Running Head: Meditation and Self-Esteem

Pulling Your Self Together:

Meditation Promotes Congruence between Implicit and Explicit Self-Esteem

Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 45, 1220-1226.

The online version of this article can be found at:

http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0022103109001310

Sander L. Koole

VU University Amsterdam

Olesya Govorun

Ohio State University

Burke Inc

Clara Michelle Cheng

American University

Marcello Gallucci

University of Milan-Bicocca

Draft: June 3, 2009

KEY WORDS: (implicit) self-esteem, name letter preference, meditation, mindfulness

Meditation and Self-Esteem 2

Abstract

Self-reported or explicit self-esteem frequently conflicts with indirectly assessed,

implicit self-esteem. The present research investigated whether meditation may reduce such

inner conflicts by promoting congruence between implicit and explicit self-esteem. Relative

to control conditions, meditation led to greater congruence between explicit self-esteem,

assessed via self-report, and implicit self-esteem, indicated by name letter preference (Studies

1 and 2). Low implicit self-esteem was further associated with a slow-down of explicit self-

evaluation (Study 2), an effect that mediated the greater congruence between implicit and

explicit self-esteem in the meditation condition. These results suggest that meditation

encourages people to rely more on intuitive feelings of self-worth.

Meditation and Self-Esteem 3

Pulling Your Self Together:

Meditation Promotes Congruence between Implicit and Explicit Self-Esteem

One of psychology’s enduring missions is to liberate people from their inner conflicts.

Many troubling psychological conflicts occur between explicit, well-articulated beliefs,

norms, or goals (Emmons & King, 1988; Higgins, 1987). Nevertheless, these may represent

only the tip of the iceberg. As recent research has shown, psychological conflicts also

proliferate on more intuitive or implicit levels that defy attempts at logical reasoning or

explanation (Baumann, Kaschel, & Kuhl, 2005; Pyszczynski, Greenberg, & Solomon, 2000;

Spencer, Jordan, Logel, & Zanna, 2005).

Implicit conflict appears to be particularly common with regard to self-esteem -

people’s evaluations of their own person as intrinsically positive or negative. Self-esteem is

traditionally assessed through self-report items such as ‘‘I take a positive attitude toward

myself’’ (Rosenberg, 1965). Recently, however, advances in social cognition research have

led to the development of implicit measures of self-esteem (Greenwald & Banaji, 1995). For

instance, implicit self-esteem may be indicated by people’s evaluations of self-associated

stimuli such as their own name letters (Koole, Dijksterhuis, & van Knippenberg, 2001) or the

degree to which the self primes positive evaluations (Hetts, Sakuma, & Pelham, 1999; Koole,

2004). Although the distinction between implicit versus explicit self-esteem continues to be

debated, most theorists now consider them to be separate (but related) constructs. Explicit

self-esteem is presumably based in beliefs about the self that a person consciously considers

to be valid. By contrast, implicit self-esteem is assumed to derive from intuitive associations

that the person has towards the self, regardless of whether he or she considers these

associations to be valid (Koole & DeHart, 2007; Pelham, Carvallo, & Jones, 2005; see also

Gawronski & Bodenhausen, 2006).

Measures of implicit and explicit self-esteem are usually weakly correlated (Bosson,

Swann, & Pennebaker, 2000; Koole et al., 2001; Krizan & Suls, 2008). Whereas implicit and

Meditation and Self-Esteem 4

explicit self-esteem go hand in hand for some individuals, many individuals display large

discrepancies between the two types of self-esteem. Importantly, such discrepancies have

been associated with distinct psychological disadvantages. For instance, individuals with high

explicit self-esteem and low implicit self-esteem are often more narcissistic and vulnerable to

criticism than individuals with other configurations of implicit and explicit self-esteem

(Bosson, Brown, Zeigler-Hill, & Swann, 2003; Jordan, Spencer, Zanna, Hoshino-Browne, &

Correll, 2003; Shröder-Abé, Rudolph, Wiesner, & Schütz, 2007; Zeigler-Hill, 2006).

