The Morality of Meditation

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/07/opinion/sunday/the-morality-of-meditation.html#

by sethbannon • 13 years ago

56 64 13 years ago

seren2• 13 years ago

It is not clear from the article how the empathy level of all participants was assessed before the beginning of the experiment. From what I read, it could have been random luck that people with more empathy were selected to follow the meditation training. What I am missing there ?

jilebedev• 13 years ago

Moreover, would the meditation participants behave compassionately in other situations? A waiting room forms an implicit assumption that the present humans will have further interaction. What of compassion shown to stranger where the subject can be reasonably expected to assume a lack of interaction after the place?

Still further: what of the gender bias? A forty person study seems hardly likely to account for the gender bias inherent in compassionate activities. I would suspect that a male would be more inclined to give up his seat to an attractive female than any other, even regardless of the circumstances (broken foot, lack of chairs, etc.) This "study" warrants some careful reading.

csbrooks• 13 years ago

I'm not a scientist, but doesn't a large enough sample-size greatly limit the chance of this, statistically?

pekk• 13 years ago

Making a sample larger cannot correct for nonrandom biases in who you sampled.

justinhj• 13 years ago

Assessing empathy would be inaccurate and subjective. The act of assessment may bias the final result. The random selection into two groups should do better than that, assuming the sample size is statistically significant. This experiment can simply be repeated to build more confidence in the result.

reddit_clone• 13 years ago

There is at least one more aspect to this , other than lack of empathy, I can think of.

Some people (ahem) are pathologically shy. Getting up in front of all those people and offering the seat to the injured person can be a physically painful act since it draws so much attention.

Tomino2• 13 years ago

I cannot believe that people are actually paid and getting popular on base of this kind of experiments. I mean, unless I am missing some crucial point, the results are just some random numbers that can point out only the fact that not many people have manners to give up seat for whoever needs it. And even that statistic is useless as it would have to be performed on many more people in order to have some solid ground. I wish I would have gone study psychology really. Lot of money and exposure for something that could be performed by primary school pupils...

dschiptsov5• 13 years ago

Yeah, they caught something statistically, and then interpret that something according to their grossly oversimplified assumptions, while there are lots of overlooked or plainly ignored factors.

It is a big question whether or not a primitive statistical methods are applicable to such vastly complex system as brain, given that no one could trace the causes of this or that manifested behavior, any other way but popular Freudian memes.

rattray4• 13 years ago

You could say the same thing about most people who make money and achieve some level of fame -- especially artists, designers, many entrepreneurs, and entertainers (including sports stars). Many times, terrific results seem like they could have been "easy" to come up with.

That doesn't take away from the fact that they had the creativity to think of it, did it, and added to our collective knowledge as a result. Sure, the results seem obvious in retrospect, and the process doesn't seem too tough to put together. But I'm grateful for their work nonetheless.

1337biz• 13 years ago

But those do usually not slap the "science" label on their result/products. You would most likely laugh in a similar fashion at some guy who's product works well for 10 out of 20 random clients and now goes around telling the world that he has scientific evidence that his product is the only product that got it right. The social world is complex and anyone pretending things can be explained by a simple cause-effect relationship is just a charlatan.

Tomino2• 13 years ago

I am sorry but make a study where you let 10 people meditate and 10 people not (I am aware that the numbers are not correct, just don't want to read it again) and then observe who is willing to give up seat is downright laughable. It has nothing to do with creativity. I imagine that the mentioned professor thought "Ok guys we need to do something new, meditation is now getting popular lets take a hit on it ASAP." There are two things that really irritates me about this:

1) The fact that they based the outcome on giving up seat for someone. They could as well give them a gun and see who is willing to shoot someone. it has NOTHING to do with meditation. What they should test instead is work productivity, energy levels, sleep habits etc. those are factors that are supposed to be influenced by meditation. But why didn't they? Well because it would require a hell of a lot more work. Why not just do the one with taken chair? ... lol

2) The fact that this article is published by New York Times. This "work" should not get attention from big publications in my opinion.

roel_v• 13 years ago

Here is another guy who made a career out of doing touchy-feely 'social psychology' studies with catchy titles that resonated well with his target audience, like 'meat eaters more anti-social than vegetarians': http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diederik_Stapel . Until it turned out he fabricated all of it, of course.

dschiptsov5• 13 years ago

"MEDITATION is fast becoming a fashionable tool for improving your mind." - Oh, RLY?! LOL! WUT.

