A Sober Second Thought? A Pre-Registered Experiment on the Effects of Mindfulness Meditation on Political Tolerance

Abstract

Mindfulness meditation is increasingly promoted as a tool to foster more inclusive and tolerant societies and, accordingly, meditation practice has been adopted in a number of public institutions including schools and legislatures. Here, we provide the first empirical test of the effects of mindfulness meditation on political and societal attitudes by examining whether completion in a 15-minute mindfulness meditation increases tolerance towards disliked groups relative to relevant control conditions. Analyses of data from a pilot experiment (N = 54) and a pre-registered experiment (N = 171) provides no evidence that mindfulness meditation increases political tolerance. Furthermore, exploratory analyses show that individual differences in trait mindfulness is not associated with differences in tolerance. These results suggest that there is reason to pause recommending mindfulness meditation as a way to achieve democratically desirable outcomes or, at least, that short-term meditation is not sufficient to generate these.

Love thy (partisan) neighbor: Brief befriending meditation reduces affective polarization

“…It has been shown to increase prosocial behavior (Donald et al, 2019) and has also been suggested as a possible tool to attenuate affective polarization in the United States (Klein, 2020). While the effect of mindfulness meditation on affective polarization remains untested, Petersen and Mitkidis (2019) found no evidence of an association between trait mindfulness and political tolerance (a construct that is conceptually linked to affective polarization) nor an effect of a brief mindfulness meditation on political tolerance. The authors suggested that the results may be different with prolonged training in mindfulness meditation or with other types of meditation that are more oriented toward facilitating feelings of compassion for others.…”

“…We tested this hypothesis by (a) examining the naturally occurring relationships between affective polarization, trait compassion, and trait mindfulness, and (b) directly influencing compassion and mindfulness by having participants complete either a befriending meditation or a mindfulness meditation. Building on prior work (Klimecki, 2019;Petersen & Mitkidis, 2019), we hypothesized that trait compassion but not trait mindfulness would be negatively associated with affective polarization in American adults who affiliated with either the Democratic Party or the Republican Party. We also hypothesized that a brief befriending meditation would reduce affective polarization between Democrats and Republicans.…”