Meditation doesn't Make You Calmer

So says an article at the Daily Mail:

If every eight-year-old in the world is taught meditation, the world will be without violence within one generation,’ the Dalai Lama claims.

But it appears the respected monk could be wrong.

For scientists have revealed the trendy Buddhist practice does not make you more compassionate, less aggressive or prejudiced.

Meditation, incorporating a range of spiritual and religious beliefs, has been touted for decades as being able to make the world a better place.

However, researchers from the UK, New Zealand and The Netherlands, have found meditation doesn’t change how adults behave towards others….

However, a further analysis revealed that meditation didn’t reduce aggression or prejudice or improving how socially-connected someone was.

The most unexpected result of this study, though, was that the more positive results found for compassion had important methodological flaws.

Compassion levels in some studies only increased if the meditation teacher was also an author of the published report.

Overall, the results suggested improvements reported by psychologists in previous studies may be the result of methodological weaknesses and biases.

Dr Farias added: ‘Despite the high hopes of practitioners and past studies, our research found that methodological shortcomings greatly influenced the results we found.

‘Most of the initial positive results disappeared when the meditation groups were compared to other groups that engaged in tasks unrelated to meditation.