

Mindfulness Mitigates Biases You May Not Know You Have - SwellJoe
https://hbr.org/2014/12/mindfulness-mitigates-biases-you-may-not-know-you-have

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faitswulff
> The test group listened to a recording that made them aware of their heart
> rate and breathing. It told them to accept these sensations and thoughts
> “without restriction, resistance, or judgment.”

From this excerpt, it seems like the study results may be contaminated by
framing
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Framing_%28social_sciences%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Framing_%28social_sciences%29))
rather than meditation alone. A better study would use an exercise without
such terminology.

If there is an effect from meditation, I wonder how permanent the effect is,
or if your implicit associations ebb and flow with how mindful you are at any
given moment.

~~~
SwellJoe
So, how would you control for that? Most folks don't know how to do
mindfulness meditation without a bit of guidance, so there's going to need to
be some coaching.

Would simply using the same words to another group without the meditation
stage of the process be an appropriate control? Or, is it necessary to only
use people who already know what mindfulness meditation is? (And if that, how
would you control for the other differences longterm mindfulness meditation
might have on the study?)

Humans are complicated. I've been reading a lot of this kind of research
lately, and I don't think I'm even beginning to grasp how to do rigorous
science with the human psyche.

~~~
faitswulff
You're right, the human psyche is a difficult to test rigorously. However,
mindfulness of the breath is simple can be done without priming the subjects
to be "without judgment:" [https://thebuddhistcentre.com/text/mindfulness-
breathing](https://thebuddhistcentre.com/text/mindfulness-breathing)

Controlling for this particular instance of framing seems doable.

