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. 2022 Nov 6;12(11):1607-1620.
doi: 10.3390/ejihpe12110113.

Reducing Choice-Blindness? An Experimental Study Comparing Experienced Meditators to Non-Meditators

Léa Lachaud  1   2 , Baptiste Jacquet  1   3 , Jean Baratgin  1   3
Affiliations

Reducing Choice-Blindness? An Experimental Study Comparing Experienced Meditators to Non-Meditators

Léa Lachaud et al. Eur J Investig Health Psychol Educ. .

Abstract

The mindfulness trait is an intrinsic characteristic of one's disposition that facilitates awareness of the present moment. Meditation has proven to enhance situational awareness. In this study, we compared the performance of participants that were split into two groups depending on their experience in mindfulness meditation (a control group naive to mindfulness meditation and a group of experienced mindfulness meditators). Choice-blindness happens when people fail to notice mismatches between their intentions and the consequences of decisions. Our task consisted of decisions where participants chose one preferred female facial image from a pair of images for a total of 15 decisions. By reversing the decisions, unbeknownst to the participants, three discrepancies were introduced in an online experimental design. Our results indicate that the likelihood of detecting one or more manipulations was higher in the mindful group compared to the control group. The higher FMI scores of the mindful group did not contribute to this observation; only the practice of mindfulness meditation itself did. Thus, this could be explained by better introspective access and control of reasoning processes acquired during practice and not by the latent characteristics that are attributed to the mindfulness trait.

Keywords: choice-blindness; decision-making; experienced meditators; meditation effects; mindfulness.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationship that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest. The funders had no role in the design of the study; in the collection, analyses, or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript; or in the decision to publish the results.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
For the M condition (manipulated trials), (A) the participant is shown two pictures and is asked to choose the one they find more attractive. (B) The participant selects the picture they prefer. (C) The two pictures are then hidden. (D) The picture supposedly chosen by the participant is displayed, but it is a deception, as the picture shown is in fact the opposite of their choice. Pictures used in our task come from the 10 k US Adult Faces Database. Reprinted with permission from Wilma Bainbridge. Copyright © 2020 Wilma Bainbridge [56].
Figure 2
Figure 2
Illustration of the experimental protocol.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Number of Manipulations Detected by Each Participant Depending on the Condition (non-meditators vs. meditators). Each participant is represented by a symbol aligned with the number of manipulations detected, with some noise added for readability. Square symbols represent participants who did not report any manipulation of their choices (modality used as a reference to estimate the odds ratio of the multinomial models). Red arrows represent significant odds ratios at * p<0.05. R code to reproduce the figure: https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/37GPY, accessed on 2 November 2022.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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