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| At least 25% of regular meditators experienced adverse events. Photo by Shvets |
David Robson is a science writer and author based in London. He has just published a book in which he explored the science delving into what affects our thinking. The book is called The Expectation Effect. In the process of his research he kept finding studies that cast doubt on much of what the mindfulness industry claims as benefits of the practice.
A key finding is that mindfulness can make life darker for the participant, rather than leading to less stress, to more energy, and to an improvement in your personality. Robson, who has been a mindfulness devotee, discusses the discrepancy between the claim and the science:
When you learn to live in the moment, the proponents say, you will find hidden reserves of empathy and compassion for those around you. That’s certainly an attractive bonus for an organisation hoping to increase co-operation in its teams.
The scientific research, however, paints a more complicated picture of mindfulness’s effects on our behaviour, with emerging evidence that it can sometimes increase people’s selfish tendencies. According to a new paper, mindfulness may be especially harmful when we have wronged other people. By quelling our feelings of guilt, it seems, the common meditation technique discourages us from making amends for our mistakes.
Already, there was evidence from "one study from 2019 showing that at least 25% of regular meditators have experienced adverse events, from panic attacks and depression to an unsettling sense of 'dissociation'.”
A study reported on in 2017 in the journal Perspectives on Psychological Science is titled "Mind the Hype: A Critical Evaluation and Prescriptive Agenda for Research on Mindfulness and Meditation". In it the team of authors state: "Misinformation and poor methodology associated with past studies of mindfulness may lead public consumers to be harmed, misled, and disappointed."
They also say that their article's goals are to "inform interested scientists, the news media, and the public, to minimize harm, curb poor research practices, and staunch the flow of misinformation about the benefits, costs, and future prospects of mindfulness meditation".
Robson examines the new study which confirms these earlier doubts about the lack of scientific credentials for much of what mindfulness promises:
[M]indfulness may be especially harmful when we have wronged other people. By quelling our feelings of guilt, it seems, the common meditation technique discourages us from making amends for our mistakes.
"Cultivating mindfulness can distract people from their own transgressions and interpersonal obligations, occasionally relaxing one’s moral compass,” says Andrew Hafenbrack, assistant professor of management and organisation at the University of Washington, US, who led the new study.
Last year, for example, researchers from the State University of New York showed that mindfulness can exaggerate people’s selfish tendencies. If a person is already individualist, then they become even less likely to help others after meditation.
Hafenbrack’s new study examined whether our state of mind at the time of meditating, and our social context, might influence its effects on our behaviour.
But many negative emotions can serve a useful purpose, particularly when it comes to moral decision making. Guilt, for example, can motivate us to apologise when we have hurt someone else, or to take reparative action that might undo some of the damage we’ve done. If mindful meditation leads us to ignore that emotion, it could therefore prevent us from righting our wrongs, suspected Hafenbrack.
To find out, he designed a series of eight experiments involving a total sample of 1,400 people using a variety of methods. In one, the participants were asked to remember and write about a situation that had made them feel guilty. Half were then asked to practice a mindfulness exercise which directed their focus to their breathing, while others were told to allow their minds to wander freely.
Afterwards, the participants were asked to take a questionnaire that measured their feelings of guilt. They also had to imagine that they had been given $100. Their task was to estimate how much they would be willing to donate to the person they had wronged for a birthday surprise.
As Hafenbrack had suspected, the participants who had done the mindfulness meditation reported less remorse – and they were substantially less generous towards the person they had wronged. On average, they were willing to donate just $33.39, while those who had simply let their minds wander were willing to give $40.70 – a nearly 20% difference.
Hafenbrack's further experiments comparing those who had practised mindfulness techniques and those who had not, showed negative results as to benefits of the technique. In one they offered less sincere apologies than was warranted in the context, and in another, they were less likely to support measures to reduce air pollution.
The reason why mindfulness can be oversold, and have negative impacts in fact, are given some attention in Robson's overview. He notes that the Buddhist scaffolding that makes mindfulness effective in personal growth is often absent in Western presentations:
Miguel Farias, an associate professor in experimental psychology at Coventry University, UK, says that he welcomes any studies that carefully and precisely detail the effects of mindfulness. “I certainly think that we need to start looking at the nuances.” In his book The Buddha Pill, co-written with Catherine Wikholm, he describes how mindfulness interventions in the West are often presented as a “quick fix”, while ignoring much of the ethical guidance that was part of the original religious tradition – which may be important for ensuring that the practice brings about the desired changes to people’s behaviour.
Working with Ute Kreplin at Massey University in New Zealand, Farias recently examined the available studies on meditation’s consequences for altruism and compassion, but found limited evidence for meaningful positive changes across individuals. “The effects are much weaker than had been proposed.” Like Hafenbrack, he suspects the practice can still be useful – but whether you see the desired benefits may depend on many factors, including the meditators’ personality, motivation and beliefs, he says. “Context is really important.”
In his study on guilt, Hafenbrack found that – unlike mindful breathing – [Buddhist] loving-kindness meditation increased people’s intentions to make amends for their wrongs. “It can help people feel less bad and focus on the present moment, without having the risk of reducing the desire to repair relationships,” he says.
Given the difficulties people are facing as they turn to alternatives to prayer, alternatives that range from the outlandish to the mainstream fashionable, it's not surprising that treatment teams have been established. Robson has information about one such group:
One researcher has even founded a non-profit organisation, Cheetah House, that offers support to ‘meditators in distress’. “We had more that 20,000 people contact us in the year 2020,” says Willoughby Britton, who is an assistant professor in psychiatry and human behaviour at [Rhode Island's] Brown University. “This is a big problem.”
Another researcher is also wary. Julieta Galante at the University of Cambridge, recently conducted a meta-analysis reviewing the evidence to date of the benefits and difficulties arising. Robson reports her as saying:
“We really haven’t even started to unpack this.” [...] She notes that most of the studies have only looked at the effects over relatively short time periods, whereas some of the adverse effects may not emerge until much later – which is important to understand, since she points out that the standard advice is to continue meditating every day for the rest of your life. “My concern is that more and more people are practising meditation every day. And maybe it’s all fine during an eight-week course, but what happens then?”
Mindfulness trainers need to tell participants about the dark side of the practice, says Robson. Then they may have more agency in dealing with problems:
And as I discovered myself with my own ill-fated attempts to gain mindfulness, this may sometimes include the decision that enough is enough.
One can read such articles as "McMindfulness: Buddhism as sold to you by neoliberals" to learn more about the packaging of mindfulness by leaders in the movement to make it seem less Buddhist and more scientific. On that account, for all its massive popularity, it is a mishmash of religious concepts, and principles weakly linked to science. It appears to be a secular pursuit of a goal we all have as part of our nature - "You have made us and drawn us to yourself, O God, and our heart is restless until it rests in you", as Augustine put it.
Prayer, lectio divina, and a willingness to surrender to God our Creator in seeking to follow His plan for our life, incorporate much of the elements of mindfulness, but these also involve the movement from self to An Other, and from that point to others. This is a more healthy practice than focusing on oneself fully and entirely.
Therefore, I urge you to take seriously the warning from experienced observers, one being Masoumeh Sara Rahmani, Research Associate in Anthropology of Religion, at the UK's Coventry University. She has written this:
Although mindfulness claims to offer a staggering collection of possible health benefits – and aligns itself with science and academia to be seen as credible – as yet there is remarkably little scientific evidence backing it up.
Ω See also:
Wellness industry defiles our worthy emotions
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