Making peace with disliked others: the effects of a short loving-kindness meditation on implicit and explicit emotional evaluations.
Franziska Anna Schroter, Petra Jansen
BMC Psychology April 29, 2022 DOI: 10.1186/s40359-022-00817-5 (opens in new tab) via PubMed
Summary
AI-generated from the abstractA brief loving-kindness meditation or an imagery task both reduced negative and positive mood in 69 students. For implicit and explicit evaluations of oneself and a disliked public figure, only a significant effect of the picture shown and a trend toward a time-by-group interaction with medium effect sizes were observed. The authors caution that a short intervention's possible influence on emotional evaluations should be treated with caution, and the claim that brief loving-kindness meditation enhances social connectedness might awaken false hopes. They recommend studying longer meditation training and the sustainability of its effects.
Study at a glance
| Characteristics | Randomized controlled trial Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Sample size | 69 |
| Population | Students |
| Interventions | Loving-kindness meditation Imagery task |
| Duration | Short intervention (before and after implementation) |
| Keywords | Affective priming Explicit attitudes Imagery Implicit attitudes Loving-kindness meditation |
| Key finding | A short loving-kindness meditation did not produce the expected positive changes in explicit and implicit evaluations of oneself or a disliked public person; only mood reductions and a trend for group interactions were found. |
Abstract
The main goal of the study was to investigate the effects of a short loving-kindness meditation (LKM) on explicit and implicit evaluations of oneself and disliked public persons. We expected a more positive explicit and implicit evaluation of oneself and a disliked public person after the LKM and a mood improvement. Before and after the implementation of a short LKM vs. imagery task, mood, explicit and implicit evaluations were analyzed in 69 students. Our results demonstrated only a reduction in negative and positive mood in both groups and regarding the explicit and implicit tasks, only a significant main effect of picture and a trend for the time*group interaction for mood, implicit and explicit attitudes with medium effect-sizes. A possible influence of a short intervention on emotional evaluations should be treated with caution. The claim that a short loving-kindness meditation enhances social connectedness might awake false hopes. This study suggests being careful with the interpretation of single meditation effects and future studies should examine the effects of a long-lasting meditation training on explicit and implicit evaluations of the self and disliked politicians as well as the sustainability of those effects.