Mind-Body Practices and the Self: Yoga and Meditation Do Not Quiet the Ego but Instead Boost Self-Enhancement

Abstract

Mind-body practices enjoy immense public and scientific interest. Yoga and meditation are highly popular. Purportedly, they foster well-being by curtailing self-enhancement bias. However, this "ego-quieting" effect contradicts an apparent psychological universal, the self-centrality principle. According to this principle, practicing any skill renders that skill self-central, and self-centrality breeds self-enhancement bias. We examined those opposing predictions in the first tests of mind-body practices' self-enhancement effects. In Experiment 1, we followed 93 yoga students over 15 weeks, assessing self-centrality and self-enhancement bias after yoga practice (yoga condition, n = 246) and without practice (control condition, n = 231). In Experiment 2, we followed 162 meditators over 4 weeks (meditation condition: n = 246; control condition: n = 245). Self-enhancement bias was higher in the yoga (Experiment 1) and meditation (Experiment 2) conditions, and those effects were mediated by greater self-centrality. Additionally, greater self-enhancement bias mediated mind-body practices' well-being benefits. Evidently, neither yoga nor meditation fully quiet the ego; to the contrary, they boost self-enhancement.

Self-Enhancement and Psychological Adjustment: A Meta-Analytic Review

“…Importantly, however, we found that agentic SE was linked not only to a more agentic reputation but also to a less communal reputation and hence to not getting along with others particularly well. The negative relation between agentic SE and informant-reported communion might explain why SE is perceived as problematic across all world religions (Gebauer, Nehrlich et al, 2017; Gebauer, Sedikides, et al, 2017). A major reason for religiosity’s success is that religiosity binds people in communal in-groups (Graham & Haidt, 2010).…”

Individual self > relational self > collective self—But why? Processes driving the self‐hierarchy in self‐ and person perception

“…The first concerns the prevalence of agency and communion in the self‐concept. People prefer agency in themselves (Abele & Wojciszke, ) but describe themselves as primarily communal (Abele et al, ; Nehrlich, Gebauer, Sedikides, & Schoel, ; Wojciszke, Baryla, Parzuchowski, Szymkow, & Abele, ). This acknowledged contradiction (Abele & Wojciszke, ) vanishes when considering the division of the self into individual, relational, and collective.…”

On the Popularity of Agentic and Communal Narcissists: The Tit-for-Tat Hypothesis

“…An important asset of jointly studying agentic and communal narcissism is that we were able to account for communal narcissism in our analyses of agentic narcissism (and vice versa). That way, we were able to assure that our agentic narcissism results are not spurious due to communal narcissism (and vice versa) (Gebauer, Nehrlich, et al, 2018; Gebauer et al, 2012). For the same approach regarding two other narcissism dimensions, see Back et al (2013) and Leckelt et al (2015).…”

“…In all, grandiose narcissism comprises agentic and communal forms. To study grandiose narcissism most comprehensively, it is, thus, vital to assess both forms (Gebauer, Nehrlich, et al, 2018; Gebauer, Sedikides, & Schrade, 2017). We do so in the present research.…”