Likewise, individuals with low explicit self-esteem and high implicit self-esteem appear to be

especially prone to maladaptive forms of perfectionism (Zeigler-Hill & Terry, 2007). Finally,

discrepancies between implicit and explicit self-esteem predict greater levels of self-doubt

(Briñol, Petty, & Wheeler, 2006), anger suppression (Shröder-Abé, Rudolph, & Schütz,

2007), and impaired physical and psychological health (Shröder-Abé et al., 2007). In view of

such findings, theorists have suggested that discrepancies between implicit and explicit self-

aspects may be a source of psychological stress (Baumann et al., 2005; Kehr, 2004; Shröder-

Abé et al., 2007; see also Rydell, McConnell, & Mackie, 2008). It thus seems important to

identify ways in which the congruence between implicit and explicit self-esteem can be

enhanced.

Prior research has established that explicit self-esteem becomes more congruent with

implicit self-esteem to the extent that people evaluate themselves more rapidly (Koole et al.,

2001, Study 3) or under heightened cognitive load (Koole et al., 2001, Study 4). Dissociations

between implicit and explicit self-esteem may thus arise especially when people engage in

conscious self-reflection. This pattern fits with traditional theories of self-consciousness,

which have assumed that conscious attention to the self is driven by conceptual processing

(e.g., Silvia & Duval, 2001). These theories suggest that when people become conscious of

the self, their more immediate experiences and intuitions about the self become filtered

through a lens of pre-existing linguistic categories, cognitive schemas, and beliefs. The

Meditation and Self-Esteem 5

concept-driven nature of self-consciousness may thus inhibit the more intuitive feelings

towards the self that presumably underlie implicit self-esteem, thus resulting in discrepancies

between implicit and explicit self-esteem.

Considerable evidence supports the link between self-consciousness and conceptual

processing (for reviews, see Swann, Chang-Schneider, & McClarty, 2007; Suls, Martin, &

Wheeler, 2002). Nevertheless, self-consciousness may not always be conceptually driven. A

variety of philosophical, religious, and psychological traditions, including ancient Greek

philosophy, Buddhism, existentialism and humanism, have proposed that human

consciousness may also operate in a more holistic, integrative manner (Brown, Ryan, &

Creswell, 2007). Resonating to these ideas, modern personality psychologists have developed

notions such as “integrative awareness” (Brown et al., 2007), “organismic valuing process”

(Sheldon, Arndt, & Houser-Marko, 2003), and “autonoetic access” (Kazén, Baumann, &

Kuhl, 2003). Although these constructs differ in important ways, they converge on the

existence of self-conscious states that allow people to get in touch with deep-seated feelings

and intuitions.

A related construct is mindfulness, a mental state of attending to and being aware of

the present moment without judgment (Brown et al., 2007; Kabat-Zinn, 1994; Langer, 1989).

Unlike conceptually driven forms of awareness, which entail processing information through

our existing cognitive schemas, mindfulness involves a mere noticing of one’s internal and

external experiences in an objective manner, “as part of the ongoing stream of consciousness”

(Brown et al., 2007, p. 212). Because mindful processing enhances the clarity of one’s

thoughts, feelings, behaviors, and sensations (Brown et al., 2007), it may allow intuitive,

implicitly represented information about the self (i.e., implicit self-esteem) to become

incorporated into people’s conscious experience of themselves (i.e., explicit self-esteem). In

addition, mindfulness promotes observing one’s experiences without making judgments or

attempts to change those experiences. Thus, mindful individuals may also be more accepting

Meditation and Self-Esteem 6

of their intuitive self-evaluations once they become aware of them.

