2014 cristiano crescentini - effects of an 8-week meditation program on the implicit and

Consciousness and Cognition 30 (2014) 266–280

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Consciousness and Cognition

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Effects of an 8-week meditation program on the implicit andexplicit attitudes toward religious/spiritual self-representations

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2014.09.0131053-8100/� 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

⇑ Corresponding author at: Department of Human Sciences, University of Udine, Via Margreth 3, 33100 Udine, Italy. Fax: +39 0432 558342.E-mail address: [email protected] (C. Crescentini).

Cristiano Crescentini a,b,⇑, Cosimo Urgesi a, Fabio Campanella c, Roberto Eleopra d,Franco Fabbro a,e

a Department of Human Sciences, University of Udine, Udine, Italyb Department of Psychology, University of Rome ‘‘La Sapienza’’, Rome, Italyc Section of Neurosurgery, University-Hospital ‘‘Santa Maria della Misericordia’’, Udine, Italyd Section of Neurology, University-Hospital ‘‘Santa Maria della Misericordia’’, Udine, Italye Perceptual Robotics (PERCRO) Laboratory, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Pisa, Italy

a r t i c l e i n f o

Article history:Received 25 July 2013Available online 19 October 2014

Keywords:Mindfulness meditationReligiousness–SpiritualityImplicit association test

a b s t r a c t

Explicit self-representations often conflict with implicit and intuitive self-representations,with such discrepancies being seen as a source of psychological tension. Most of previousresearch on the psychological effects of mindfulness-meditation has assessed people’s self-attitudes at an explicit level, leaving unknown whether mindfulness-meditation promoteschanges on implicit self-representations. Here, we assessed the changes in implicit andexplicit self-related religious/spiritual (RS) representations in healthy participants follow-ing an 8-week mindfulness-oriented meditation (MOM) program. Before and after medita-tion, participants were administered implicit (implicit association test) and explicit (self-reported questionnaires) RS measures. Relative to control condition, MOM led to increasesof implicit RS in individuals whit low pre-existing implicit RS and to more widespreadincreases in explicit RS. On the assumption that MOM practice may enhance the clarityof one’s transcendental thoughts and feelings, we argued that MOM allows people to trans-form their intuitive feelings of implicit RS as well as their explicit RS attitudes.

� 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction

People have two sources of self-evaluative tendencies. The first roots in high order propositional processes of deliberativereasoning in which well-articulated beliefs, motivations, and goals shape individuals’ explicit attitudes. The second sourcerelies instead on largely automatic and associative processes in which intuitive, ‘‘gut’’ evaluations and feelings, which peoplemay or may not be aware of, shape individuals’ implicit attitudes (Gawronski & Bodenhausen, 2006; Jordan, Whitfield, &Zeigler-Hill, 2007). For example, when we have to make decisions in our daily life, for instance choosing whether to acceptor not a new job, we are frequently faced with situations in which we experience a psychological conflict between rational,reflective evaluations and other more intuitive feelings. Of importance, these conflicts do not only occur during appreciationof the external situations, but also affect more personal spheres, concerning self-representations and self-attitudes (Emmons& King, 1988; Gawronski & Bodenhausen, 2006; Greenwald & Banaji, 1995). Indeed, the multicomponent representation of

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C. Crescentini et al. / Consciousness and Cognition 30 (2014) 266–280 267

the self includes both explicit aspects that are available to our conscious thinking and, eventually, to verbal description, andmore implicit aspects that are barely available to us (Morin, 2006).

Methodologically, while explicit attitudes are measured directly with self-report questionnaires and scales, implicit atti-tudes are inferred indirectly from people’s performance on reaction times measures such as the Implicit Association Test(IAT) (Greenwald & Farnham, 2000; Greenwald, McGhee, & Schwanz, 1998), the Affect Misattribution Procedure (Payne,Cheng, Govorun, & Stewart, 2005), the sequential priming task (Fazio, Jackson, Dunton, & Williams, 1995), or the name–lettertask (Nuttin, 1985), which are more difficult to control or to fake and do not require self-reflection or the intent to self-eval-uate on the part of the respondent.

A large body of research has shown that explicit and implicit measures of self-attitudes are frequently unrelated orweakly correlated to each other, with implicit measures explaining some variability in attitudes that self-report, explicitmeasures do not, for instance in fields such as religious/spiritual behavior and feelings in which self-report measures are par-ticularly susceptible to desirable responding and other confounding factors (Bosson, Swann, & Pennebaker, 2000; Jordanet al., 2007; Koole, Dijksterhuis, & van Knippenberg, 2001; Koole, Govorun, Cheng, & Gallucci, 2009; Krizan & Suls, 2008;LaBouff, Rowatt, Johnson, Thedford, & Tsang, 2010; Sedikides & Gebauer, 2010).

More importantly, incongruities between explicit and implicit self-representations have been associated to differentforms of psychological suffering (Bosson, Brown, Zeigler-Hill, & Swann, 2003; Briñol, Petty, & Wheeler, 2006; Gawronski& Bodenhausen, 2006; Koole et al., 2009; Schröder-Abé, Rudolph, & Schütz, 2007; Schröder-Abé, Rudolph, Wiesner, &Schütz, 2007; Zeigler-Hill & Terry, 2007), and this justifies the large effort that has been made in order to understand whichcould be the factors able to moderate the concordance between explicit and implicit attitudes, hence contributing to a morecoherent self-image. For instance, it has been shown that when people rely more on intuitive feelings towards the self andless on conscious self-reflection, the congruence between explicit and implicit self-attitudes is encouraged. In differentexperiments, this was obtained by engaging people in self-evaluation under time-pressure or under heightened cognitiveload (Koole et al., 2001), or yet by asking participants to complete implicit measures using ‘‘gut feelings’’ vs. reflectivethought (Jordan et al., 2007; Pelham et al., 2005). Moreover, the correspondence between implicit and explicit self-measuresis the higher the more the implicit attitudes are perceived as valid and accepted (Gawronski & Bodenhausen, 2006; Jordanet al., 2007).

A potentially useful construct for the study of individuals’ self-attitudes is mindfulness. Mindfulness is an attribute ofconsciousness that consists of being aware of and attentive to what is occurring in the present moment (Brown & Ryan,2003; Kabat-Zinn, 1994). Mindfulness skills, which are developed effectively through the practice of meditation (Baer,2003; Kabat-Zinn, 1994), have been shown to promote a variety of well-being outcomes, for instance in anxiety, depression,immune function, chronic pain, stress and substance-abuse problems (Baer, 2003; Brown & Ryan, 2003; Chiesa & Serretti,2010). An important quality of mindful awareness is the promotion of non-judgmental awareness of the self in which acti-vated self-feelings, thoughts, and sensations are not attempted to be changed by the perceiver but are instead observed andaccepted. Mindfulness awareness, and its cultivation through meditation, would operate through erosion of habitual pat-terns of responding and of the use of evaluative language and thinking; this would promote self-insights and a greater accep-tance of one’s internal states including intuitive feelings, potentially leading to transformation of implicit self-attitudes andperhaps to better tuning of one’s implicit and explicit self-representations (Brown & Ryan, 2003; Chambers, Lo, & Allen,2008; Koole et al., 2009; Vago & Silbersweig, 2012).