As for rest of the nonsense, any more or less authoritative teacher will tell you that it requires years of deliberate practice to attain very basic level of being continuously aware and in control of ones inner states. It is not mere sitting and counting one's breath. This is just a training drill for the very first realization, that thoughts are not continuous, that there is a gaps between them, and that the thought could be stopped, but not by self-denial or will, but naturally ceased, like an unnecessary tension. This is just a realization (the most important one) but one cannot stop ones mind without forcing oneself, and even that only for a few seconds. This is NOT the goal of meditation. It is only the very first step.

But the next step - from this very first realization to developing a habit of being self-aware continuously, without any conscious effort requires years of practice.

Different schools and branches has different techniques to practice daily in order to develop this habit of permanent self-awareness with in pop-culture is called the third eye (which looks inside). Practices which are based on body/breath control to change the state of the mind usually called yoga, at least in Tibetan or Indian tradition, but there are many so-called analytic meditation techniques, such as famous Tibetan meditation on a corpse (to realize the true nature of our body) and so on.

So, please, cut that 8-week-course crap out. What they "measured" is elevated self-esteem, or better self-confidence, or just felling special or even enlightened - any kind of these naive pre-mature "experiences" each and any novice had had.

It takes years of daily practice, as any other talent development.

mjb2• 13 years ago

So, please, cut that 8-week-course crap out. What they "measured" is elevated self-esteem, or better self-confidence, or just felling special or even enlightened - any kind of these naive pre-mature "experiences" each and any novice had had.

If a novice can improve themselves in only 8 weeks, that doesn't seem to imply that only practicing for 8 weeks is "crap". Rather, it seems to imply that an 8 week course may be truly valuable.

It takes a great deal of daily practice to master chess, but even a few hours of instruction and the occasional game provides many people with pleasure, a chance for social interaction, and practice in careful thought. You don't need to truly master something for its practice to have value.

any more or less authoritative teacher will tell you that it requires years of deliberate practice to attain very basic level of being continuously aware and in control of ones inner states

Perhaps that is true, but the article says that there are other benefits. On the other hand, it's important to beware of any teacher that tells you that you need years of (paid) instruction to get any benefit from something.

dschiptsov5• 13 years ago

Sigh, there is a classic (and popular) text called "Cutting through spiritual materialism" which explains what "improvements" they think they have attained.

Even without any books, just look around, any dude who spent vacation in India or Tibet is cocksure that he is already enlightened, transformed, special - all those bearded, barefooted hipsters wandering in a popular tourist destinations, or some yogi-dressed Slavic youths, spending parent's money on weed and booze.

It looks like a person who picked up few phrases from "learn Hindi in 21 days" and now claims that he know the language, while just ability to watch TV or read a newspaper understanding everything requires years and years of practice.

mnemonicsloth2• 13 years ago

The tone of this comment is not one I associate with self-awareness.

dschiptsov5• 13 years ago

Why, there is no anger of hatred involved, just few under-controlled emotions.))

hosh7• 13 years ago

Why not?

I can tell you from my own practice, that you eventually become OK with things that arise and passes. That includes what non-meditators tend to consider as "negative" emotions.

More to the point, what you associate with "self-awareness" is just that. An association. It is as real and unreal as the emotions driving this person to make that comment with that tone. Both are things to investigate, and if not examined, both can form obstacles to practice.

jessriedel6• 13 years ago

Your comment has a couple of good points, but you put so much ire into it that it's definitely a net negative to the conversation (hence the downvotes). Consider re-writing it to take out the attitude and condense your claims. I'll upvote it.

hosh7• 13 years ago

I don't see what the ire or the attitude has to do with being downvoted.

