Listening to a brief mindfulness meditation audio increased state mindfulness and reduced implicit bias against older people and Black people, as measured by implicit association tests. The reduction in bias occurred because the meditation weakened automatically activated associations, not because it increased deliberate control. The findings suggest that even short mindfulness exercises can lessen automatic prejudices.
A randomized controlled trial tested whether a 4-day mindfulness training, compared to a sham meditation training, increased helping behaviors toward racial outgroup members. People with higher baseline trait mindfulness showed more helping behavior before the intervention. Mindfulness training increased interracial helping in a lab simulation. Among participants with lower baseline trait mindfulness, mindfulness training predicted more real-world helping behavior reported via ecological momentary assessment. However, neither training condition reduced the tendency to preferentially help racial ingroup members. The findings suggest mindfulness fosters helping toward strangers regardless of race, but does not eliminate ingroup bias.