Despite it being likely that implicit cognition and intuition are important aspects of mindfulness, it should be noted thatmost of the previous studies on the impact of mindfulness meditation on psychological health have only considered explicitself-report measures. While this may have exaggerated the ease with which people were seen to change their attitudes inthese previous studies (Chambers et al., 2008; Wilson, Lindsey, & Schooler, 2000), the sole investigation of explicit cognitionhas also precluded the possibility of taking into account the effects of mindfulness on implicit cognition, both in isolation andtogether with explicit cognition. In fact, only a few studies exist on dispositional or state mindfulness (independently fromcontinued meditation practice) and implicit and explicit measures of the self (Brown & Ryan, 2003; Hutcherson, Seppala, &Gross, 2008; Koole et al., 2009; Levesque & Brown, 2007; Sauer et al., 2011; Strick, van Noorden, Ritskes, de Ruiter, &Dijksterhuis, 2012); some of these studies also took explicitly into account whether mindfulness promotes congruencybetween explicit and implicit self-measures (Brown & Ryan, 2003; Koole et al., 2009). Although very valuable, these previousstudies have, however, left unaddressed the issue of whether regular meditation practice during a mindfulness training per-iod of a few months can have a direct impact on implicit as well as explicit measures of the self.

The present study was aimed at examining this issue by trying to directly put into relation the effects of an 8-week mind-fulness-oriented meditation training (MOM) on implicit and explicit religious/spiritual self-representations. Explicit andimplicit attitudes toward religiousness/spirituality (RS) were investigated in two groups of healthy, meditation naïve, par-ticipants; the first group was involved in a MOM training, while the other group was not involved in any meditation practiceand formed the control group. Explicit and implicit RS were investigated in the present study for a variety of reasons. First,recent empirical evidence has suggested a close link between mindfulness and spirituality, in that participation in a mind-fulness meditation training, although occurring within a secular context, may be associated with increases in explicit mea-sures of spirituality and, more generally, with increased daily spiritual experiences (Carmody, Reed, Kristeller, & Merriam,2008; Falb & Pargament, 2012; Geary & Rosenthal, 2011; Greeson et al., 2011; Wachholtz & Pargament, 2008). Second, inthe light of evidence suggesting that spirituality may be a possible mechanism by which mindfulness training leads to ben-eficial outcomes such as improvements in medical and psychological symptoms (Carmody et al., 2008; Greeson et al., 2011),

268 C. Crescentini et al. / Consciousness and Cognition 30 (2014) 266–280

it appears important to investigate the potential influence of mindfulness meditation on RS at both levels of implicit andexplicit representations. The importance of such an investigation, and of its potential implication for psychological health,is suggested by the fact that, except few exceptions (e.g., Crescentini, Aglioti, Fabbro, & Urgesi, 2014; LaBouff et al., 2010),the scientific study of RS, including the beneficial effects of mindfulness meditation, has so far neglected the contributionof implicit measures that, as briefly mentioned, can go beyond that carried by explicit measures.

In the present study, the Implicit Association Test (IAT) (Greenwald et al., 1998) was used to assess automatic associationsbetween the self and RS dimensions (RS-IAT). Generally speaking, the IAT is one of the most frequently used implicit tests tomeasure the strength of automatic concept-attribute associations, that are thought to underlie some aspects of personality(Greenwald & Farnham, 2000; Schnabel, Asendorpf, & Greenwald, 2008), including RS (LaBouff et al., 2010; see alsoCrescentini et al., 2014); its validity and psychometric properties have been demonstrated in a number of studies (e.g.,Cunningham, Preacher, & Banaji, 2001; Greenwald, Nosek, & Banaji, 2003). Thus, a complimentary aim of the present studywas to further validate initial applications of automatic self-concept research methods (i.e., RS-IAT) to the scientific study ofRS (LaBouff et al., 2010). On this view, we also aimed to extend to meditation research more recent and refined (in terms ofvariety and psycholinguistic features of the stimuli employed) applications of RS-IAT showing fast plasticity of RS self-rep-resentations after magnetic brain stimulation (Crescentini et al., 2014).

Following the typical IAT procedure, the RS-IAT was assessed in the current study by having participants categorize stim-uli from four categories of words – two target categories (referring to the concept of self and other) and two attribute cat-egories (RS and non-RS words) – by pressing one of two response keys. In separate blocks, which are referred to as congruentor incongruent on the basis of the expected direction of self-attribute associations (e.g., RS and self; see methods), eachresponse key is paired with one or the other target category and one or the other attribute category. Generally, the mainassumption of the IAT is that strongly associated concept-attribute pairs are easier to classify when they are associated tothe same response key than are weakly associated pairs. This difference is generally used to infer the individuals’ associa-tions between the target category and specific evaluative attributes or traits investigated in an IAT.

Furthermore, to assess how specific the potential effects of MOM on implicit measures of RS self-representations were, weemployed another IAT which again called into question self/other-concepts but not RS dimensions. We thus developed a self-esteem-IAT (SE-IAT) where self vs. other target words were associated to good vs. bad attribute categories (i.e., positive vs.negative valence words, respectively), again in congruent vs. incongruent conditions (Crescentini et al., 2014; Greenwald &Farnham, 2000). Finally, explicit, self-report measures of RS, namely the Self Transcendence (ST) scale of the Temperamentand Character Inventory (TCI) (Cloninger, Przybeck, Svrakic, & Wetzel, 1994) and the index of core spiritual experiencesquestionnaire (INSPIRIT) (Kass, Friedman, Lesserman, Zuttermeister, & Benson, 1991), as well as measures of dispositionalmindfulness (Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ) (Baer, Smith, Hopkins, Krietemeyer, & Toney, 2006), were alsocollected.

Given the proposed intuitive nature of mindful awareness and the positive association between meditation and spiritualexperiences, we hypothesized that continued practice during an 8-week long MOM training could directly impact individ-uals’ implicit, as well as explicit, RS self-representations. We thus expected that the RS-IAT could be sensitive to manipula-tions of spirituality via meditation practice.