That poster's comments and attitude is pretty typical for meditators along a certain stage of practice (in the insight cycles). Everyone will pass through that point eventually. Correction of this isn't something that needs to come from social pressure; it comes from continued practice on mindfulness. I commend this person for practicing and encourage him or her to keep going!

hosh7• 13 years ago

"As for rest of the nonsense, any more or less authoritative teacher will tell you that it requires years of deliberate practice to attain very basic level of being continuously aware and in control of ones inner states. "

They say that because that is generally true, and people who come into this practice cold tend to have expectations of quick results that forms obstacles to the practice.

However, I have met, and have experienced on my own, various inner states that themselves motivated me to start up a practice of meditation. That happens too. It results from biology, though some of those very same authoritative teachers might have other views on this.

In any case, there is a reason that when teachers describe meditation to the mainstream, they will lower the standards to as low as it goes. 8-weeks. Sit for five minutes. Etc. Some sort of practice, no matter how watered down, has a beneficial effect, will tease out a tiny bit of self-realization for the person. As such, encouraging people to try it without talking about how enormous the task is, is itself a compassionate activity.

dschiptsov5• 13 years ago

My objection is that what they have "measured" had nothing to do with meditation as a practice of developing a habit of continuous, effortless self-awareness, and that the practice itself, by definition, has nothing to do with morality.

mping• 13 years ago

Agreed, any decent art won't require years of dedication to start getting its benefits. Unless there is some heavy obstruction, if people learn meditation from a good teacher, they should feel the benefits quite easily at the end of a sit, so much more after 8 weeks. In fact, people are generally so "confused" it's quite easy for us to get impressed with some minor improvements such as mood and concentration.

As for the article, take it at face value.

portmanteaufu• 13 years ago

I do not know if it was your intent, but your comment came across as hostile and arrogant.

The article doesn't assert that the participants had mastered anything. Novices experience the benefits of meditation to a degree. Even minimal sustained practice has been shown to increase focus and provide a sense of well being.

300bps• 13 years ago

WHEN a participant entered the waiting area for our lab, he (or she) found three chairs, two of which were already occupied. Naturally, he sat in the remaining chair. As he waited, a fourth person, using crutches and wearing a boot for a broken foot, entered the room and audibly sighed in pain as she leaned uncomfortably against a wall.

...and the results:

Although only 16 percent of the nonmeditators gave up their seats — an admittedly disheartening fact — the proportion rose to 50 percent among those who had meditated.

So they had 39 people total. 20 meditators and 19 non-meditators. Of that, 3 non-meditators of 19 gave up their seat and 10 meditators of 20 gave up their seat.

Did they perform this study on sociopaths? I find it incredible that any able-bodied person would not give up a chair to a person on crutches.

loginalready• 13 years ago

Methinks this is not about morality or (the lack of) compassion, but being more aware of your environment, i.e. mindfulness.

I would suggests the other people simply weren't consciously aware enough to notice, but would have gladly given up their seat if someone else pointed it out to them.

hosh7• 13 years ago

I remember reading another story where, they observed people being immersed in compassion or at least, being considerate. The experimenters then told the experimental subjects they needed to hurry to another building. Along the way, they passed someone who needed help in some way. Generally, even though the people were pumped, the ones who were told to hurry were more likely to ignore the person who needed help.

I don't think it is fruitful to try to scientifically evaluate morality. Morality from my own practice, naturally arises from awareness of [i]self[/i] as well as environment. What the professor said about meditation fostering perception of interconnectedness syncs up with my own experiences of this practice.

davorak• 13 years ago

Did they perform this study on sociopaths? I find it incredible that any able-bodied person would not give up a chair to a person on crutches.

How will you correct your expectations given the results of the study? It is possible they hired a bad actor for the person with the crutches and therefore did not trigger the same response as if the person was actually in pain.

jessriedel6• 13 years ago

So they had 39 people total. 20 meditators and 19 non-meditators. Of that, 3 non-meditators of 19 gave up their seat and 10 meditators of 20 gave up their seat.

Small numbers, but the effect size seems big enough that this would pass the (admittedly low) bar for p=0.05.