If self-conscious states such as mindfulness indeed promote the integration of implicit

and explicit self-representations, then these mental states can be expected to foster congruence

between implicit and explicit self-esteem. Indirect support for this notion was obtained in

studies showing that congruence between implicit and explicit self-esteem is greater among

individuals who are chronically attuned to their intuition (Jordan et al., 2007; Pelham et al.,

2005), and among individuals who are instructed to embrace their intuitions about the self

(Jordan et al., 2007). Being open to intuition is presumably an important aspect of integrative

awareness or mindfulness. More to the point, a recent study showed that dispositional

mindfulness predicts greater congruence between implicit and explicit self-esteem (Brown

&Ryan, 2003). Building on and extending these findings, the present research examines

whether a practice that is aimed at promoting mindfulness –namely, meditation - may enhance

the congruence between implicit and explicit self-esteem.

Meditation refers to a set of practices that engage a specific attentional set in order to

regulate body and mind (Cahn & Polich, 2006). Meditation is rooted in several Eastern

religious traditions such as Buddhism, Taoism, and Hinduism, and has increasingly become a

popular secular practice aimed at improving psychological and physical well-being. It is also

often used to cultivate mindfulness skills (Kabat-Zinn, 1994). Common meditative practices

include observing one’s thoughts or feelings in an objective manner and focusing on specific

bodily sensations such as breathing. Though the precise psychological mechanisms

underlying meditation remain to be explicated, there exists an extensive body of research on

the psychological and neurobiological effects of meditation (Cahn & Polich, 2006).

Moreover, meditative practices are increasingly used as a clinical intervention (Barbor, 2001).

There are various grounds to suspect that meditation might enhance the congruence of

implicit and explicit self-esteem. First, as mentioned above, meditation may promote

mindfulness, which is associated with greater congruence between implicit and explicit self-

Meditation and Self-Esteem 7

related affect (Brown & Ryan, 2003). Second, many forms of meditation have been explicitly

designed with the goal of promoting inner harmony, and empirical studies have confirmed

that meditation can indeed foster beneficial psychological and physiological states (Davidson

et al., 2003). To the extent that discrepancies between implicit and explicit self-esteem create

inner turmoil (Briñol et al., 2006; Jordan et al., 2003; Zeigler-Hill & Terry, 2007), practices

designed to harmonize mental life may enhance the correspondence between implicit and

explicit self-esteem. Third, meditation has been found to increase EEG coherence, a

neurological index of how well different brain areas are synchronized (e.g., Aftanas &

Golocheikine, 2001). By fostering integration by higher order cognitive functions (Singer,

1999), neurological synchronization might help to resolve discrepancies between implicit and

explicit aspects of the self.

As an initial test of the idea that meditation may increase the congruence between

implicit and explicit self-esteem, we measured both types of self-esteem among a group of

individuals (N = 20) with varying experience at meditation (i.e., from 1 month to 20 years).

As expected, the association between implicit and explicit self-esteem became more positive

with increased meditation experience, even when statistically controlling for age. Encouraged

by these findings, we designed the present experiments to address the causal impact of

meditation on the congruence between implicit and explicit self-esteem. In Study 1, a group

of university students engaged in a meditation exercise before or after completing implicit and

explicit measures of self-esteem. We predicted that participants would display greater

congruence between implicit and explicit self-esteem if they had meditated before rather than

after completing the self-esteem measures. Study 2 sought to replicate these effects using a

different control condition and explored some underlying mechanisms whereby meditation

may influence the self-evaluation process.

Study 1

Method

Meditation and Self-Esteem 8

Participants and Design

One hundred and thirty introductory psychology students (76 women and 54 men;

mean age = 19) at the Ohio State University were randomly assigned to the experimental

conditions.

Procedure

Participants completed the study on individual computers in groups of 2 to 5. They

were told that the study involved a meditation exercise and several unrelated tasks dealing

with preferences and self-views. In the meditation condition, participants listened to the

meditation audio and then completed implicit and explicit measures of self-esteem. In the

control condition, participants first completed the two self-esteem measures and then listened

to the meditation audio. Participants always completed the implicit self-esteem measure

before the explicit self-esteem measure, because the reverse order can artificially raise the

congruence between both measures (Bosson et al., 2000). At the end of the experiment,

participants reported their initials, gender, and age. Participants were then probed for

suspicion, debriefed, and dismissed. Overall, participants reported enjoying the meditation

exercise and were not suspicious of the cover story or any of the measures.

