How mindfulness could make you selfish

How mindfulness could make you selfish

Unravel the unexpected correlation between mindfulness and selfishness. Explore how the pursuit of inner peace might inadvertently foster self-centered tendencies, challenging the conventional wisdom that mindfulness solely promotes empathy and compassion.

The’me’ in meditation

In some contexts, practicing mindfulness can exaggerate some people’s selfish tendencies

Effects of meditation on attitudes

People who took the mindfulness exercise were willing to spend more time on the charitable task.

‘McMindfulness’

The mindfulness exercise exaggerated the effects of their self-perception, driving increased altruism among the interdependent-minded and decreased altruism for the more independent-minded

Mindfulness comes with many potential benefits – but for the independent-minded, a selfishness boost could be an unexpected side-effect

To see whether this would influence the effects of mindfulness in the West, Poulin invited 366 college students into the lab and first gave them a questionnaire measuring their independence or interdependence.

The experiment

Students were told about a new project to help fund a charity for the homeless.

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