Meditation, free-will beliefs, and sentencing attitudes: an exploratory pilot study in India
Pragya Mishra, Susan L. Prescott, Alan C. Logan
Frontiers in Psychology August 10, 2026 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2026.1865426 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Exploratory pilot, uncontrolled pre-post with comparison cohorts Randomized Pilot study Preregistered Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Sample size | 90 |
| Population | Experienced meditators, meditation-naïve controls, and legal professionals or advanced law trainees |
| Duration | Four-week programme |
| Measures | anxiety, free-will beliefs, aggression, social dominance, just-world beliefs, pretrial juror attitudes, vignette-based sentencing judgments, dehumanization, five moral-foundation subscales |
| Topics | Meditation |
| Keywords | Anapana Criminal justice Dehumanization Free-will beliefs Moral foundations |
| Key findings | Experienced meditators showed less punitive sentencing attitudes than controls, and legal professionals showed significant pre-post improvements across all 21 outcomes after the Anapana programme (|d_z| = 1.05–3.11). The authors argue the findings are hypothesis-generating and warrant randomized trials. |
Abstract
Criminal sentencing attitudes can reflect psychological dispositions concerning agency, hierarchy, blame, and rehabilitation. This exploratory pilot examined whether established contemplative practice is associated with a less punitive profile and whether legal professionals show differences following a four-week Anapana programme. Ninety adults participated in three cohorts: experienced meditators (n = 30), meditation-naïve controls (n = 30), and legal professionals or advanced law trainees assessed before and after the programme (n = 30). The study assessed 21 outcomes: 15 core outcomes covering anxiety, free-will beliefs, aggression, social dominance, just-world beliefs, pretrial juror attitudes, and vignette-based sentencing judgments, plus six additional exploratory outcomes comprising dehumanization and five moral-foundation subscales. The six exploratory outcomes, initially envisaged for a subsequent study, were incorporated during rolling data collection; Group C completed them before beginning the programme and again at post-assessment. All 21 omnibus group comparisons remained significant after false-discovery-rate and Bonferroni correction. The experienced-meditator versus control differences also remained significant after adjustment for exact age and in a sensitivity analysis restricted to the shared 50–60-year age range. Following the programme, Group C showed statistically significant pre–post differences on all 21 outcomes (|d_z| = 1.05–3.11). The direction, coherence, and timing of those differences are consistent with a meaningful meditation-related contribution, although the uncontrolled design cannot estimate how much was attributable specifically to Anapana rather than expectancy, repeated testing, demand characteristics, regression to the mean, or other time-related influences. Exploratory indirect-effect analyses did not establish causal mechanisms: only the anxiety-to-aggression model was directionally consistent, while an aggression-to-rehabilitation model showed inconsistent mediation or suppression. No retreat contrast survived multiplicity correction. The findings are therefore best interpreted as hypothesis-generating evidence of a coherent pattern that warrants preregistered, adequately powered randomized trials with concurrently reassessed active controls, behavioural outcomes, and follow-up assessment.
Comparable studies
Other non-randomized and open-label trials on meditation, most cited first.
| Study | Year | Design | Participants |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction in Relation to Quality of Life, Mood, Symptoms of Stress, and Immune Parameters in Breast and Prostate Cancer Outpatients Early-stage breast and prostate cancer patients | 2003 | Pre-post intervention study | n = 59 |
| Exploring self‐compassion and empathy in the context of mindfulness‐based stress reduction (MBSR) Community sample | 2010 | Pre-post intervention study | |
| Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Lowers Psychological Distress In Medical Students Second-year medical students | 2003 | Prospective nonrandomized cohort-controlled study | n = 302 |
| Intensive meditation training, immune cell telomerase activity, and psychological mediators. Retreat participants and matched controls | 2011 | Controlled trial with wait-list control group | n = 60 |
| The Effectiveness of Mindfulness Training for Children with ADHD and Mindful Parenting for their Parents Children aged 8-12 with ADHD and their parents | 2011 | Within-group waitlist controlled trial | n = 22 |