7 Minutes Meditation to cut
racial prejudice!
The researchers found that
just seven minutes of a meditation technique called Loving-kindness meditation
(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.
The Loving-kindness
meditation (LKM) is a Buddhist practise that promotes unconditional kindness
towards oneself and others.
"This indicates that
some meditation techniques are about much more than feeling good and might be
an important tool for enhancing inter-group harmony," said lead researcher
Alexander Stell, doctoral student in psychology from University of Sussex.
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.
For the new study, 71
white, non-meditating adults were each given a photo of a gender-matched black
person and either received taped LKM instructions or instructions to look at
the photos and notice certain features of the face.
Both conditions lasted just
seven minutes.
The researchers then scored
the reaction times of the participants who were asked to match up positive and
negative words (for example "happiness" or "wrong") with
faces that belonged to either their own or another ethnic group.
The team found that just
seven minutes of LKM directed to a member of a specific racial group was
sufficient to reduce racial bias towards that group.
Additionally, the
researchers measured levels of positive emotions and found that people doing
LKM showed a significant enhancement in generating positive emotions.
The study was published in the journal Motivation and
Emotion.
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