2. Materials and methods

2.1. Participants

Fifteen Italian participants (3 males) took part in the MOM training (mean age = 44.53, SD = 9.43; years of education:16.53, SD = 1.02). The experimental tasks and questionnaires described below were administered to all participants in a firstsession occurring on average 2.07 days before the MOM training starting date; the actual session time ranged from 8 daysbefore to 7 days after the MOM training starting date since two subjects were tested just before the second MOM meeting(analogous results to those presented in the following sections were obtained when we repeated all analyses excluding thesetwo participants). Furthermore, the same measures were also administered to 14 out of the 15 participants (it was impos-sible to administer the tasks to one 47 year-old female participant after the MOM training) in a second session taking placeon average 6.57 days (range: 2–12 days) after the MOM training ending date. A convenience sample of 15 Italian participants(9 males) (mean age = 37.53, SD = 11.29; years of education: 16.13, SD = 1.58), matched for age (t(28) = 1.78, p = .09,gp2 = 0.102) and years of education (t(28) = 0.79, p = .43, gp2 = 0.022) to the MOM training group, took also part in the studyas control group. The latter sample of individuals was asked not to engage in any training course and was also tested in twoseparate sessions. On average for the two groups, 69.5 days (range: 55–81 days) passed between the two testing sessions. Ingeneral, the two samples of participants were recruited through advertisements and by word of mouth from different pro-fessional contexts in the local population (master students, hospital employees -administrative personnel, nurses, physi-cians, general business employees). Participants were invited to take part to a psychological study that involvedresponding to a series of questionnaires and performing computerized tasks at the beginning and at the end of an 8-weekly-session training; the precise nature of the training and of the tests was explained only at the first individual meeting,thus reducing recruitment biases related to specific interest to meditation. Despite the limitations of a convenience samplingprocedure in terms of generalization of the results to the general population and the absence of an active control group (see


Section 4 for further details), the fact that all recruited participants had no previous experience with mindfulness meditationor with the outcome measures used in the study ensured that the research questions addressed in the current investigationcould adequately be answered. All participants reported normal or corrected-to normal vision, no past history of neurolog-ical or mental illness. Signed informed consent was obtained before participation in the study from all participants. Thestudy was approved by the local Ethics Committee and was in accordance with the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki.

2.2. Mindfulness Oriented Meditation (MOM) training

The MOM training was leaded by the last author who has several years of experience with mindfulness meditation. Thetraining was based on the method recently proposed by Fabbro and Muratori (2012) which is in turn inspired by the Ther-avada schools of Buddhism (e.g., Gunaratana, 2002) as well as by western-based mindfulness programs such as the Mind-fulness Based Stress Reduction (Kabat-Zinn, 1982, 1990, 2003). The MOM training consisted of 8 weekly meetings ofabout two hours each. Each meeting was organized in 3 phases: (a) 30 min of active teaching on topics related to meditativepractice (e.g., introduction to the basic historical and philosophical foundations of mindfulness; the relationship betweenpsychotherapy and meditation; the fundamentals of meditation practice), (b) 30 min of MOM practice, and (c) a final‘‘debriefing’’ period of up to one hour where there was the opportunity for the participants to share their meditation expe-riences, gained both at home and throughout the course, with the other participants; the participants could also expresstheir difficulties and ask questions to the instructor. Some typical topics of discussion could be related to the posture takenduring meditation, the best time to meditate at home, or some difficulties as that of keeping a ‘‘detached’’ attitude, behavinglike a non-judging witness of oncoming thoughts, feelings and sensations, during the meditation practice.

With regard to the MOM practice, this was divided into 3 parts of about 10 min each (Naranjo, 2011; Naranjo & Ornstein,1972): (i) mindfulness of breathing (i.e., anapanasati); (ii) ‘‘contemplation of bodily phenomena’’, in which participants wereasked to mindfully and gently focus their attention on the different parts of the body; (iii) vipassana meditation, where sub-jects were encouraged to non-judgmentally observe their here-and-now mental experience, namely the ongoing stream ofinternal thoughts and emotions as they arise.

At the end of the first meeting, participants in the MOM training group were given a CD containing a recording of thevoice of the instructor guiding a MOM practice session of half an hour and were encouraged to listen to it as an aid for home-work assignments which consisted of 30 min of daily meditation practice. Participants were required to keep a daily diary towrite down the times and duration of the practice. Moreover, to measure changes in dispositional mindfulness as due to theMOM training, the participants were required to complete, in both the testing sessions conducted before and after the train-ing, the FFMQ (Baer et al., 2006), which is a 39 item measure consisting of five subscales (observing, describing, acting withawareness, non-judging of inner experience, and non-reactivity to inner experience).

2.3. Experimental tasks

2.3.1. Implicit Association Test (IAT): StimuliThe same procedure was used as by Crescentini et al. (2014) in order to select the stimulus words for the religious–spiri-

tual/non-religious–non-spiritual axis of the RS-IAT and for the good–bad axis of the SE-IAT. Thus, we ran a pilot study inwhich 34 Italian individuals (range 18–58 years-old; 19 female) not taking part in the experiment were asked to judge ona seven-point scale, the imageability (ease and speed of a word in evoking a mental image or a sensory experience), familiarity(subjective report about how frequently a word occurs in the life of a person), concreteness (reference to objects, living things,actions and materials that can be experienced through the senses), age of acquisition (the age at which a word and its mean-ing has been learned for the first time in spoken form or in writing), valence (ability of a word to elicit in the speaker andlistener positive or negative feelings), and religiousness–spirituality (the ease of a word to associate and to evoke reli-gious–spiritual dimensions) of 190 words. A subset of 97 words with religious–spiritual (n = 52) or non-religious–non-spiri-tual (n = 45) connotation were selected from the Measures of Religiosity book (Hill & Hood, 1999) and were chosen ascandidate stimuli for the RS-IAT. For the SE-IAT, 93 words with a positive (n = 47) or a negative (n = 46) valence wereselected, in part from past research on SE-IAT (Greenwald & Farnham, 2000). On the basis of these data, we selected 15 wordsfor each of the religious–spiritual, non-religious–non-spiritual, good, and bad stimulus categories (Table 1; see alsoCrescentini et al., 2014, Tables 1 and 2 for similar material). A series of one-way ANOVAs showed that stimuli used in thetwo IATs were matched for imageability, age of acquisition, frequency of use in Italian language (CoLFIS database: Corpusand Frequency Lexicon of Written Italian; Bertinetto et al., http://www.istc.cnr.it/grouppage/databases), and number of let-ters (all F(3,56) < 1.74, p > .17, gp2 < 0.086). Similarly to Crescentini et al. (2014), one-way ANOVAs also showed that famil-iarity, concreteness, valence, and religiousness–spirituality differed across the four word categories (all F(3,56) > 3.83,p < .02, gp2 > 0.170). In particular, Duncan post hoc tests for familiarity and concreteness showed that the religious–spiritualwords were judged less familiar than good words (p < .01, all other p > .05), and less concrete than the other three categoriesof words (all p < .01), with no difference between the latter three (all p > .05). Post hoc tests also showed that stimuli used inthe good category had more positive valence than the other three types of words and that religious–spiritual words werejudged more religious–spiritual than the other three types of words (all p < .01). Moreover, stimuli in the bad categoryhad more negative valence than the other three types of words (all p < .01) while stimuli in the non-religious–non-spiritualcategory were judged less religious–spiritual than words in the good category (p < .01) but as much religious–spiritual as

Table 1Word stimuli used in the RS-IAT and in the SE-IAT (Italian in parentheses).

