Brief loving-kindness meditation reduces racial bias, mediated by positive other-regarding emotions
February 1, 2016 Alexander J. Stell, Tom Farsides
A short-term loving-kindness meditation (LKM) induction reduced implicit racial prejudice toward the targeted racial group but not toward an untargeted group. The reduction was mediated by other-regarding positive emotions, increased controlled processing, and decreased automatic processing on the Implicit Association Test. Non-other-regarding positive emotions showed no correlation with bias. The findings suggest that positive emotions functionally differentiate in their effects on bias, and that LKM can reduce prejudice even when it increases a broad range of positive emotions.