Meditation’s popularity seems to have crested in recent years: Celebrities, politicians, and business people have sworn by it, and science has largely supported its benefits. But a certain reality has also set in—that it’s not a cure-all, and it can even have some negative effects for some. Now, a review study in Scientific Reports finds that meditation may not make us measurably better people; that is, we may not become the exemplars of kindness, compassion, and selflessness that we hope. But there's no reason to quit it just yet.The authors set out to look at the prosocial effects of meditation—like increasing kindness and compassion toward others and reductions in prejudice and thoughts about the self. There's been some discussion about whether meditation without its original philosophical, religious and ethical beliefs can be as effective as it once was, in its fuller iterations. But many researchers and practitioners have a lot of hope for its promise in changing people and even society.
"The possibility that meditation might improve prosocial behaviours, and reduce prejudice and aggression, brings with it the prospect of applications in a variety of contexts, including schools with high rates of conflict and in prisons," the authors write in their paper. "It is conceivable that it may even find its use in social conflicts, such as mitigation of war and terrorism. Our primary aim in this article is to examine the extent to which the use of meditation-based techniques in healthy populations, outside of a religious context, might lead to improvements in prosociality. In other words, can meditation per semake the world a better — less aggressive and more compassionate — place?"
To figure this out, the researchers, from Coventry University in the UK, Massey University in New Zealand, and Radboud University in the Netherlands, looked back over literature that measured meditation’s effects on several social-psychological variables: compassion, connectedness, empathy, aggression, and prejudice. Of the thousands they screened, only 22 studies, all randomized controlled trials, met the researchers' criteria for inclusion, and effectively tracked psychosocial changes in the participants over time.And, the team discovered, the effect was “limited” overall. The researchers found some evidence for meditation’s effect on two of the five variables—empathy and compassion. But when other factors were taking into account, like the presence and type of control groups, the effect dwindled. For example, when there was a control group engaging in another activity, like watching a nature video, the effects largely disappeared.
Another important finding was that compassion only increased in participants when the meditation teacher was also an author of the paper, which was the case in about half of the studies. This suggests that either the authors of the respective papers were particularly effective teachers, or that there’s some experimental bias going on which affected the results.All in all, the authors say that the results don’t suggest that meditation is ineffective, just that something may be lost in translation as meditation is moved from spiritual practice to popular practice.“This, of course, does not invalidate Buddhist or other religions’ claims about the moral value and eventually life changing potential of its beliefs and practices,” the authors write. “However, the adaptation of spiritual practices into the lab suffers from methodological weaknesses and is partly immersed in theoretical mist.”The head author of the new study, Miguel Farias, has previously raised concerns about meditation as it’s practiced today—not because he doesn't think meditation can be beneficial, but because he believes that stripping it of its original tenets doesn’t work as well as we like to think. It wasn’t designed to be a psychotherapy, he’s said, and shouldn’t be used that way today.
“Mindfulness has been separated from its roots, stripped of its ethical and spiritual connotations, and sold to us as a therapeutic tool,” wrote Farias in The Conversation a few years ago. “While this may not deny its power as a technique to change our state of consciousness and with implications for mental health, it arguably limits its 'naturalness,' as well as its potential – at least as originally intended.”Learning a bit about the ethical and spiritual roots of meditation and yoga may not be a bad idea, since it may help put the practice in context, and bring out its fuller range of effects. From the new study, it seems that meditation may not by itself make us the bastions of selflessness that we hope. But because meditation has been shown to have so many other benefits, particularly for the brain, it's probably a good idea to continue your practice if you have one (and perhaps broaden it)—and give it a try if you don't.