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People who meditate daily are less likely to avoid negative information. That’s according to a new study by a research team including researchers from ETH Zurich. [1, 2].
Smart decision makers gather all relevant information and weigh the pros and cons dispassionately. It also includes the collection of information that could be disturbing or unpleasant. At least, that’s the theory.
However, the reality is often quite different. Due to what experts call cognitive biases, people tend to ignore potentially harmful information, even when it is available.
For example, they don’t want to know if an investment is no longer worth it, if a medical examination has confirmed an illness or if a friend has betrayed their trust. The reason is that even thinking about negative information triggers fear and worry.
A recent study by Elliott Ash, professor of law, economics and data science at ETH Zurich, shows that people can reduce this tendency to avoid information through regular mindfulness meditation.
Better manage negative emotions
Researchers define the practice of mindfulness meditation as sitting with your eyes closed, observing – but not reacting to – the breath, physical sensations, thoughts and feelings. Numerous scientific studies have shown that the regular practice of meditation has a positive effect on body and mind.
Meditating for just 15 minutes a day helps people relieve stress, increases their ability to concentrate, reduces their risk of depression and improves their productivity. As in other studies, Ash and his co-authors have shown that daily meditation enhances people’s ability to deal with negative emotions.
“Study participants who meditated daily for two weeks were better equipped to simply observe their negative emotions and calmly accept them,” says Ash. This positive development was not observed in the members of the control group.
A desire to know what could go wrong
The authors of the study conclude that mindfulness meditation makes people more resilient to uncomfortable emotions, allowing them to process negative information more objectively.
“Someone who handles negative emotions well will also want to know what could go wrong as a result of a particular decision,” Ash says.
In other words, meditation training could help people make better decisions. They are better informed because they are more likely to view information to which they might react negatively.
Two weeks of daily meditation
For their study, the researchers recruited 261 participants via an online platform and randomly divided them into two groups. A group meditated daily for 15 minutes, while the other listened to relaxing music [3].
Before and after the experiment, study participants had to answer standardized questions to determine how well they processed negative information and how well they reacted to emotions. Participants were asked, for example, if they wanted to receive potentially harmful information about their health, financial investments or personal relationships.
[1] https://doi.org/10.1016/j.econlet.2023.110997
[2] http://www.ethz.ch/
[3] https://neurosciencenews.com/meditation-cognitive-bias-23372/
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