Religious–Spiritual Non-religious–Non-spiritual Good Bad

Soul (Anima) Agnostic (Agnostico) Skillful (Abile) Blasphemous (Blasfemo)Believer (Credente) Atheist (Ateo) Affable (Affabile) Abrut (Brusco)God (Dio) Carnal (Carnale) Competent (Competente) Bad (Brutto)Divine (Divino) Cynical (Cinico) Available (Disponibile) Illicit (Illecito)Eternal (Eterno) Concreteness (Concretezza) Excellent (Eccellente) Immoral (Immorale)Faith (Fede) Body (Corpo) Excitement (Eccitazione) Indecent (Indecente)Ethereal (Immateriale) Physical (Fisico) Fabulous (Favoloso) Obscene (Osceno)Inner (Interiore) Irreligious (Irreligioso) Favorable (Favorevole) Hostile (Ostile)Meditation (Meditazione) Limited (Limitato) Gaiety (Gaiezza) Scandalous (Scandaloso)Omnipotent (Onnipotente) Logical (Logico) Magnificent (Magnifico) Unfavorable (Sfavorevole)Religious (Religioso) Material (Materiale) Honest (Onesto) Ugly (Sgradevole)Sacred (Sacro) Objective (Oggettivo) Perfect (Perfetto) Unpleasant (Spiacevole)Saint (Santo) Profane (Profano) Pleasantness (Piacevolezza) Awful (Terribile)Supernatural (Soprannaturale) Tangible (Tangibile) Triumph (Trionfo) Shameful (Vergognoso)Spirit (Spirito) Earthly (Terreno) Virtuous (Virtuoso) Vulgar (Volgare)

Table 2Descriptive statistics for the stimulus words used in the RS-IAT and SE-IAT.

Word category Imageability Familiarity Concreteness AoA Valence Religiousness–Spirituality

Frequency Number ofletters

Religious–spiritual 4.19 3.67 2.79 4.28 4.60 5.72 122.93 7.6(.46) (.35) (.50) (.62) (.47) (.38) (107.38) (3.05)

Non-religious–non-spiritual

4.22 4.07 4.43 4.88 3.72 2.56 104.06 7.6(.86) (1.01) (.92) (.91) (.82) (.26) (217.16) (1.99)

Good 4.50 4.56 4.19 4.28 5.49 3.55 86.40 8.67(.49) (.65) (.35) (.70) (.44) (.50) (89.54) (1.92)

Bad 4.52 4.22 4.05 4.38 2.38 2.33 60.06 8.2(.43) (.60) (.49) (.99) (.21) (.32) (86.63) (1.68)

Notes: Mean values for each stimulus category are based on judgments given on a seven-point scale (Imageability; Familiarity; Concreteness; Valence; andReligiousness–Spirituality) (a score of 7 denotes the highest score). For the Age of Acquisition (AoA) seven-point scale, 1 = 0–2 years and 7 = 13–14 (or older)years with intermediate scores denoting intermediate ages. See main text for the frequency variable. Standard deviations of the means are reported inparentheses.


stimuli used in the bad category (p > .10). Overall, the pilot study corroborated the legitimacy of our RS and valence mea-sures. Table 2 reports the mean values for each of the above-mentioned variables for the four categories of stimulus words.Finally, 12 pronouns for referring to Self–Other concepts (Me stesso-Altri in Italian) (Self, English/Italian: I/io; mine/mio; mine/mia; mine/mie; mine/miei; me/me; Other: you/voi, your/tuoi, his-her/sua, his-her/sue, them/loro, your/vostro) were used in boththe RS-IAT and SE-IAT.

2.3.2. Implicit Association Test (IAT): Experimental procedureAs already mentioned, both participant groups were administered the two IATs in two separate sessions. In each session

the participants were tested individually, in a quiet and silent room. Stimuli for both IATs were presented on a PC, located infront of the subject at a distance of approximately 60 cm, running the E-Prime software package (Psychology Software Tools,Pittsburgh, PA). In both IATs, responses had to be given as fast and accurately as possible after the onset of the stimuli (i.e.single words) presented one at a time at the center of the screen, by pressing a left (E) or a right (I) key on a computer key-board with the index finger of the left and right hand, respectively.

Each IAT lasted approximately 7 min and was administered in seven total blocks, consisting of both congruent and incon-gruent condition blocks (see below) and familiarization blocks (blocks 1, 2, and 5 in Fig. 1) (Greenwald et al., 2003; LaBouffet al., 2010). Following previous work with the RS-IAT and the SE-IAT (Crescentini et al., 2014; Greenwald & Farnham, 2000;LaBouff et al., 2010), we hypothesized that individuals perceive the self to be more religious/spiritual than nonreligious/non-spiritual (RS-IAT) and also associate the self with positive rather than with negative valence (SE-IAT). Thus, for the RS-IAT weexpected people showing better classifications (reflected in shorter response latency and/or higher rate of correct responses)when self and RS words are associated to the same response key and other and non-RS words are associated to the other key(i.e., the congruent RS-IAT condition), than when self and non-RS words are associated to the same response key and otherand RS words are associated to the other key (i.e., the incongruent RS-IAT condition). An RS-IAT effect is found when a personis faster and/or more accurate in congruent than incongruent conditions. This effect would be suggestive of automatic asso-ciations between the self and RS dimensions, indicating that a person automatically perceives the self as more religious–spiritual than non-religious–non-spiritual (Crescentini et al., 2014; LaBouff et al., 2010). To be more specific, in the congruent

Fig. 1. Schematic structure of the Religiousness–Spirituality (RS) IAT and Self-Esteem (SE) IAT. Each IAT consists of 7 blocks in which a series of stimuluswords appear at the center of the screen and must be associated to the stimulus categories shown on the upper left or right corner of the screen by pressingtwo corresponding response keys (e.g., in the first block of the RS-IAT, religious–spiritual and non-religious–non-spiritual words are presented one at a timeand have to be classified as being either religious–spiritual (left key) or non-religious–non-spiritual (right key); right key response is the correct response inthe example). In the reported examples, the congruent condition occurs before than the incongruent condition in both the two IATs. The number of trials ineach block is reported in parentheses.


condition of the RS-IAT (blocks 3&4 of Fig 1, left part), participants had to press the same left response key for self-relatedwords and religious–spiritual words, and the right response key for other-related words and non-religious–non-spiritualwords. Conversely, in the incongruent condition (blocks 6&7 of Fig 1, left part), participants had to press the left responsekey for self-related words and non-religious–non-spiritual words and the right key for other-related words and religious–spiritual words.

Similarly, in the congruent condition of the SE-IAT (blocks 3&4 of Fig 1, right part), participants had to press the leftresponse key for self-related words and good words, and the right response key for other-related words and bad words.By contrast, in the incongruent condition of the SE-IAT (blocks 6&7 of Fig 1, right part), participants had to press the leftresponse key for self-related words and bad words and the right key for other-related words and good words. Following


the same logic of the RS-IAT, an SE-IAT effect (i.e., better performance in congruent than incongruent blocks) would suggestthat a person automatically associates the self with positive rather than with negative valence (Greenwald & Farnham, 2000).To summarize, congruency in the RS-IAT refers to the match between an attribute (RS) and one’s self-concept as compared toothers; in a similar way, in the SE-IAT congruency refers to the match between the SE attribute and one’s self-concept ascompared to others. In our study, we expected to find both the RS-IAT effect and the SE-IAT effect.

