The effect of meditation based on self-observation on cognitive responses in conflictive social interaction
Summary (2 min read)
Introduction
- The practice of mindfulness meditation can have numerous effects on the way people process information and react emotionally in their social interactions.
- Meditation mindfulness requires both the ability to anchor one's attention on what is occurring, and the ability to intentionally switch attention from one aspect of the experience to another (Keng, S.L.; Smoski, M.J. & Robins, C.J., 2011).
- Training in self-observation enables the person to focus the attention of the experiences on internal processes, thus strengthening the effect of meditation on social interaction responses.
- The appropriate response, such as anger, arises more easily in people with dispositional attributions.
- Conflictive social interactions require that responsibility for their negative experiences be attributed to the other, together with a distanced social perception of the other.
Participants
- The number of hours was chosen arbitrarily, as it was considered to guarantee that those chosen were not experienced meditators.
- The survey opened with a question about meditation experience in order to identify people who had never meditated.
Instruments
- The questionnaire consisted of three parts: Meditation: 1. Irregular meditator, unspecific (N=111): participants were asked to estimate the total time they had spent meditating.
- The driver didn’t see us, and the authors didn’t see him either’; ‘maybe he didn’t see us, he must have been worried, I wasn’t concentrating, I should have left home earlier, he got scared’);.
- Hence, two categories remained in this variable: 1. External dispositional attribution (N=54); 2. Situational attribution (N=175).
- The scale asked participants to evaluate their degree of acceptance of a person from a threatening group (a score of one indicated no social distance, with full acceptance of the person from the threatening group; a score of nine indicated the greatest social distance).
Results
- The aim of the study was to analyse the effect of irregular meditation on attributional style, anger response and social distance.
- The results indicate that the situational attributional style is more significantly related to a lower anger response and less social distance.
- The results show that the meditational experience is associated with both higher self-observation scores and less intense subjective perception of anger, and less social distance from threatening others.
- For each group (meditators and non-meditators) the authors first analysed the relationship between level of self-observation and attributional style, by performing a chi-square test.
Discussion
- The aim of the present study was to explore the relationship between meditation and response to conflictive social situations, as well as the effect associated with self- observation ability.
- This begs the question of why self-observation moderates the effect among nonmeditators in emotional responses, and among meditators in cognitive responses.
- The results presented in this study suggest that meditation has the potential to facilitate less aggressive and conflictive social interactions.
- The limitations of this study are essentially related to the sample.
- The majority of participants in this study responded with situational attribution, which suggests that the measure was not powerful enough to detect the differences in attributional style.
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Citations
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Cites background from "The effect of meditation based on s..."
...Mindfulness has been associated with social interaction in different settings such as communication processes (Burgoon et al., 2000) and aggressive interactions to the other (Borders, Earleywine, & Jajodia, 2010; Pinazo & Vázquez, 2014)....
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References
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"The effect of meditation based on s..." refers background in this paper
...Attribution theory states that when we try to understand a situation, particularly when it is painful or frustrating, the first thing we do is to make a judgement (Heider, 1958; Weiner, 1985)....
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Frequently Asked Questions (11)
Q2. What are the future works in this paper?
Further indepth research is required to explore whether meditation can bring members of different social groups closer together at a cognitive level, enabling greater mutual acceptance in itself, or through the development of self-observation or the reduction of emotional reactions. Future research, as noted by Langer ( 1997 ), could further explore the idea that meditation and/or the development of mindfulness skills might reduce the automatic responses associated with conflictive social interactions. Study limitations and future research lines Future research might usefully study experienced meditators in order to evaluate the possible effect of meditation experience on the various attribution responses.
Q3. What is the effect of meditation on social interactions?
The results presented in this study suggest that meditation has the potential to facilitate less aggressive and conflictive social interactions.
Q4. What is the effect of self-observation on the emotional response of nonmeditators?
Selfobservation is a facet of full attention, and in people who have not learned to develop the set of full attention skills through meditation, self-observation may have the effect of reducing impulsivity.
Q5. What is the main conclusion of Siegel's paper?
Siegel (2007) suggests that there are neural systems which support experiences of synchronisation and resonance with other people.
Q6. What is the effect of self-observation on cognitive processes?
In other words, perhaps the effect of self-observation on cognitive processes as a causal explanation of a more dispositional style and lower social distance, as observed in the meditator group, may be due to the fact that self-observation acts in individuals who have learned to reduce their negative emotional responses.
Q7. What does the study show about the effect of meditation on social distance?
High selfobservation intensifies the reduction of social distance in the meditator group, but subjective perception of anger does not change among these participants.
Q8. What is the effect of self-observation on anger?
Given that self-observation is a cognitive skill in recognising internal processes, it might be the case that it has a positive effect on anger in non-meditators, because they are not trained to contain their emotional responses.
Q9. What is the effect of self-observation on social distance?
Self-observation increases the frequency of the response as compared with nonmeditators, or meditators with low self-observation.
Q10. What is the relationship between meditational experience and anger?
The results show that the meditational experience is associated with both higher self-observation scores and less intense subjective perception of anger, and less social distance from threatening others.
Q11. What is the significance of the Bogardus social distance scale?
A compound score of social distance was obtained by totalling the scores from each item from the scale of 1 (greatest social distance) to 9 (least social distance) and dividing the result by 5 (M=4.083; SD=1.768).