A BETTER SPIRITUAL LANGUAGE

Brief Notes On A Study

The Dalai Lama once said that "if every eight year old in the world is taught meditation, we will eliminate violence from the world within one generation”.

That’s unlikely.

A 2021 study by Michael Poulin at the State University of New York at Buffalo tested the willingness of participants to help the homeless—after engaging in mindfulness practices.

The study found that behavioral outcomes were contingent on how a person thought about themselves symbolically before the test:

For people who considered themselves independent, mindfulness had the effect of intensifying their selfish behavior, while for those who considered themselves interdependent, the mindfulness exercise increased generosity.

In Study 1 (N= 366), a brief mindfulness induction, compared to a meditation control, led to decreased prosocial behavior among people with relatively independent self-construals, but had the opposite effect among those with relatively interdependent self-construals.

This is highly significant. It suggests that, for people who view themselves as independent (most living in the western world), mindfulness may actually have the effect of accelerating selfish and extractive behavior.

But by far the most important—and useful—part of the study is found in its second phase.

Participants were primed with either collective pronouns (us/we/our) or independent pronouns (I/me/mine):

Poulin’s team conducted a second experiment, in which the participants were first given a short text written either in the first-person singular (I), or first-person plural (we). As they read the text, they had to click on all the pronouns – a simple task known to prime either independent or interdependent thinking. They then completed the meditation tasks and, to test their pro-sociality, were asked whether they wanted to devote time to chat online with potential donors for the homelessness charity. 

The effects were spectacular.

In Study 2 (N= 325), a mindfulness induction led to decreased prosocial behavior among those primed with independence, but had the opposite effect among those primed with interdependence.

In other words, simply reading out the words “I am” led to increased selfish behavior after the meditation, while reading out the words “we are” increased generosity after the meditation.

From the abstract of the study:

We propose that the prosocial effects of mindfulness depend greatly on whether one sees the self as independent from or as interdependent with other individuals—and that accordingly, mindfulness may actually reduce prosocial behavior among independent-minded individuals.

In short, outcomes of mindfulness may be determined, like psychedelics, by set and setting.

If the mindset and setting of the subject is capitalist/individualist, both meditation and psychedelics are likely to increase extractive/selfish behavior in the subject. This suggests that to change behavior at scale from extractive to regenerative, we must change rhetoric at scale.

Use of the following phrases would increase selfish, anti-social behavior—and from my own studies, already have:

“Personal Manifestation”, “You Create Your Own Reality”, “Personal Sovereignty”.

Toss those in the garbage. Instead, let’s prime ourselves with interdependence:

“Co-Manifestation”, “We Create Our Reality”, “Interdependence”.

Such simple rhetorical corrections combined with just about any spiritual practice may yield considerably more collective, caring, and protopian behavior.

Let’s give it a whirl.