The stimulus words within each block were randomly presented and each of them remained on the computer screen untilthe participant gave a correct response in each trial. Indeed, if an error occurred in a trial, a red X appearing below the wordstimulus prompted participants to correct the mistake by pressing the correct key. After response, the next stimulusappeared after 500 ms, during which only the category labels were visible on the screen. For both participant groups, halfof participants performed first the RS-IAT and second the SE-IAT; the reverse order was applied for the second half of par-ticipants. Moreover, for half of the participants in both groups, the positions of Blocks 1, 3, and 4 were switched with Blocks5, 6, and 7 for both IATs. Finally, in both sessions and before the administration of each IAT, participants were shown aprinted list with all the words belonging to the four relevant categories and were asked to carefully read all the stimuli; thiswas done to allow the participants to familiarize themselves with the stimuli before performing the tasks.

2.3.3. Explicit religiousness/spirituality measuresIn both sessions, after the two IATs the participants of both groups were required to complete the Self Transcendence (ST)

scale of the Temperament and Character Inventory (TCI) (Cloninger et al., 1994) and the index of core spiritual experiencesquestionnaire (INSPIRIT) (Kass et al., 1991), which are known to measure individuals’ religiousness/spirituality. In particular,the ST scale measures individual differences in spiritual feeling and thinking, reflecting one’s tendency to identify the self asan integral part of the universe as a whole. Similarly, the INSPIRIT questionnaire measures intrinsic religiousness/spiritualityand subjective beliefs, including personal religious/spiritual experiences.

2.4. Data analysis

The data were analyzed with Statistica 8 (StatSoft, Inc, Tulsa, OK). The main analysis concerned a series of ANCOVAs, car-ried out separately for the two IATs, aimed at testing the difference between the MOM and control groups (categorical pre-dictor) in the pattern of IAT responses after the training (dependent variable), controlling for pre-existing implicit attitudes(i.e., IAT responses before the training; continuous predictor/covariate). Similarly, for the explicit RS measures two ANCOVAswere carried out (one for the INSPIRIT and the other for the ST questionnaire) in order to test the difference between theMOM and control groups (categorical predictor) in the overall pattern of INSPIRIT/ST responses after the training (dependentvariable), controlling for pre-existing explicit attitudes (i.e., the pattern of INSPIRIT/ST responses before the training; contin-uous predictor/covariate).

Since traditional ANCOVA designs for continuous and categorical predictor variables are appropriate when the latter twovariables do not interact in influencing the outcome measures (homogeneity of regression slopes assumption), before run-ning each ANCOVA we used the homogeneity of slope design to test whether the continuous and categorical predictors inter-acted in influencing responses. Next, if no interaction was present, we employed the traditional ANCOVA design; otherwise,we used the separate slope design which is appropriate for modeling the effects of the predictors when continuous and cat-egorical predictors interact in influencing responses. Finally, if an interaction was found in the separate slope design, weassessed group differences on the dependent variable at particular levels of the covariate (see below) using a factorialANOVA design (Green & Salkind, 2011).

For the IAT data, analyses were primarily performed on the mean D scores measuring the IAT effect, computed for boththe SE-IAT and RS-IAT following the improved algorithm procedure described by Greenwald et al. (2003). In particular, thismethod includes data from both practice and test blocks (blocks 3 and 4, respectively for congruent conditions, and blocks 6and 7, respectively for incongruent conditions in Fig 1), eliminates trials >10,000 ms (just one trial was removed in ourstudy), excludes from the analyses subjects for whom more than 10% of responses were faster than 300 ms (none of our sub-jects fell in this category), and removes and replaces error trials with the mean latency of the correct trials in the correspond-ing performance block plus a penalty of 600 ms. To compute the D score measure, the mean RT differences between criticaltrials (i.e., block 6 minus block 3 and block 7 minus block 4) were divided by the pooled standard deviation of all trials in theassociated critical blocks (i.e., blocks 3&6 and blocks 4&7). Finally, the D score variable was computed as the equal-weightaverage of the two resulting ratios (one for the practice blocks and another for the test blocks).

Moreover, we carried out further analyses on the participants’ accuracy (arcsine transformation of proportion of correctresponses was applied in order to obtain better normalization of accuracy data before performing parametric analyses) andon the mean RT data (log transformation of raw RTs applied, again to obtain better normalization of RT data) because wewanted to be able to test for the potential effects of MOM separately on congruent vs. incongruent IAT trials and on RTvs. accuracy data, with such effects being impossible to differentiate when relying only on D scores, in which responseslatencies are adjusted for accuracy and individual’s latency variability. The results of the latency/accuracy analyses arereported in the Supplementary materials.

Overall, similarly to the previous RS-IAT version (LaBouff et al., 2010), the resulting D score measures were used as indi-cators of implicit RS (relative to non RS) (or of implicit high SE vs. low SE in the SE-IAT) such that higher D score values indi-cated faster categorization in the congruent condition (self/religious–spiritual and other/non-religious–non-spiritual) than


in the opposed incongruent condition. In a similar fashion, the bigger the relative difference in response latencies or accuracybetween congruent and incongruent IAT blocks, the stronger the implicit associations a person holds with regard to RS (RS-IAT) or SE (SE-IAT). In the analyses below (and in the Supplementary materials for latency/accuracy data), we refer to theseconstructs simply as implicit RS or SE.

With regard to the explicit questionnaires, standard procedures were applied in scoring both the ST and the INSPIRIT(Cloninger et al., 1994; Kass et al., 1991). For the ST scale, for each participant we calculated the proportion of responses giv-ing a score of 1 (i.e., a score of 1 is given to true responses for not reverse-score items and to false responses for reverse-scoreitems). For the INSPIRIT, the scores for each of its item range from 1 (low) to 4 (high), with higher scores indicating morespirituality. The INSPIRIT score is the average rating of all answered questions (range = 1–4). The significance threshold ofp < .05 was used in all statistical tests. In the analyses, effect sizes are reported as partial eta squared (gp2). Statistical trendsare discussed when .05 < p < .10.

3. Results

3.1. Efficacy of the MOM training

Before considering the performance on the two IATs and the scores on the explicit measures of religiousness/spirituality,we assessed the efficacy of the MOM training by evaluating the FFMQ scores at both Session 1 and Session 2. A series of 5dependent-sample t tests showed that the MOM training led to significantly increased scores in the describing (mean rawscores session 1: 27 ± 7.54; mean raw scores session 2: 29.50 ± 6.98, t(13) = 3.38, p < .01, gp2 = 0.467), acting with awareness(26.14 ± 5.04 vs. 28.71 ± 5.50, t(13) = 2.39, p < .04, gp2 = 0.306), and non-judging of inner experience (28.28 ± 5.14 vs.30.92 ± 5.47, t(13) = 2.53, p < .03, gp2 = 0.331) facets of the FFMQ and to marginally increased levels in the observing(27.14 ± 3.79 vs. 29.14 ± 3.37, t(13) = 2.02, p < .07, gp2 = 0.239) and non-reactivity to inner experience factors (18.14 ± 3.60vs. 20.42 ± 3.06, t(13) = 1.97, p < .07, gp2 = 0.231). Corroborating the data from the FFMQ, the data reported by participantsin their meditation diary showed that they satisfactorily complied with homework assignments. Indeed, inspection of thediaries showed that the participants globally meditated on average 5.14 ± 1.28 days a week. Of interest, however, home prac-tice of mindfulness meditation exercises was not related to the extent of change in the mindfulness facets (range of Pearsoncorrelation coefficients: r = �.34/.25, p = .23/.98). One possibility for this lack of relation, which cannot be excluded on thebasis of our data, is that measuring dispositional mindfulness by using the self-report FFMQ a few days after the completionof the MOM course may have caused an inflated/placebo effect whereby MOM participants were more prone to reportincreased mindfulness just because they had participated in the course.