Materials

Name-Letter Task. The name-letter task (Nuttin, 1985; Kitayama & Karasawa, 1997)

was used as an implicit self-esteem measure. Participants were told that the task dealt with

simple preferences and were asked to rate how much they liked each of the letters in the

Roman alphabet on a scale from 1 (dislike very much) to 7 (like very much). In evaluating the

letters, participants were instructed to rely on their intuitions. Implicit self-esteem scores were

computed by (1) calculating an average preference for each letter based on the ratings of

individuals who did not have these letters as their initials; (2) subtracting this baseline from

participants’ ratings of their initials; (3) averaging the adjusted ratings of the two initials for

each participant. This procedure is commonly used for computing implicit self-esteem scores

Meditation and Self-Esteem 9

on the name-letter task (Kitayama & Karasawa, 1997). Meditation did not impact baseline

evaluations of alphabet letters in in the present research. We therefore computed name-letter

preferences on the basis of baseline letter evaluations that were aggregated for all participants

within each study.

Name-letter preferences are a widely used and valid implicit measure of self-esteem

(for a review, see Koole & Pelham, 2003). People generally lack awareness that they engage

in self-evaluation when rating their name letters (Jones, Pelham, Mirenberg, & Hetts, 2002).

Name-letter preference further shows adequate test-retest reliability, internal consistency, and

predictive validity (Bosson et al., 2000; Koole et al., 2001). For example, similar to explicit

self-esteem scores, higher name-letter scores are associated with the tendency to self-enhance

(Bosson, Brown, Zeigler-Hill, & Swann, 2003). The measure also demonstrates theoretically

predicted effects, such as an increase in name-letter liking following a consistent pairing of

the self with positive stimuli (Baccus, Baldwin, & Packer, 2004; Dijksterhuis, 2004). So far,

name-letter preference is the only form of implicit self-esteem that has been shown to

influence major life decisions (Anseel & Duyck, 2008; Pelham, Mirenberg, & Jones, 2005).

Explicit self-esteem. We used the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (RSES; Rosenberg,

1965) to measure explicit self-esteem. The RSES is one of the most well-validated and

reliable explicit self-esteem measures (Blascovich & Tomaka, 1991; Demo, 1985). It consists

of 10 items assessing people’s global feelings of self-worth. Sample items include “I feel that

I am a person of worth, at least on an equal basis with others” and “All in all, I am inclined to

feel that I am a failure” (reverse scored). The response scale ranges from 1 (strongly disagree)

to 7 (strongly agree). The RSES had good reliability (Cronbach’s αs in Studies 1 and 2 > .80)

and so its items were summed.

Meditation Exercise. During the meditation audio, participants listened to an 11-

minute guided body scan exercise developed and recorded by Overman (1999). Participants

were instructed to sit in a relaxed and wakeful posture with their eyes closed and to focus on

Meditation and Self-Esteem 10

their breathing. Participants were then directed to observe sensations in each area of their

body in a careful and nonjudgmental fashion. The exercise was narrated by a male voice and

was accompanied by relaxing music. Body scan exercises are frequently used to introduce

beginners to the practice of meditation. Due to clear and frequent instructions, body scans are

easier to follow than some of the more advanced meditative practices (e.g., prolonged

focusing of attention without guidance; see Cahn & Polich, 2006).

Results and Discussion

Gender did not qualify any effects of meditation in Studies 1 and 2 and is not

discussed further. Likewise, meditation did not affect mean levels of implicit or explicit self-

esteem in Studies 1 and 2. Our discussion therefore focuses on the relation between implicit

and explicit self-esteem.

