Effects of audio guided loving kindness meditation on psychological well being and laboratory stress responsiveness in healthy university students
Scientific Reports July 15, 2026 Shunta Maeda, Ren Fujisawa, Takumi Uchiyama et al.
A two-week online audio-guided loving-kindness meditation program did not outperform mindfulness meditation or an active control in a healthy university population. All groups improved similarly in psychological distress, self-compassion, social connectedness, and negative emotion. In a laboratory stress test, no group differences emerged in average cortisol, blood pressure, or subjective stress. Exploratory analyses suggested that the mindfulness group, but not the loving-kindness group, may have had more attenuated cortisol activation and a higher completion rate on the cold pressor test than the active control, offering hypothesis-generating leads for future research.