3.2. IAT: D scores

Participants’ D scores are shown in Fig. 2. Overall, a series of 4 independent-sample t tests showed comparable SE-IAT andRS-IAT D scores at Session 1 and Session 2 for MOM and control participants (all t(27) < 1.07, p > .29, gp2 < 0.041). Of impor-tance, this indicated the absence of differences between participant groups in implicit SE and RS before the MOM trainingand this may rule out the possibility that any systematic selection biases could have been present at baseline (i.e., Session1), potentially affecting the results obtained after the MOM course. On the basis of these initial data, we first assessed the

Fig. 2. Mean D scores measuring the SE-IAT and RS-IAT effects in both Session 1 and Session 2 for both groups of participants (MOM and Controls). Errorbars represent standard deviations of the means. Higher D scores indicate higher implicit Self-Esteem (i.e., larger SE-IAT effect) and higher implicitReligiousness–Spirituality (i.e., larger RS-IAT effect).


effects of MOM training on the implicit association of the self to RS attributes. We ran a homogeneity of slope design withSession 2 RS-IAT D score as the dependent variable, Session 1 RS-IAT D score as a covariate, and Group membership (MOM/Controls) as a categorical predictor. The analysis returned the two-factor interaction between the covariate and the categor-ical predictor (F(1,25) = 4.55, p < .05, gp2 = 0.154). We thus turned to a corresponding separate slope design which confirmedthe interaction between Group and the RS-IAT D score at Session 1 (F(2,25) = 7.54, p < .01, gp2 = 0.376) as well as the maineffect of Group (MOM > Controls; F(1,25) = 6.31, p < .02, gp2 = 0.201) which denoted overall higher implicit RS for MOM vs.Controls at Session 2. Critically, we further investigated the interaction between Group and pre-existing implicit RS attitudesby running a factorial ANOVA involving the RS-IAT D score at Session 2 as dependent variable and Group (MOM/Controls)and Session 1-Subgroup membership, which was based on the individual RS-IAT D score at Session 1, as categorical indepen-dent variables. The latter factor was codified at three levels of Session 1 RS-IAT D score separately for MOM and Controls inorder to have a similar number of subjects for each level (Low: 0.5 standard deviation – SD – below the mean of the Session 1RS-IAT D score; High: 0.5 SD above the mean; and Medium: within the interval of 0.5 SD below and 0.5 SD above the groupmean). The analysis showed the main effect of Session 1-Subgroup (F(2,23) = 6.07, p < .01, gp2 = 0.345) and the interactionbetween Group and Session 1-Subgroup (F(2,23) = 4.92, p < .02, gp2 = 0.299). The latter interaction was supported by a largeeffect size and this may ameliorate a possible concern related to limited cell size in the conditions compared in the factorialANOVA. Finally, the main effect of Group was not significant (F(1,23) = 1.71, p = .20, gp2 = 0.069). Duncan post hoc tests per-formed for the 2-way interaction showed that MOM participants with a low implicit RS attitude before the meditation courseshowed higher implicit RS at Session 2 than control participants with low implicit RS at Session 1 (p < .01; Fig 3). No differ-ence was instead obtained between MOM and control participants with Medium and High level of implicit RS at Session 1(p > .21). Moreover, while control participants with low pre-existing implicit RS continued to show a lower RS at Session 2than controls in the Medium and High Session 1-Subgroups (both p < .01), there were no differences among the MOM par-ticipant subgroups in their level of implicit RS after the course (all p > .09). In sum, the MOM course increased implicit RSparticularly in those subjects who had a low pre-existing implicit RS attitude. More generally, these findings indicate a roleof mindfulness meditation in modulating participants’ implicit RS self-representations. Consistent with this result, the anal-ysis of the RS-IAT accuracy data (see Supplementary material and Figs. 1S and 2S) showed that the MOM training led to abetter ability to associate the self to RS dimensions particularly in those individuals who had a low pre-existing attitudeto associate the self with RS attributes in the congruent RS-IAT trials.

Second, we assessed the effects of MOM training on the implicit association of the self to SE dimensions. We carried out ahomogeneity of slope design with Session 2 SE-IAT D score as the dependent variable, Session 1 SE-IAT D score as a covariate,and Group membership (MOM/Controls) as a categorical predictor. The analysis showed a non-significant two-way interac-tion (F(1,25) = 0.38, p = .54, gp2 = 0.015). We thus performed the corresponding ANCOVA analysis based on the same data.The ANCOVA only showed the main effect of the covariate (Session 1 SE-IAT D score) (F(1,26) = 6.49, p < .02, gp2 = 0.199),indicating that the pre-existing implicit SE attitude was an important factor in explaining participants’ SE attitude at Session2; the main effect of Group membership was not significant (F(1,26) = 0.12, p = .73, gp2 = 0.004). This latter result suggestedthat the MOM training had not modulatory effects on the implicit SE self-representations of the participants.

Fig. 3. RS-IAT D score measured at Session 2 as a function of RS-IAT D score measured at Session 1. Subgroup membership at Session 1 is expressed in bothsubject groups at three levels (i.e., Low: 0.5 standard deviation – SD – below the mean of the Session 1 RS-IAT D score; High: 0.5 SD above the mean; andMedium: within the interval of 0.5 SD below and 0.5 SD above the group mean). Error bars represent standard deviations of the means. The asteriskindicates a significant difference in the D score between subject groups.


