A meta-analysis of meditation studies has shown that their authors often unknowingly misrepresent experimental results in favor of concentration practice.
An international group of psychologists has studied how the practice of meditation affects prosocial behavior - behavior focused on benefits for others and society as a whole. It was found that meditation can increase the ability to empathize, but does not help to reduce the level of aggression, as well as the level of prejudice towards certain social groups. In addition, it has been found that many authors of studies on meditation may unknowingly distort the results of experiments.
In the 2010s, a lot of research on meditation emerged. Most of the work is devoted to the effect of the practice on the meditator himself - on his level of anxiety, response to stress and health. There is less work on how meditation affects a person's relationships with others, although meditation is often talked about as a way to become more kind to others.
Researchers studied 22 randomized controlled trials. In these studies, the authors compared regularly meditating people with a control group that did not practice meditation. The experiments used secular practices based on various Buddhist techniques, including mindfulness meditation and lovingkindness meditation. Scientists have identified five characteristics of social behavior described in the works: compassion, empathy, aggression, bias, and social involvement (social connectedness, the number and quality of social connections).
Studies have shown that meditation increased a tendency toward empathy and compassion, but was not reflected in levels of aggression, prejudice, and community involvement. Then psychologists found that there is a pattern in research on the ability to compassion: meditation helped to develop this ability better if the participants were taught a course of meditation techniques by one of the authors of the work. Whether the same effect is present in works on empathy is unknown - many of them lack details about who the teacher was. The researchers believe that the teaching authors could, without realizing it, distort the results of the experiments.
Psychologists do not deny the positive effect of meditation, but emphasize that more rigorous criteria are needed in research on this problem.
The research is published in Scientific Reports.
Natalia Pelezneva
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