Making peace with disliked others: the effects of a short loving-kindness meditation on implicit and explicit emotional evaluations.
Level 3 - non-randomized controlled study
Controlled pre-post experimental study (randomization not specified in abstract)
PubMed 35488316 · doi:10.1186/s40359-022-00817-5
What was done
Researchers measured mood alongside implicit and explicit emotional evaluations of oneself and disliked public figures in 69 students before and after a single session of either a short loving-kindness meditation (LKM) or an imagery control task.
What was found
The abstract reports no exact numeric values. Both the LKM and imagery groups showed a reduction in both positive and negative mood. For the implicit and explicit evaluation tasks, there was only a significant main effect of picture and a non-significant trend for the time-by-group interaction across mood and attitudes, reported as having medium effect sizes.
Why it matters
Brief, single-session loving-kindness meditation is often claimed to foster social connectedness, but these findings suggest that isolated short sessions may be insufficient to reliably alter emotional evaluations toward disliked individuals.
Limits
The study evaluated only a single short meditation session rather than sustained practice. The sample was small (n = 69) and restricted to university students, limiting generalizability. Randomization was not specified in the abstract, and exact numerical estimates and confidence intervals were omitted.