Moral Superiority, Dehumanisation, and the Roots of Punitive Attitudes: A Pilot Study of Experienced Meditators in India

Abstract

Observational, cross-sectional, anonymous questionnaire study comparing experienced Goenka-lineage Vipassana meditators with matched non-meditators in Uttar Pradesh, India, on moral self-evaluation, moral-superiority beliefs, offender humanisation/dehumanisation, sentencing attitudes, perceived dangerousness, and capacity for reform. Confirmatory hypotheses (two co-primary outcomes, Holm-corrected): H1. Experienced meditators will show a lower indirect BTAE good-vs-evil index (V1) than matched non-meditators. H2. Experienced meditators will recommend a shorter incarceration duration in years (V2) than matched non-meditators. Secondary hypotheses (S1-S6) are estimation-focused and carry no confirmatory claims. Exploratory analyses (E1-E9), including within-meditator dose-response and mediation, are hypothesis-generating only. The design is cross-sectional and observational; all findings will be reported in associational language, with no causal claims. The complete analysis plan — hypotheses, exact scoring rules for all measured variables, group definitions and sensitivity definitions, attention-check and exclusion rules, matching procedure, covariate set, statistical tests, and multiplicity handling — is contained in the attached document "Research 2.0 Preregistration Analysis Plan v1.2 FINAL". Two clarifications to the attached plan, registered here: (1) Section 8.3: where a participant has an unequal number of scorable good-trait and evil-trait differences, V1 is computed as the unweighted mean of all available signed item-level differences, not as the mean of separately computed domain means. (2) Section 5.4 / E8: in all re-estimations of H1 and H2 under alternative meditator definitions (S-Def-1, S-Def-2, S-Def-3), the comparison group is held fixed at the baseline non-meditator group; only meditator-group membership varies across definitions. Ethics approval: PSCRC, Agra. Funder: Nova Institute for Health pilot award; the funder has no role in analysis or publication. Recruitment begins on 3rd August. Planned collection window: 3rd August - 31st August, closing on that date or when 75 analyzable participants (88 total participants ) per group are reached, whichever occurs first. If recruitment is interrupted, the window may be extended once; any extension will be recorded as a dated addendum to this registration before it takes effect.