Seven minutes of meditation can reduce racial prejudice, study finds

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-11/uos-smo111915.php

Public Release: 19-Nov-2015
Seven minutes of meditation can reduce racial prejudice, study finds
University of Sussex

A popular meditation technique that's intended to create feelings of kindness can also reduce prejudice, according to new University of Sussex research.

The study, published online in the journal Motivation and Emotion, found that just seven minutes of Loving-kindness meditation (LKM), a Buddhist practise that promotes unconditional kindness towards oneself and others, is effective at reducing racial bias.

Lead researcher Alexander Stell, a Doctoral student in Psychology, said: "This indicates that some meditation techniques are about much more than feeling good, and might be an important tool for enhancing inter-group harmony."

LKM is known to engender happiness and kindness to oneself and others through repeating phrases such as 'may you be happy and healthy' while visualising a particular person.

Some previous studies have shown that inducing happiness in people, for example by exposing them to upbeat music, can actually make them more likely to have prejudiced thoughts compared to those hearing sad music.

Mr Stell said: "We wanted to see whether doing LKM towards a member of another ethnic group would reduce the automatic preference people tend to show for their own ethnic group."

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The researchers found that just seven minutes of LKM directed to a member of a specific racial group (in this case, a black person) was sufficient to reduce racial bias towards that group. However, there was no marked reduction in racial bias towards other groups.

Additionally the researchers measured levels of positive emotions that were either 'other-regarding' (e.g. love, gratitude, awe, elevation) and those that were more self-directed (e.g. contentment, joy, pride) and found that people doing LKM showed large increases specifically in other-regarding emotions. These other-regarding emotions were found to be what drives the reduction of bias.

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