A new study challenges the idea that a short breathing meditation can quickly override automatic bias, finding that relaxation training may be more effective at helping people make less stereotype-driven split-second decisions.
Study: Effects of mindful breathing meditation on stereotype expression in two randomized controlled double-blinded trials. Image Credit: PeopleImages / Shutterstock.com
In a recent study published in the journal PLOS One, researchers at the University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany assessed whether short, mindful breathing meditation reduces the expression of social stereotypes.
The cognitive science behind implicit bias
Within the brain, stereotypes allow individuals to quickly process environmental inputs, thereby reducing cognitive demand. The unintentional activation of established associations characterizes automatic stereotyping without deliberate effort, whereas controlled processes are not limited by cognitive capacity and, as a result, are more intentional and flexible.
Stereotypes are deeply ingrained in human minds. Due to their instantaneous response, stereotypes can lead to significant systemic issues like racial discrimination and healthcare inequalities. Emerging research suggests that stereotype bias may arise from an individual’s willingness or ability to control automatically activated associations, thus emphasizing the importance of cognitive control, a process that relies on conflict monitoring and executive functions.
Can mindfulness override automatic stereotypes?
Mindfulness meditation has been popularized as a powerful technique to further enhance cognitive control. Mindfulness practices like breathing meditation require the practitioner to identify cognitive processes like thoughts, feelings, and emotions that are preventing the individual from focusing on their current task of breathing.
Proponents argue that practicing focused awareness by redirecting one’s attention to breathing may strengthen the brain's ability to detect and inhibit automatic habits. These cognitive benefits have been confirmed in both intervention and cross-sectional studies, wherein meditation training successfully improved conflict monitoring and resolution.
Meditation training for 10 minutes has also been shown to reduce automatic activation of racial and age bias; however, long-term findings have been mixed. Specifically, an eight-week mindfulness-based training for law enforcement officers did not affect response latencies or behaviors when presented with Black or White individuals holding a gun or a non-harmful object.
Exploring the psychological effects of brief mindfulness training
The current study used data from two randomized, double-blind, controlled trials to examine how brief, isolated sessions of state mindfulness affect participants’ split-second choices. One group received mindful breathing exercises, the active control group practiced progressive muscle relaxation (PMR), and the passive control group listened to neutral history podcasts.
After completing the intervention, study participants performed reaction-time tasks to assess bias, including a computer-based shooter task where participants quickly identified whether Black or White targets held a gun or a harmless object like a phone. Experiment two involved an avoidance task, in which participants approached or avoided German or Turkish targets holding knives or harmless items.
Statistical analyses were carried out using Bayesian hierarchical Drift Diffusion Modeling (DDM), which used the experimental data to calculate the delta or drift rate, which measures how efficiently a person extracts visual evidence. Alpha reflected the threshold separation or overall decision caution, thereby allowing researchers to examine the psychological steps involved in making each decision.
Relaxation exercises outperform meditation in reducing bias
For the shooter task, the stereotypic drift rate showed a statistically significant interaction between measurement point and training condition. This finding implies that, rather than reducing bias, mindful breathing meditation increased stereotype-biased evidence accumulation.
PMR relaxation reduced the influence of target ethnicity on evidence accumulation, whereas breathing meditation led to greater stereotypic bias than the relaxation group. This increased bias following meditation was primarily attributed to the lack of performance improvement on stereotype-incongruent trials. For example, when confronted with a White target holding a gun or a German target holding a knife, the meditation group struggled with resolving the cognitive mismatch, thereby exhibiting higher cognitive conflict.
Conclusions
Mindful meditation may not only fail to reduce cognitive bias but, according to the study's findings, may even exacerbate stereotypes. The mechanisms underlying these findings remain unclear; however, short-term meditation appears to increase conflict monitoring, reflecting the brain's sensitivity to the gap between stereotypes and reality, without providing sufficient executive control to resolve these thoughts.
The heightened self-awareness that emerges after meditation may amplify sensitivity to social identities and norms, which could cause atypical behaviors to stand out more. Comparatively, relaxation techniques like PMR likely reduce physiological stress, freeing up cognitive resources that support more deliberate control over automatic responses.
Future research is needed to assess whether significantly longer, sustained mindfulness training can increase the cognitive demands required to make unbiased decisions.
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