The negative feeling that can emerge from mindfulness meditation

Whether you’re a school teacher, a hospital worker, a Google programmer, a US naval officer, or even a UK politician, you’ve likely been encouraged to adopt mindfulness meditation by peers and supervisors.

Even my smartwatch regularly reminds me to take a “mindful minute”. In the US and UK, the practice of mindfulness is very widespread.

The immediate results of this popular form of meditation are meant to reduce stress and the risk of burnout. But in addition to these benefits, you often find claims that mindfulness meditation can improve your personality.

When you learn to live in the moment, say proponents of the thesis, you find hidden reserves of empathy and compassion for those around you. This is undoubtedly an attractive bonus for an organization hoping to increase cooperation within its teams.

Scientific research, however, paints a more complex picture of the effects of mindfulness on our behavior, with evidence emerging that it can sometimes increase people’s selfish tendencies.

According to a new article, mindfulness meditation can be especially harmful when we hurt other people. By repressing our feelings of guilt, it seems, the technique discourages us from making amends.

“Cultivating mindfulness can distract people from their own transgressions and interpersonal obligations, occasionally relaxing the moral compass,” says Andrew Hafenbrack, an assistant professor of management and organization at the University of Washington, who led the new study.

Such effects shouldn’t discourage us from meditating, emphasizes Hafenbrack, but they can change when and how we choose to do so. “Although some see it as a panacea, mindfulness meditation is a specific practice with specific psychological effects,” he says.

And we need to be a little more… aware of these effects.

Calm and callous?

There are many forms of mindfulness, but the most common techniques involve focusing on the breath or paying close attention to the sensations in the body.

There is good evidence that these practices can help people deal with stress better, but some studies in recent years have shown that they can also have some unexpected and unwanted effects.

Last year, for example, researchers at the State University of New York suggested that mindfulness can exaggerate people’s selfish tendencies.

If a person is already an individualist, he will become even less likely to help others after meditation.

Hafenbrack’s new study looked at whether our state of mind at the time of meditation and our social context can influence its effects on our behavior.

In general, mindfulness practice seems to calm uncomfortable feelings, he says, which is incredibly helpful if you feel overwhelmed by pressure at work.

But many negative emotions can serve a useful purpose, particularly when it comes to moral decision making. Guilt, for example, can motivate us to apologize when we’ve hurt someone else or to take remedial action that can undo some of the damage we’ve done.

If mindfulness meditation causes us to ignore this emotion, it could therefore prevent us from correcting our mistakes, Hafenbrack suspected.

To find out, he developed a series of eight experiments, involving a total sample of 1,400 people, using a variety of methods.

In one of them, participants were asked to remember and write about a situation that made them feel guilty.

Half were then instructed to practice a mindfulness exercise that directed their focus to the breath, while the others were instructed to allow their minds to roam freely.

Then the participants answered a questionnaire that measured their feelings of guilt.

They also had to imagine that they had received $100. Their task was to estimate how much they would be willing to donate to the person they had offended, as a surprise birthday present.

As Hafenbrack suspected, participants who had practiced mindfulness meditation reported less remorse — and were substantially less generous to the person they offended.

On average, they were willing to donate just $33.39, while those who simply let their minds wander were willing to donate $40.70 – a difference of nearly 20%.

In another experiment, Hafenbrack divided participants into three groups.

Some practiced mindful breathing, while others were instructed to let their minds wander, and a third group surfed the web.

Participants were then asked to write a letter of apology to someone they had offended, which two independent judges then rated according to 1) whether the individual took responsibility for their actions and 2) offered to make up for the mistake. (A high-quality sincere apology would include both elements.)

In line with Hafenbrack’s hypothesis, people who practiced mindfulness made less sincere apologies than those in any of the control groups.

This again suggested that the practice had silenced her feelings of guilt and, as a result, her willingness to make amends. The remaining experiments indicate that this is true in a number of different situations, including making business decisions that can affect social justice.

Participants in an experiment, for example, had to imagine that they were CEOs of a chemical company that dealt with hazardous materials. They were then asked to declare their support for a new environmental policy that would help reduce air pollution.

Participants who had just practiced mindfulness meditation were much less likely to support the restorative measure.

the buddha pill

It is important to recognize that these studies looked at the effects of mindfulness exercises in very specific contexts, when guilt was prominent in participants’ minds.

“We shouldn’t overgeneralize and conclude that mindfulness meditation makes you a worse person,” says Hafenbrack. The results of the study may, however, encourage us to be a little more careful when we apply the practice.

We should think twice before using it after a disagreement with a friend or colleague, for example, especially if you already know you were wrong.

“If we ‘artificially’ reduce our guilt by meditating on it, we can end up with worse relationships, or even fewer relationships,” he warns.

Miguel Farias, associate professor of experimental psychology at the University of Coventry in the UK, says any study that carefully and precisely details the effects of mindfulness is welcome.

“I definitely think we need to start looking at the nuances.”

In the book “The Buddha Pill”, written in partnership with Catherine Wikholm, he describes how mindfulness interventions in the West are often presented as a “quick fix”, ignoring much of the guidance ethics that were part of the original religious tradition – which can be important in ensuring that the practice produces the desired changes in people’s behavior.

In partnership with Ute Kreplin of Massey University in New Zealand, Farias recently reviewed available studies on the consequences of meditation for altruism and compassion, but found limited evidence of significant positive changes among individuals.

“The effects are much weaker than had been proposed.”

Like Hafenbrack, he suspects the practice can still be helpful — but whether you see the desired benefits could depend on a number of factors, including the meditator’s personality, motivation and beliefs, he says.

“Context is very important.”

‘Loving Kindness Meditation’

At the very least, Hafenbrack’s research suggests that casual meditators may turn to contemplative techniques other than mindful breathing and body scanning in moments of interpersonal conflict.

He looked at a technique known as ‘loving-kindness meditation’, for example, which is inspired by the Buddhist practice of Metta Bhavana.

The practice involves contemplating the people in your life – from friends and family to acquaintances and strangers – and cultivating good wishes and feelings of affection for them.

In her study of guilt, Hafenbrack found that – unlike mindful breathing – loving-kindness meditation increased people’s intention to make amends.

“It can help people feel less bad and focus on the present moment without running the risk of reducing their willingness to repair relationships,” he says.

Human beings are complex beings with many different needs; it’s only fair that we use various techniques to shape our emotions and behavior.

Sometimes this involves looking inward to ground our thinking in our bodies, and at other times we need to look outward and remind ourselves of our essential connections to the people around us.

There is no other way to take responsibility for our behaviors and ensure that our relationships continue to flourish.

Read the entirety of this report (in English) on the BBC Worklife website.