To examine whether meditation increased the relation between implicit and explicit

self-esteem, explicit self-esteem scores were regressed on name-letter preferences,

experimental condition (coded as -1 for meditation last and 1 for meditation first), and their

interaction term. In Studies 1 and 2, continuous predictor variables were z-transformed as

recommended by Aiken and West (1991). The analysis revealed only a significant condition

by name-letter preferences interaction, β = .34, t (1, 126) = 1.94, p = .05. The pattern of this

interaction is depicted in Figure 1. Further analyses showed that name-letter preferences were

significantly related to explicit self-esteem in the meditation condition, r (65) = .27, p < .04,

but not in the control condition, r (65) = -.07, ns. Thus, as expected, meditation increased the

congruence between implicit and explicit self-esteem. As far as we know, Study 1 provides

the first demonstration that meditation can have a causal impact on the resolution of

discrepancies between implicit and explicit self-views.

Study 2

In Study 2, we sought to replicate and extend Study 1's findings. As before, we

manipulated whether or not participants meditated and predicted that meditation would

Meditation and Self-Esteem 11

increase the congruence between implicit and explicit self-esteem. This time, however, we

took additional steps to deepen our understanding of the underlying processes whereby

meditation influences the relation between implicit and explicit self-esteem.

First, we assessed participants' explicit self-evaluation latencies as an indirect indicator

of the process whereby people may access their implicit self-evaluations. Negative emotions

tend to mobilize more cognitive resources than positive emotions (Taylor, 1991), which,

among other things, is evidenced by longer response latencies to negative stimuli (Pratto &

John, 1991). Because bringing negative implicit self-evaluations into awareness is likely to

arouse painful feelings (Jordan et al., 2007), individuals who access their low implicit self-

esteem during explicit self-evaluation can be expected to display a slow-down in response

latencies. This slow-down might be moderated by meditation. Specifically, meditation may

facilitate the process of accessing implicit self-evaluations during explicit self-evaluation (see

Kazén et al., 2003's notion of auto-noetic access). If this is the case, then meditation would be

expected to amplify the slow-down in explicit self-evaluations among individuals with low

implicit self-esteem. We refer to the latter as the enhanced access model, which is displayed

in Figure 2a.

Alternatively, it could be that meditation facilitates people's reliance on their feelings

of implicit self-esteem in judgments of explicit self-esteem (see also Jordan et al. 2007). This

line of reasoning assumes that both meditating and non-meditating individuals have access to

their implicit self-esteem, and are thus equally likely to display a slow-down in explicit self-

evaluation when their implicit self-esteem is negative. However, only meditating individuals

may be inclined to use accessible feelings of implicit self-esteem in determining their explicit

self-esteem. We refer to the latter as the enhanced use model, which is displayed in Figure 2b.

Both the enhanced access and enhanced use models involve a combination of moderation and

mediation effects. We therefore tested these models using moderated mediation analysis

(MacKinnon, Fairchild, & Fritz, 2007; Preacher, Rucker, & Hayes, 2007).

Meditation and Self-Esteem 12

Second, we modified the control condition to make sure that the effects of meditation

were not due to differences in task duration, information availability, or cognitive load. All

participants in Study 2 listened to the meditation audio. However, control participants were

additionally asked to count the number of verbs in the spoken narrative on the tape. We

reasoned that counting verbs would be distracting and thus prevent control participants from

engaging in meditation. Therefore, participants in the meditation and control conditions were

engaged in a task for the same duration and were exposed to the same information prior to

completing the dependent measures. Furthermore, because counting verbs is cognitively

demanding, this improved control condition ruled out the possibility that the effects of

meditation were due to cognitive load.

Finally, because prior studies have found that meditation can foster affect regulation

(Brown et al., 2007; Cahn & Polich, 2006), we also assessed participants’ moods in Study 2.

We had no strong theoretical expectations regarding the role of mood in our findings.

