03/04/2022

Study: Mindfulness Has its Limits

In fact, mindfulness can make you a darker person

Whether you are a school teacher, a hospital worker, a Google programmer, a U.S. Marine or even a UK politician, you'll have been encouraged to embrace mindfulness by colleagues and supervisors. Even my smartwatch regularly reminds me to take a "mindful minute."

The immediate outcomes of this popular form of meditation are meant to be reduced stress and risk of burnout. But listed alongside these benefits, you'll often find claims that mindfulness can improve your personality. When you learn to live in the moment, the proponents say, you will find hidden reserves of empathy and compassion for those around you. That's certainly an attractive bonus for an organization hoping to increase cooperation in its teams.

The scientific research, however, paints a more complicated picture of mindfulness' effects on our behavior, with emerging evidence that it can sometimes increase people's selfish tendencies. According to a new paper, mindfulness may be especially harmful when we have wronged other people. By quelling our feelings of guilt, it seems, the common meditation technique discourages us from making amends for our mistakes.

Please select this link to read the complete blog post from The BBC.