The Demographics of Meditation in the United States
Conrad Hackett
The Oxford Handbook of Meditation December 15, 2020 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198808640.013.28 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Cross-sectional survey Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Sample size | 35,000 |
| Population | U.S. adults |
| Topics | Meditation |
| Key findings | Americans most likely to report high frequency of meditation are Jehovah's Witnesses, older Americans, Black Americans, poorer Americans, and political conservatives. |
Abstract
Abstract This chapter describes which U.S. groups report meditating frequently. While there is little cross-national data available to analyze demographic characteristics associated with meditation, Pew Research Center’s nationally representative 2014 Religious Landscape Study (RLS) asked more than 35,000 U.S. adults, “How often do you meditate? Would you say at least once a week, once or twice a month, several times a year, seldom, or never?” Americans tend to say they meditate regularly (40 percent do so at least weekly) or rarely, if at all (45 percent seldom or never do). There’s not much middle ground—only 8 percent say they meditate once or twice a month and only 4 percent say they do so several times a year. The Americans most likely to report high frequency of meditation—Jehovah’s Witnesses, older Americans, Black Americans, poorer Americans, and political conservatives—diverge from stereotypes about frequent practitioners of meditation.
Comparable studies
Other cross-sectional and survey studies on meditation, most cited first.
| Study | Year | Design | Participants |
|---|---|---|---|
| Construct Validity of the Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire in Meditating and Nonmeditating Samples Experienced meditators and nonmeditating comparison groups | 2008 | Cross-sectional study | |
| Neural Correlates of Dispositional Mindfulness During Affect Labeling Adult participants | 2007 | Observational cross-sectional | n = 27 |
| Assessing mindfulness in children and adolescents: Development and validation of the Child and Adolescent Mindfulness Measure (CAMM). School-aged children and adolescents | 2011 | Cross-sectional validation study | n = 1,413 |
| Mindfulness and self-compassion as predictors of psychological wellbeing in long-term meditators and matched nonmeditators Experienced meditators and demographically matched nonmeditators | 2012 | Cross-sectional study | n = 152 |
| Mechanisms of Action in the Inverse Relationship Between Mindfulness and Psychological Distress Undergraduates | 2008 | Cross-sectional, correlational |