Nevertheless, our hunch was that the effects of meditation on the congruence between implicit

and explicit self-esteem were driven by changes in self-consciousness rather than mood.

Method

Participants

Fifty-eight paid volunteers (38 women and 20 men; mean age = 21) at the VU

University Amsterdam were randomly assigned to the experimental conditions.

Design and Procedure

Design, procedure, and materials were identical to Study 1, with a few exceptions.

First, all materials were translated into Dutch, the RSES was scored on 9-point scales, and the

audiotape was spoken by a female voice. Second, participants in the control condition were

asked to count the number of verbs in the spoken narrative of the meditation tape. Third,

during the name-letter preference task, participants rated the beauty of alphabet letters using a

5-point scale (1= not at all beautiful, 5 = very beautiful). Fourth, before and after the

Meditation and Self-Esteem 13

meditation manipulation, we administered a Dutch translation of the abbreviated Profile of

Mood Scales (POMS; Shacham, 1985), which measures depression (8 items), anger (7 items),

fatigue (6 items), vigor (5 items), and tension (6 items). Reliabilities of the POMS subscales

were satisfactory at each measurement, Cronbach’s αs > .70. Finally, the computer

unobtrusively assessed the latencies of participants’ evaluations during the assessment of

explicit self-esteem.

Results and Discussion

Mood. A series of 2 (time: before or after meditation manipulation; within

participants) x 2 (condition: meditation or counting verbs; between participants) ANOVAs on

the POMS yielded no effects of meditation, all Fs < 1. Notably, prior investigations that

found effects of meditation on mood generally provided participants with more practice at

meditation (see Cahn & Polich, 2006). It could be that the lack of meditation experience of

the present sample, which consisted of relatively inexperienced meditators, accounted for the

absence of mood effects.

Congruence of Implicit and Explicit Self-Esteem. To examine whether meditation

increased congruence between implicit and explicit self-esteem, explicit self-esteem scores

were regressed on name-letter preferences, meditation, and their interaction term.

Experimental condition was coded as -1 (counting verbs) and 1 (meditation). The analysis

revealed a marginal effect of name-letter preferences, β = .24, t(1,54) = 1.84, p = .071, and a

significant main effect of meditation, β = -.29, t(1,54) = -2.15, p < .04. However, these effects

were fully qualified by the predicted meditation by name-letter preferences interaction, β =

.35, t(1,54) = 2.35, p < .03. The specific pattern of this interaction is depicted in Figure 3.

Follow-up analyses showed that name-letter preferences were significantly related to explicit

self-esteem in the meditation condition, r (24) =.49, p < .02, but not in the control condition, r

(34) = -.07, ns. Thus, in line with our findings in Studies 1 and 2, meditation increased the

congruence between implicit and explicit self-esteem.

Meditation and Self-Esteem 14

Self-Evaluation Latencies. Following established conventions in the analysis of

response latency data, we first eliminated outliers from the dataset by converting values of

4,500 ms and higher to 4,500 ms. Next, we computed average latencies of participants explicit

self-evaluations in the RSES (Cronbach's α = .88). In a regression analysis, we estimated the

effects of implicit self-esteem, meditation, and their interaction on self-evaluation latencies.

The results revealed only a main effect of implicit self-esteem, such that explicit self-

evaluations were slower as implicit self-esteem became more negative, β = -.320, t(54) =

2.39, p < .03. The interaction between implicit self-esteem and meditation was non-

significant, t < 1. The lack of this interaction effect disconfirms the enhanced access model.

Instead, it appears that participants in both meditation and control conditions accessed their

implicit self-esteem. Presumably accessing low feelings of self-worth induced a mobilization

of attentional resources (Taylor, 1991), and a resulting slow-down in explicit self-evaluation.

