Mindfulness
Do women and men get different benefits from meditation training?
Open access · cc by · source: Europe PMC
After a semester of meditation classes, women's negative mood dropped while men's did not, even though both improved in mindfulness and self-compassion.
Study at a glance
- Design
- Other — Uncontrolled pre-post study of students in 12-week meditation courses, comparing change in women versus men with time x gender ANOVAs.
- N
- N=77 · 77 analysed (36 women, the rest men) of 114 who started; 37 excluded for low participation, incomplete questionnaires or loss to follow-up.
- Population
- Brown University undergraduates who chose courses with meditation labs, 2008-2011
- Outcome
- Change in positive and negative affect (PANAS), mindfulness facets (FFMQ) and self-compassion (SCS)
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Key findings
The group as a whole showed no change in positive or negative mood, but there was a time by gender interaction: women's negative affect fell significantly while men's rose slightly and non-significantly. Both genders improved in overall mindfulness and self-compassion, with women improving more on four of five mindfulness facets. In women, lower negative mood went with gains in non-reactivity, awareness and reduced self-judgment; in men, it correlated only with the describing facet. Men actually reported slightly more practice time, so dose did not explain the gap.
Methodology
Undergraduates in 12-week courses that included three one-hour meditation labs per week, focused mainly on attention to the breath and body, filled in mood, mindfulness and self-compassion questionnaires at the start and end of the semester. The researchers analysed 77 students who completed both surveys and attended at least half the labs, and tested whether change over time differed by gender. They also correlated changes in negative mood with changes in mindfulness and self-compassion separately for women and men.
Limitations
There was no control group, so improvements cannot be attributed to meditation rather than the passage of the semester, the course content or expectation effects. Students chose these courses themselves, attended a single private university, and 32% of starters were dropped, which could bias who remained. All measures were self-report, men may under-report distress, gender was recorded only as a binary, and the proposed rumination-versus-distraction explanation was not directly measured.
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