3.3. Explicit measures of religiousness/spirituality

Next, we looked at possible modulatory effects of MOM for the ST and INSPIRIT scales. As done for the IAT D scores, aseries of 4 independent-sample t tests only showed a significant difference between MOM and control participants forthe INSPIRIT scores at Session 2 (t(27) = 2.32, p < .03, gp2 = 0.166; all other t(27) < 1.50, p > .14, gp2 < 0.077; see below formean INSPIRIT and ST values). Thus, analogously to the implicit measures, the data on the explicit scales indicated no dif-ferences between participant groups before the MOM training. Moreover, also for the explicit RS measures we followedthe same rationale of the previous analyses. Thus, we first carried out two homogeneity of slope designs (one on INSPIRITand one on ST scores) with Session 2 INSPIRIT (or ST) scores as the dependent variable, Session 1 INSPIRIT (or ST) scoresas a covariate, and Group membership (MOM/Controls) as a categorical predictor. Both analyses returned a non-significanttwo-way interaction between the covariate and the categorical predictor (INSPIRIT: F(1,25) = 0.13, p = .72, gp2 = 0.005; ST:F(1,25) = 0.07, p = .80, gp2 = 0.002). We then carried out two corresponding ANCOVAs, one for the INSPIRIT and the otherfor the ST scores. The ANCOVA carried out on the INSPIRIT scores showed the main effect of both the covariate (Session 1INSPIRIT scores) (F(1,26) = 127.72, p < .01, gp2 = 0.830) and Group membership (MOM > Controls: F(1,26) = 4.86, p < .04,gp2 = 0.157) (MOM: mean scores at Session 1: 2.70, SD = 0.60; mean scores at Session 2: 2.89, SD = 0.61; Controls: meanscores at Session 1: 2.32, SD = 0.72; mean scores at Session 2: 2.30, SD = 0.69). Similarly, the ANCOVA carried out on theST scores also showed the significant contribution of the covariate (Session 1 ST scores) (F(1,26) = 69.39, p < .01,gp2 = 0.727) and a marginally significant main effect of Group membership (MOM > Controls: F(1,26) = 3.95, p = .0575,gp2 = 0.132) (MOM: mean scores at Session 1: 0.48, SD = 0.19; mean scores at Session 2: 0.54, SD = 0.22; Controls: meanscores at Session 1: 0.48, SD = 0.19; mean scores at Session 2: 0.45, SD = 0.20). Thus, beyond the expected consistencybetween the individual scores at Session 1 and Session 2, the data on the explicit measures of RS showed increased scoresfor MOM vs. Controls as a function of the testing session; in other words, the data indicate a modulatory role of MOM forexplicit RS self-representations independently of the pre-existing levels of explicit RS.

3.4. Correlation between explicit and implicit measures of religiousness/spirituality

Although implicit and explicit measures may access RS representations of the self in different ways, previous researchwith the RS-IAT and other types of IATs has proved the existence of implicit–explicit correspondence (e.g., Hofmann,Gawronski, Gschwendner, Le, & Schmitt, 2005; LaBouff et al., 2010). In order to assess such possible association, in the pres-ent study we tested for correlations (using the Pearson coefficient) between the individual INSPIRIT and ST scores and theindividual RS-IAT and SE-IAT D scores, expecting to find significant correlations only with the first of the two IATs. We con-sidered the whole group of 29 participants in these correlations and we focused on data from Session 1 only. We found thatthe INSPIRIT scores correlated positively and specifically with the RS-IAT D scores (r = .40, p = .03; r = �.07, p = .73 for the SE-IAT D scores). In a similar manner, the ST scores marginally correlated positively and specifically with the RS-IAT D scores(r = .34, p = .07; r = �.02, p = .93 for the SE-IAT D scores). These correlations with the RS-IAT D scores indicated that the morethe participants explicitly judged themselves to be religious/spiritual, the more they showed an implicit attitude to associatethemselves to RS dimensions. Globally, these correlational results suggest a close link between implicit and explicit mea-sures of RS and indicate that the RS-IAT used in our study was very likely to measure genuine RS dimensions.

Moreover, despite our small samples, we explored similar correlations between explicit and implicit RS measures sepa-rately for MOM and control participants. In more detail, we calculated explicit and implicit indexes of increased RS in bothparticipant groups by respectively subtracting the individual INSPIRIT and ST scores and the RS-IAT D scores observed in Ses-sion 1 from those measured in Session 2. We then tested for correlations between the explicit and implicit change indexes.The only significant correlation was between the RS-IAT D score index of increased RS and the INSPIRIT index of increased RSfor the MOM group (r = .72, p = .003; all other r < .47, p > .092). The significant correlation in the MOM group indicated thatthe more the participants explicitly felt to be more religious/spiritual after vs. before the MOM training, the more theyshowed an increased implicit attitude to associate themselves to RS dimensions. Although the small samples suggest cautionin interpreting this result, which hence would be better considered as additional information confirming the correlationinvolving the overall sample of participants (namely further showing a certain degree of implicit/explicit RS correspon-dence), the absence of such relation in the control group highlights the role of MOM in promoting congruent increases inimplicit and explicit RS self-representations.

4. Discussion

The aim of the present study was to assess whether mindfulness meditation leads to changes in implicit as well as explicitself-referential representations related to RS. To this end, we had a group of participants involved in an 8-week mindfulness-oriented meditation (MOM) training and a control group not involved in any training. In two different testing sessions bothparticipant groups had to complete implicit and explicit measures of RS. As expected, the data suggest that the MOM trainingwas able to affect both implicit and explicit RS dimensions. More specifically, we found that participating in the MOM train-ing increased implicit RS particularly in those subjects who had a low pre-existing implicit RS attitude. Thus, MOM partic-ipants with a low implicit RS attitude before the meditation course showed higher implicit RS at Session 2 than control


participants with low implicit RS at Session 1. While these data suggest a role of mindfulness meditation in modulating par-ticipants’ implicit RS self-representations, a similar modulatory effect was not found for implicit SE (D score analysis, Sec-tion 3.2). Moreover, complementing these results concerning the RS-IAT, the analyses of the accuracy data highlighted apositive modulatory effect of the MOM training on the performance of the congruent trials, at least in subjects who had alow pre-existing attitude to associate the self with RS attributes (see Supplementary material). Moreover, the data on theexplicit measures of RS showed a more widespread modulatory role of MOM for explicit RS self-representations, in thatMOM participants globally reported to be more religious/spiritual and self-transcendent than controls after the meditationcourse (Section 3.3). Finally, in the MOM group we found that implicit and explicit RS self-representations increased congru-ently after vs. before the MOM training (Section 3.4).

The overall pattern of results indicates the greater stability or, in other words, the reduced malleability of the construct ofimplicit RS vs. explicit RS self-representations by means of a MOM course lasting 8 weeks. Indeed, while explicit RS repre-sentations increased following the MOM training independently from the pre-existing levels of explicit RS, implicit RSincreased only for those participants who had particularly low pre-existing levels of implicit RS. If on the one hand explicitattitudes are considered as more recently acquired attitudes that coexist with implicit attitudes, on the other hand the lattermay be more difficult to transform because they may reflect more stable and older evaluative representations (see below;see also Wilson et al., 2000; and Gawronski & Bodenhausen, 2006 for a discussion of the mechanisms that lead to asymmetricor symmetric changes in explicit and implicit attitudes). Moreover, as mentioned in the Introduction, explicit measures mayalso be more subject to desirable responding and other confounding factors which may contribute to overestimate theobserved changes.

The present findings extend in a number of important ways the results of those few previous studies that tried to put intorelations the independent fields of implicit (social) cognition and meditation research (Brown & Ryan, 2003; Hutchersonet al., 2008; Koole et al., 2009; Levesque & Brown, 2007; Sauer et al., 2011; Strick et al., 2012). First of all, these previousstudies have mainly focused on either dispositional mindfulness of individuals with no meditation experience (e.g.,Brown & Ryan, 2003) or on the changes occurring after brief (few minutes), single-session meditation exercises in expertor naïve meditators (e.g., Hutcherson et al., 2008; Koole et al., 2009). Hence, these studies probably were able to detect,respectively, how implicit and explicit self-representations are related to differences in trait mindfulness among personsnot involved in meditation trainings, or on the effects linked to changes in transient state mindfulness. On the contrary,the present study employing a longitudinal design and an 8-week MOM training has very likely allowed us to focus moreon longer lasting changes in individuals’ trait, rather than state, mindfulness (Cahn & Polich, 2006) (see also the resultson the FFMQ reported in Section 3.1), and on the related effects on implicit and explicit self-referential RS. Accordingly, par-ticipants in the current study were neither explicitly instructed to be mindful nor asked to meditate before or during theexperiment. Moreover, in the second testing session included in our study the experimental material was administered toMOM participants after, on average, about one week from the end of the course (Section 2.1), thus avoiding that performingthe task immediately after 2 h of engagement with mindfulness meditation could potentially affect, among others, statemindfulness levels.