Incidentally, does anyone have a quick method for estimating the statistical significance of numbers like these?

seren2• 13 years ago

You can do a student T test in Excel with TTEST(), I assume you have similar functions in OpenCalc.

acomar• 13 years ago

Read up on the bystander effect: people really will ignore others in need if they see others around them capable of helping (and not doing so).

JulianMorrison• 13 years ago

Bystander effect. Somebody should give up their seat! I'll wait for one of them to do it.

hornbaker• 13 years ago

"The G-test statistic is 3.8189 so version 'Meditators' wins with 94.93% confidence." [1]

I'd have expected them to go for a higher level of statistical confidence.

1. http://elem.com/~btilly/effective-ab-testing/g-test-calculat...

rattray4• 13 years ago

In a harder science, sure. But 95% in psych strikes me as remarkably good (though I agree the sample size seems small).

apenney• 13 years ago

I'm in an air cast boot thing right now and until recently I was on crutches. I'd say 16% is about average for people willing to look me in the eye and speak to me. Most people deliberately avoid eye contact desperately so they won't have to offer you a seat.

Alex39172• 13 years ago

My favored explanation, though, derives from a different aspect of meditation: its ability to foster a view that all beings are interconnected.

What a load of crap. There is no way you'd experience that after meditating once a week for eight weeks.

rattray4• 13 years ago

Have you ever meditated?

delluminatus2• 13 years ago

I have meditated daily for months and never experienced any sense of interconnectedness. Have you ever meditated?

Alex39172• 13 years ago

I've got one 10-day vipassana retreat under my belt. But I've also read enough to know that the 'feeling of interconnectedness' the author is describing is associated with states that take several years of serious practice to achieve.

jshen• 13 years ago

Why not?

lnanek22• 13 years ago

You could get the same effect as seen in the study just by priming the participants with compassionate readings vs. violent readings right before the test situation. Psychology studies do this all the time with mental behavior. That's a difference in thirty minutes, so eight weeks is way more than that.

mchusma• 13 years ago

I found this to be a great example of the flaws with "evidence based" reporting rather than "science based"

Science would suggest that this result is preliminary, and results should be studied with Bayesian statistics. This article makes headlines, sure, but shouldn't on its own dictate any behavior.

PS. I found the false dichotomy between things like "moving for a person with crutches" and "being good at your job" annoying. This was likely more a product of reporting than the study though.

rattray4• 13 years ago

It seems more like the difference between "reporting" and "science" to me. If you're interested in the science, consider reading the linked research paper instead[0]. It may adopt something closer to the tone you're looking for.

FWIW, I agree that Bayesian statistics strikes me as regrettably underused in modern social science. But it's my impression that scientists of many stripes continue to use classical statistics instead, so calling something that doesn't use Bayes "not science" seems a bit off.

[0] http://www.socialemotions.org/page5/files/Condon.etal.2013.p...

hosh7• 13 years ago

The article made no pretense at being journalistic reporting. It's published in the Op-Ed section, after all.

d23• 13 years ago

Prediction: this comments section will be filled with people claiming this is a load of hogwash (and I can already see it happening). My response: do the results really seem that crazy?

To me, it seems as obvious as comparing two groups of exercisers and non-exercisers to see who are about to last longer on a treadmill. If you practice something enough, you're going to see benefits. Practicing getting past those negative elements of your psyche for 8 weeks is surely going to cause you to be a bit kinder to those around you.

msluyter• 13 years ago

An alternative explanation: a group of people were selected to participate in meditation training. This heightened their awareness of the supposed benefits/effects of meditation as well as its historical traditions. Perhaps some of them read a bit about Buddhism and compassion, or were freshly reminded of such things. This primed them to think of themselves as being more aware, compassionate, etc... and that self image would be in the foreground, since they'd just started meditation so recently. Hence, perhaps when they found themselves in a social situation that called for such things, their enhanced self image was able to override the bystander effect.

IOW: "I've been meditating lately and meditation is supposed to make you a nicer person, so I should do something!"