Moderated Mediation Analysis. We proceeded to test a conditional mediation model

(MacKinnon, Fairchild, Fritz, 2007; Muller, Judd, Yzerbyt, 2005; Preacher, Rucker, & Hayes,

2007), to evaluate the role of self-evaluation latencies as a possible mediator of the observed

congruence between implicit and explicit self-esteem. Specifically, we regressed explicit self-

esteem on name-letter preferences, meditation condition, response time, and their interactions.

The three-way interaction was non-significant and hence was dropped from the model, as

were the other non-significant paths (cf. Aiken & West, 1991). Results indicated a significant

main effect of self-evaluation latencies, β = -.315, t(51) = -2.20, p < .04, and of meditation, β

= .303, t(51) = 2.16, p < .04. Importantly, the interaction between meditation and self-

evaluation latencies was significant, β = .28, t(51) = 2.05 p =.045, whereas the interaction

between implicit self-esteem and meditation was no longer significant, t < 1. Thus, the

interaction between name-letter preferences and meditation on explicit self-esteem was

mediated by the interaction between self-evaluation latencies and the meditation condition.

The obtained conditional mediation model is summarized in Figure 4.

Meditation and Self-Esteem 15

One implication of the conditional mediation results is that the mediating effect of

response time should vary by experimental condition. To explore this implication, we

computed the conditional indirect effects of name-letter preferences on explicit self-esteem

through self-evaluation latencies (i.e. a simple mediation model) for the two groups (cf.

Preacher, Rucker, & Hayes, 2007). To obtain the simple mediation models, we multiplied the

conditional simple slopes of name-letter preferences predicting response time and response

time predicting explicit self-esteem, conditioned to the two experimental groups. When

estimated for the control group, the indirect effect of name-letter preferences on explicit self-

esteem was not significant, IE = -.0019, z =-.032, p = .974, whereas when estimated for the

meditation group, the indirect effect was significant, IE = .210, z = .1.97, p =.048. Thus, the

mediational effect of self-evaluation latencies was present in the meditation condition but not

in the control condition. This pattern of mediation effects is in line with the enhanced use

model, which states that meditation enhances people's inclination to rely on their implicit self-

esteem in constructing their explicit judgments of self-esteem.

General Discussion

People’s explicit self-evaluations frequently conflict with their implicit self-

evaluations (Bosson et al., 2000; Koole et al., 2001). In the present research, we examined

whether meditation might help to resolve such implicit conflicts within the self. Among

American and Dutch university students, experimentally induced meditation increased the

association between implicit and explicit self-esteem (Studies 1 and 2). Meditation had no

consistent effects on average levels of implicit self-esteem (Studies 1-2), explicit self-esteem

(Studies 1-2), or mood (Study 2). Taken together, these findings suggest that the notion that

meditation promotes inner harmony has more than just a metaphorical meaning. In a real,

objectively verifiable sense, meditation may allow people to bring their explicitly endorsed

self-views in line with their more intuitively based implicit associations about the self.

Meditation and Self-Esteem 16

Past research has shown that explicit self-esteem may become more congruent with

implicit self-esteem when people evaluate themselves hastily or under cognitive load (Koole

et al., 2001). Could the influence of meditation on implicit and explicit self-esteem be due to

either of these variables? Various considerations suggest otherwise. First, in Study 2, a control

condition that was cognitively demanding (i.e., counting verbs) did not promote congruence

between implicit and explicit self-esteem. Second, the meditation instructions encouraged

participants to relax and to observe their inner sensations in a careful and non-judgmental

fashion. Third, examining participants’ explicit self-evaluation latencies in Study 2 yielded no

evidence that meditation leads to a global speed-up of explicit self-evaluation. It thus seems

unlikely that meditation increases implicit-explicit self-esteem congruence by preventing

individuals altogether from engaging in self-reflective thought.

