Individual differences in meditation interventions: A meta-analytic study

Abstract

Objectives: Meditation interventions typically show small to moderate effects on health and well-being, but we know little about how these effects vary across individuals. This meta-analytic study investigates the relationship between baseline participant characteristics and the outcomes of meditation.

Methods: A systematic search yielded 51 eligible studies with 7782 participants. A combination of subgroup analyses and meta-regression based on the random-effects model were used.

Results: We found that a higher baseline level of psychopathology or depression was associated with deterioration in mental health after a meditation intervention. On the other hand, participants with higher scores on interpersonal variables, motivation, medical conditions, and mindfulness showed higher levels of positive meditation outcomes. Higher well-being and stress were simultaneously associated with moderate increases in negative and positive meditation outcomes. Participant demographics, psychological traits, self-concept, and length of meditation practice did not significantly influence the response to meditation.

Conclusions: Overall, we found that meditation interventions affect participants differently, and identified some of the individual characteristics that should be considered when using meditation interventions.

Keywords: individual differences; meditation; meta-analysis; mindfulness; participant characteristics.

Figure 1

PRISMA flowchart.

Figure 2

Schema for conducting data extraction and analysis. First, the relevant data were extracted from the 51 eligible studies and the quality of each study was rated. Second, we categorized all independent variables (i.e., participant characteristics) and dependent variables (i.e., outcome measure of meditation intervention), which resulted in thirteen categories of independent variables and two categories of dependent variables. Third, all extracted effect sizes were converted into Pearson’s r. Fourth, multiple effect sizes within one study were averaged when they were related to the same construct or the same category, when the effect sizes represented two or more follow‐ups, or when studies included three or more groups. Fifth, effect sizes were normalized through Fisher’s z transformation and a random‐effects model was applied in all analyses. Subgroup analyses were used to show the effect for each category of participant characteristics on two types of outcomes (i.e., positive and negative), and to test categorical moderators: sample type, research design, and meditation type. Finally, a meta‐regression was conducted to test for continuous moderators: sample size, study quality, and length of meditation.

Figure 3

The funnel plot shows the overall mean effect size of eligible studies converted to Fisher’s z on the X‐axis and standard errors on the Y‐axis, along with the expected distribution of studies in the absence of bias.