Who Benefits Most? Interactions between Personality Traits and Outcomes of Four Incremental Meditation and Yoga Treatments.

People differ in how much they benefit from mind-body practices like meditation and yoga. In an eight-week study of 57 healthy beginners, those with high anxiety, high absorption, low spirituality, low openness, and younger age showed greater improvements in wellbeing and decentering and less mind wandering. Adding ethical education consistently boosted wellbeing, while adding physical yoga reduced mind wandering. Cluster analysis revealed that participants with more maladaptive personality traits improved their emotion regulation skills the most. These findings suggest that tailoring mind-body interventions to individual characteristics may enhance their effectiveness.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Mind-Body Medicine (MBM) includes a broad range of interventions with proven preventive and clinical value, such as yoga and meditation. However, people differ in their preferences and response to different MBM treatments and it remains unclear who benefits most from what type of practice. Thus, finding moderators of treatment outcome seems to be a promising approach. This was the aim of the present study. We conducted a single-case multiple-baseline study investigating the outcomes and moderators of four different MBM treatments. Fifty-seven healthy participants with no prior experience were randomly assigned to three baselines (7, 14, and 21 days) and four eight-week treatments: mantra meditation alone, meditation plus physical yoga, meditation plus ethical education and meditation plus yoga and ethical education. We analysed the data using effect size estimation, multiple regression and cluster analyses. High anxiety, high absorption, low spirituality, low openness and younger age were associated with a range of positive outcomes, such as increased wellbeing or decentering and decreased mind wandering. Receiving ethical education consistently improved wellbeing, while engaging in physical yoga reduced mind wandering. In the cluster analysis, we found that participants with a more maladaptive personality structure enhanced their emotion regulation skills more. Consequently, people do differ in their response to MBM interventions and more vulnerable people, or those high in absorption, seem to benefit more. These findings could support the development of custom-tailored MBM interventions and help clinicians to make scientifically sound recommendations for their patients.