Understanding the Affective and Mental Health Outcomes of Meditation Interventions: The Role of Individual Differences in Self-compassion

Abstract Objectives Extensive research documents that mindfulness meditation (MM) and loving-kindness meditation (LKM) have benefits for emotional, social, and mental health outcomes. Despite this work documenting the benefits of meditation practice, research also demonstrates that meditation does not always have equivalent effects for all people. So, who is most likely to benefit from meditation practice? In this study, we proposed that individual differences in baseline levels of self-compassion may moderate the association between meditation training and affective, social, and mental health outcomes across time. Method To test this proposition, we used data from a randomized intervention study (collected from 2013 to 2015) where 217 adults received 6 weeks of training in either MM or LKM, and reported their emotions, feelings of social connectedness, and depressive symptoms. Results Consistent with our pre-registered hypotheses, results from multilevel analyses demonstrated that participants who were lower in self-compassion prior to the intervention tended to experience greater affective and mental health benefits across the course of the intervention period. Moderated mediation analyses demonstrated that increases in self-compassion from pre- to post-intervention mediated the relationship between training in meditation and lower depression across time, but only for those with lower baseline self-compassion levels. Conclusions These findings spotlight the role of individual differences in self-compassion in contributing to people’s response to meditation interventions, suggesting that people low in self-compassion may stand to benefit the most from meditation training. Pre-registration This study was pre-registered and the pre-registration can be viewed on https://aspredicted.org/48ik9.pdf.