This would be in accord with lots of studies that show how you prime someone's thinking can affect how they behave. You could test the above hypothesis by studying people who weren't recently introduced to meditation, that is, whose self image had some time to return to some sort of base state. The trick would be to disentangle the actual effects of the meditative process from the aura of associations surrounding Buddhism in particular, and that might be impossible.

To clarify my question: is it the meditation itself that makes you more compassionate, or the engaging in a practice long associated with compassion that makes you more compassionate?

lcedp• 13 years ago

In meditation books it's often said one who wants to start meditating should have intention to become a better person otherwise it would make no sense. So to answer you question, I take a guess, it's conscious effort + meditation as a tool to keep you focused on your said goal by lowering anxiety.

eshvk• 13 years ago

I am personally incredibly skeptical of eastern religious practices so getting in mindfulness was a big step for me. So the way mindfulness works, it definitely forces you to become more aware of the world. Self-compassion is a big component of the mindfulness process (it is very hard to sit quietly for X minutes without having to calm your own judgmental thoughts).

I don't' think there is a long term biological effect in me. If I stop meditating for a few days, I can feel myself coming back to a base state. However, as I keep doing this, it gets much better. So yes I think the very act of regular meditation helps you become more compassionate. It is like a daily priming of the system.

rayiner2• 13 years ago

A number of “mindfulness” training programs, like that developed by the engineer Chade-Meng Tan at Google, and conferences like Wisdom 2.0 for business and tech leaders, promise attendees insight into how meditation can be used to augment individual performance, leadership and productivity.

Management fads rank right up there with parenting fads and diet fads in their ability to attract otherwise intelligent, and often highly intelligent, people to their inanity.

lnanek22• 13 years ago

Meditation has many studies supporting it, including imaging studies showing changes to the brain. Calling programs that teach it inane is just ignorant.

rayiner2• 13 years ago

Note the long chain of causality from "studies showing change to the brain" to teaching meditation as a way to improve management.

potatolicious• 13 years ago

I have no feeling about meditation one way or another, but "imaging studies showing changes to the brain" does not seem relevant to anything, unless said changes to the brain have a compelling causal link to something.

Having people do something and watching their brains light up is cool, but without taking it much further is hardly evidence of the efficacy of meditation one way or the other.

After all, changes in my skin conductivity do not suggest that I'm being haunted by thetans.

wozniacki• 13 years ago

Is there a single major study involving a randomized controlled trial that strongly suggests that long term meditation indubitably aids in a certain function of humans?

For the sake of clarity, a major study is designed like this:

Low-fat dietary pattern and risk of colorectal cancer: the Women's Health Initiative Randomized Controlled Dietary Modification Trial.

DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS:

The Women's Health Initiative Dietary Modification Trial, a randomized controlled trial conducted in 48,835 postmenopausal women aged 50 to 79 years recruited between 1993 and 1998 from 40 clinical centers throughout the United States.

Source:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16467233

tinbad• 13 years ago

Great to see that enlightenment in the form of meditation is getting attention from the main stream media. We are getting caught up in our daily routines so much that we often forget who we are and what it is that actually makes us happy. Meditation, even when done for a short period of time, can truly change ones perception and bring in more happiness into ones life.

Taking meditation into a business perspective, I believe it can truly enhance teams and have people work together better. At my previous company, one of our developers introduced me to meditation for the first time. I enjoyed it so much that I've asked him to 'lead' a collective meditation session every morning in the office for all the employees who were 'open' to it. After a few weeks most of our team participated in these sessions and the feedback from our employees was very positive.

Now I have never tried to find a correlation of these sessions with actual productivity, but overall everybody seemed to be more focussed and happy in the office. If I ever get to found another company, I would definitely like to explore the options of team/office meditation sessions again.

For anybody interested in connecting with the inner self, Eckhart Tolle really knows how to translate the concepts of our inner spirit into plain language: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qE1dWwoJPU0

neves• 13 years ago

Nice article, but it looks like a simple case of reciprocity: "Hey, the people here just gave me an 8 week meditation course. The guys here are really nice. I should also be nice to everybody here".

The Morality of Meditation

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