The assessment of participants' latencies of explicitly evaluating their self-esteem in

Study 2 shed additional light on the process whereby meditation may enhance the congruence

between implicit and explicit self-esteem. Specifically, the results showed that low implicit

self-esteem was associated with slower explicit self-evaluation latencies. We suggest that this

slow-down in explicit self-evaluation is due to a mobilization of attentional resources (Taylor,

1991) that ensues when individuals are cognitively accessing negative feelings about

themselves (i.e., feelings of low implicit self-esteem). Notably, the slow-down in self-

evaluation latencies among individuals with low implicit self-esteem was not qualified by

meditation. Thus, if our interpretation of participants' self-evaluation latencies is correct, it

follows that meditation did little to improve participants' cognitive access to their feelings of

implicit self-esteem. Instead, meditation increased the extent to which participants used

accessible feelings of implicit self-esteem in gauging their explicit sense of self-esteem. This

enhanced use model was supported in a moderated meditation analysis (see Figure 4).

It appears then, that engaging in meditation leads people to rely more on accessible

feelings of implicit self-esteem in figuring out how much they explicitly esteem the self. In

Meditation and Self-Esteem 17

this respect, the effects of meditation seem to parallel the effects of explicit instructions to

rely on one's intuition (Jordan et al., 2007). Nevertheless, enhanced access to implicit self-

esteem may still play a role in other forms of meditation than the one that was investigated in

the present research. Specifically, the present form of meditation did not change participants'

moods in Study 2, whereas other forms of meditation have been found to improve people's

moods (Brown et al., 2001; Cahn & Polich, 2006). According to some theorists, negative

mood can impair cognitive access to intuitive cognitive representations (Baumann et al.,

2005). It is thus conceivable that meditation facilitates people's cognitive access to implicit

self-esteem only to the extent that meditation serves to improve people's moods.

The present research is preliminary and hence subject to limitations. First, we relied

exclusively on name-letter preferences to measure implicit self-esteem. Although the name

letter measure has been extensively validated (Koole & Pelham, 2003), it remains important

to establish whether the effects of meditation can be replicated with alternative measures of

implicit self-esteem, such as the implicit association test (Greenwald & Farnham, 2000) or the

evaluative priming task (Hetts et al., 1999; Koole, 2004). Second, more could be done to link

the present findings to the neurological effects of meditation. As noted earlier, there is

suggestive evidence that meditation may synchronize activity in various areas of the brain

(Aftanas & Golocheikine, 2001). Neurological synchronization is believed to play a crucial

role in the integration of distributed neural processes into higher order cognitive and affective

functions (Singer, 1999). Thus, future work may examine whether the congruence-enhancing

effects of meditation may be explained by neurological synchronization.

More generally, the present research bridges the independent traditions of implicit

social cognition and meditation research. To our knowledge, the present research is the first to

explicitly connect these two areas. Adding to the study of implicit social cognition, the

present research was found that some forms of self-reflective thought may enhance, rather

than reduce, the congruence between implicit and explicit measures. Adding to the meditation

Meditation and Self-Esteem 18

literature, the present research demonstrates that some of the effects of meditation only

become apparent if one simultaneously considers implicit and explicit measures of the self.

To broaden the scope of the present work, future research may examine the effects of

meditation across a greater variety of meditative practices, such as Zen or transcendental

meditation (see Cahn & Polich, 2006), and different psychological constructs, such as implicit

and explicit motives, attitudes, and affective states (see Baumann et al., 2005; Gawronski &

Bodenhausen, 2006; Quirin, Kazén, Rohrmann, & Kuhl, 2009).

By promoting congruence in implicit and explicit self-esteem, meditation may serve

important self-regulatory functions. Conflicts between implicit and explicit self-esteem are

associated with a number of important psychological problems, such as narcissism (Jordan et

al., 2003), self-doubt (Briñol et al., 2006), and maladaptive perfectionism (Zeigler-Hill &

Terry, 2007). Future work may investigate whether meditation can alleviate the problems that

are associated with discrepancies between implicit and explicit self-esteem. On the basis of

the present research, meditation appears to be an effective way of resolving potentially

disturbing conflicts within the self.

Meditation and Self-Esteem 19

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