who rely more on teamwork as the research object, explored the relationship between their trait mindfulness and TMX quality, and verified the mediating effect of two emotion regulation strategies.

We invited 336 active duty officers and soldiers who had served in the military for more than one year to participate in the study and to complete online questionnaires. All data were analyzed by SPSS 21 (IBM). Hierarchical multiple regression equations were conducted to investigate the relationship between mindfulness and TMX, with control variables entered in Step 1, followed by mindfulness in Step 2, and reappraisal and suppression in Step 3. The SPSS macro PROCESS (model 4) was employed to investigate the significance of mediating pathways between mindfulness and TMX via bootstrapping analyses (Hayes, 2018).

The results are summarized as follows:

1. This result indicated that trait mindfulness is related to high-quality TMX. As the level of trait mindfulness increases, objects in this study express a greater willingness to support and assist other team members. And at the same time, they are abler to feel the recognition and feedback from other team members. In the past, Nonose et al. (2014) pointed out that personal mental traits (such as emotional intelligence and metacognition) are related to team collaboration relationships and performance. This study confirmed the potential correlation between mental traits (i.e. “trait mindfulness”) and high-quality team member interactions again, and revealed that personal trait mindfulness has positive benefits for maintaining and developing supportive interaction among team members.

2. There was a positive correlation between trait mindfulness and cognitive reappraisal strategy, but no significant correlation with suppression strategy.

We found that individuals with higher levels of trait mindfulness tend to use the cognitive reappraisal strategy. The result was consistent with previous studies (Cheung & Ng, 2020; Dubert et al., 2016; Hanley & Garland, 2014; Hawkes & Neale, 2020). In contrast, we found an insignificant positive correlation between trait mindfulness and suppression strategy (β = .09, p > .05). This research result was inconsistent with previous ones. In the past, Hayes et al. (1996) pointed out that the characteristics of mindfulness emphasize openness, acceptance, and no avoidance, which is different from the way of suppressing emotions. Therefore, he advocated mindfulness one is more willing to express their emotions and decrease emotional suppression. Empirical studies have also pointed out a negative correlation between adult trait mindfulness and suppression emotion strategies (Prakash, Whitmoyer, et al., 2015). Alternatively, enhancing one’s level of mindfulness through mindfulness intervention can effectively reduce the use of emotional suppression strategies (Greeson et al., 2018; Reber et al., 2013). We do not know what factors caused the differences in research results, and we believe that we can continue to explore the reasons behind them in the future.

3. There was a positive correlation between the cognitive reappraisal strategy and TMX, but the relationship between the suppression strategy and TMX was not significant.

This study indicated that the adaptive emotional regulation strategy (i.e. cognitive reappraisal strategy) has a high explanatory power for TMX (β = .49, p < .001). It implied that the higher the tendency to use the cognitive reappraisal strategy, the higher the willingness to support team members, and the more often they experience recognition and support from other team members. However, we found the negative correlation between the suppression strategy and TMX was not significant. In the past, most scholars believed that people who have been depressed for a long time are prone to interpersonal alienation, and are not easy to provide social support (Butler et al., 2003; Gross, 2002; Gross & John, 2003). So we assumed that people who use the suppression strategy more often have lower TMX performance. But this hypothesis did not been supported. We speculated that the inconsistent research results may be due to cultural differences. Wei et al. (2013) indicated that compared to Westerners, Chinese people tend to use suppression strategies more often to maintain interpersonal harmony. It implied that in Chinese culture, suppression strategy may not always be related to negative interpersonal interaction behavior. It can lead to different behavioral manifestations depending on the purpose or timing of the application.

4. The cognitive reappraisal strategy had a mediating effect between trait mindfulness and TMX, while the suppression strategy did not.

In addition, we found that individuals with higher levels of trait mindfulness were more likely to establish better relationships with team members, partly because they tended to use adaptive emotional regulation strategy (i.e. cognitive reappraisal strategy) more often to handle their interpersonal emotions.

In summary, this study provided empirical support for trait mindfulness in enhancing interpersonal interactions among team members, especially in the sense of reciprocity. Previous studies have pointed out that high-quality TMX has positive benefits in promoting personal health and work performance (Banks et al., 2014), thus emphasizing the importance of developing supportive interactions in team organizations. According to the results of this study, we supposed that cultivating individuals’ trait mindfulness and adaptive emotion regulation ability may be one of the methods to help individuals develop supportive interactions such as reciprocity and cooperation.

Finally, we suggested that organizations hold regular mindfulness activities for their members and encourage them to engage in self-practice. Furthermore, managers in organizations could also provide appropriate working conditions, such as a reasonable workload and sufficient rest time, allowing members to have enough energy resources to maintain attention and awareness of the present (Hülsheger et al., 2018).