{"id":117,"date":"2015-11-30T11:08:17","date_gmt":"2015-11-30T11:08:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.sussex.ac.uk\/psychology\/?p=117"},"modified":"2020-05-28T14:14:46","modified_gmt":"2020-05-28T14:14:46","slug":"can-meditation-make-you-less-prejudiced","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.sussex.ac.uk\/psychology\/2015\/11\/30\/can-meditation-make-you-less-prejudiced\/","title":{"rendered":"Can meditation make you less prejudiced?"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Xander Stell<\/p>\n

Although\u00a0meditation and related practices once were considered too \u2018esoteric\u2019 to study\u00a0scientifically, research on these topics has burgeoned within psychology and\u00a0neuroscience. This is, in part, because meditation has been linked to a raft of positive\u00a0outcomes such as greater happiness, increased cognitive flexibility, more\u00a0effective regulation of emotions and lower disease risk.<\/p>\n

These benefits\u00a0however are normally observed at the level of the individual; the meditator\u00a0themselves. Much less work has explored how practicing meditation can affect\u00a0how people think of and behave towards others. This lack is particularly\u00a0notable given that traditional accounts of meditation often emphasise\u00a0inter-personal harmony as an important practice goal.<\/p>\n

One suggestion is\u00a0that practicing certain types of meditation may help us widen the circle of\u00a0what we consider to be \u2018us\u2019. That is, instead of being identified with our local\u00a0groups and roles (e.g. white person, black person, teacher, footballer)\u00a0meditation\u00a0training may orient us towards feeling part of a more universal community (e.g.\u00a0all humans). If meditation does have this effect, it may have implications for\u00a0combatting social ills such prejudice and discrimination.<\/p>\n

\"Picture<\/a>

Picture by Balint F\u00f6ldesi (CC)<\/p><\/div>\n

Tom Farsides (my supervisor) and I were interested in the technique\u00a0known to Buddhists as Loving-Kindness Meditation (LKM), which involves creating\u00a0a mental image of someone and then wishing that person health and happiness.\u00a0First this is done for people that this is easy for (e.g. a sick puppy)\u00a0and then it is done towards people you feel neutral towards and finally towards\u00a0those \u2018difficult\u2019 people in your life (although in Buddhism these are classically called \u2018enemies\u2019!). The Dalai Lama has called this process\u00a0\u2018widening the\u00a0circle of love\u2019. We wanted to see whether getting people to do LKM\u00a0towards a member of another ethnic group would reduce what is known as implicit\u00a0racial bias, which is the largely automatic preference people tend to show for\u00a0their own ethnic\u00a0group. This test (which you can take yourself online at\u00a0Project Implicit:\u00a0projectimplicit.com<\/a>)\u00a0is a series of reaction time tests where people are asked to match up positive\u00a0and negative words with faces that belong to either their own or another\u00a0ethnic\u00a0group. On average people are quicker to match positive words with their own\u00a0group and quicker to match negative words to the other group. This produces a\u00a0bias \u2018score\u2019 that is considered a more robust measure of prejudice than traditional questionnaire data, which are known to be strongly influenced by social desirability.<\/p>\n

We got students identifying as \u2018white\u2019 to look at a photo of a gender-matched black person. Then they either\u00a0received taped LKM instructions, or had instructions to look at the photos and\u00a0notice certain features of the face. Both conditions lasted just seven\u00a0minutes.<\/p>\n

Even with this\u00a0short induction, those doing LKM showed significantly less implicit bias than\u00a0those in the control condition. Additionally we measured levels of\u00a0positive emotions that were either \u2018other-regarding\u2019 (e.g. love, gratitude,\u00a0awe, elevation) and those that were more self directed (e.g. contentment, joy,\u00a0pride) and found that people doing LKM showed large increases specifically in\u00a0these other-regarding emotions. Through some statistical untangling, these\u00a0other-regarding emotions were found to be what drive the reduction of bias.<\/p>\n

These results seem to indicate that some meditation techniques are about much more than feeling good, and\u00a0might be an important tool for enhancing inter-group harmony.<\/p>\n

Reference:\u00a0Stell, A. J., & Farsides, T. (2015). Brief loving-kindness\u00a0meditation reduces racial bias, mediated by positive other-regarding\u00a0emotions.\u00a0Motivation and Emotion, 1-8.<\/p>\n

Find out more about our research on Social and Applied Psychology<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Xander Stell Although\u00a0meditation and related practices once were considered too \u2018esoteric\u2019 to study\u00a0scientifically, research on these topics has burgeoned within psychology and\u00a0neuroscience. This is, in part, because meditation has been linked to a raft of positive\u00a0outcomes such as greater…<\/span><\/p>\n

Read more ›<\/a><\/div>\n

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