An additional point of novelty of the current study concerns more specifically the type of self-attitude investigated,namely RS. While the few previous studies investigating the relation between mindfulness and implicit cognition havefocused on psychological constructs such as self-esteem, motivation, and affective states (Brown & Ryan, 2003;Hutcherson et al., 2008; Koole et al., 2009; Levesque & Brown, 2007; Sauer et al., 2011; Strick et al., 2012), past researchon mindfulness and spirituality has made use only of explicit measures (Carmody et al., 2008; Falb & Pargament, 2012;Geary & Rosenthal, 2011; Greeson et al., 2011; Wachholtz & Pargament, 2008). Moreover, apart from these aspects, it is quitesurprising that, while many traditional sources speak of meditation as a spiritual practice, empirical research on this aspect islower as compared to any other area whereby the effects of meditation are recognized (Baer, 2010). Nonetheless, spiritualgrowth and spiritual commitment are increasingly accepted as a valid treatment goal; for instance, in the context of treat-ments based on mindfulness meditation, the spiritual effects of meditation have been considered to be important mediatorsof the therapeutic effects in areas such as physical health, emotional regulation, interpersonal relationships, and also in sub-stance abuse disorders (Baer, 2010; Carmody et al., 2008; Falb & Pargament, 2012; Greeson et al., 2011; Leigh, Bowen, &Marlatt, 2005).

Different approaches of meditation, among which mindfulness meditation, may impact on different aspects of RS expe-riences (Baer, 2010). Religiousness and spirituality are universal phenomena, being ubiquitous in people’s lives, and can bedefined as the complex of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that reflect the ultimate concerns of people in relation to unseenrealities/supernatural agents and in relation to transcendent contexts (Emmons & Paloutzian, 2003; Zinnbauer & Pargament,2005). A possibility in line with the present results would be to link RS feelings to the experience of the suspension of iden-tification with one’s self promoted by mindfulness meditation (Baer, 2010). Indeed, mindfulness meditation is characterizedby an attitude of openness and acceptance of present-moment experience, in which thoughts and feelings are observed asevents in the mind without over-identifying the self with them and without reacting to them. Therefore, the development ofa mindful awareness, cultivated through mindfulness meditation, may foster intuitive experiences of non-self or extended-self in the practitioners. These may include individuals’ experiences of a sense of relationship with a high, transcendentpower and of an intuitive feeling of connection with nature and other individuals at large. Such a possibility would accountfor the increase in explicit RS observed in the current study using the ST and INSPIRIT measures, which indeed make explicitreference to transcendental representations of the self and to belief in the existence of God as a criterion for spirituality, and


for the increase in implicit RS whereby religious and spiritual terms were more easily related to the self in the RS-IAT, at leastby those subjects who had a low pre-existing implicit RS attitude before the MOM course.

An aspect related to the above-mentioned account deserves further discussion. The pre–post MOM effects found on theRS-IAT for a subset of participants may highlight the importance of continued mindfulness meditation practice in changingautomatic, implicit self-attitudes (Hutcherson et al., 2008). Indeed, systematic practice of such a technique is believed togradually transform habitual patterns of responding and to facilitate the uncovering of previously inaccessible feelings aboutthe self (Brown & Ryan, 2003; Chambers et al., 2008; Koole et al., 2009). Thus, it appears particularly important in promotingchanges in implicit attitudes, which are thought to reflect robust evaluative representations, having their origins in long-term personal experiences (Gawronski & Bodenhausen, 2006; Wilson et al., 2000). The fact that only those subjects withlow pre-existing implicit RS were able to transform their implicit RS attitude after a two-month long MOM course mightsuggest that these individuals were less spiritually mature than the other individuals before the course, in that their eval-uative automatic self-representations concerning RS were less well developed and defined (technically in the RS-IAT thiswould reflect into a reduced difference between congruent and incongruent trials and hence to lower D scores). Thus, thepracticing of rituals and spiritual behaviors, even in a non-overtly religious context such as that of a MOM course, may havetaken root particularly in these subjects, powerfully influencing their implicit religious/spiritual self-concepts and helpingthem to develop their spiritual maturity. In more general terms, practices for training attention, transforming emotions,and increasing self-awareness, which are all part of mindfulness meditation, are considered essential for developing spiritualmaturity (e.g., Vaughan, 2002).

Undoubtedly, we cannot answer the question whether a longer MOM course would have allowed all participants, inde-pendently of their pre-existing implicit RS attitudes, to transform their implicit religious/spiritual self-concept, as alreadyhappened for explicit RS with an 8-week course (see also below for a further discussion about the limitations of not havinga follow-up evaluation). Nonetheless, the absence of an effect of the MOM training on implicit self-esteem in the currentstudy, a result that parallels similar ones found in previous researches employing brief, single meditation exercises (Kooleet al., 2009), further suggests that not all types of implicit self-attitudes are subject to changes by protracted mindfulnessmeditation, with some implicit responses globally appearing more resistant to change than others (e.g., implicit self-esteemvs. implicit RS self-representations). Overall, these results highlight the need to broaden the aims of the current study byfurther examining the effects of brief and continued meditation practice on different types of implicit self-representationsand by using diverse measures of implicit cognition (e.g., IAT in the current study and name–letter preferences in Kooleet al., 2009).

Although aspects of RS experiences other than intuitive experiences of non- or extended-self, such as meaning and innerpeace, may have contributed to our results being also linked to mindfulness meditation (Carmody et al., 2008), the presentstudy highlights how important it is to further explore, either directly or indirectly with explicit and implicit tests, the spiri-tual component of meditation. This is to foster our knowledge both of the beneficial effects on health arising from the prac-tice and of the basic psychological processes and mechanisms of actions that underpin mindfulness-based therapies. In ouropinion, crucial aspects that need to be addressed by future research include trying to extend the present findings by alsotaking into account medical and psychological symptoms in experiments more explicitly focused on the salutary effectsof mindfulness and spirituality. Moreover, RS scales and tests more secular in nature than the INSPIRIT and the actual versionof the RS-IAT could be used to further investigate the different facets of the multidimensional construct of spirituality in sec-ular contexts such those in which up to date mindfulness-based interventions are delivered (Carmody et al., 2008).

Furthermore, another issue that could be explicitly addressed in future studies on the effects of continuous meditationpractice on implicit and explicit self-attitudes concerns the congruency between the implicit and explicit measures. Asalready mentioned in the Introduction, concordance between explicit and implicit self-attitudes is important for psycholog-ical health. A number of psychological problems have indeed been reported following conflicts between implicit and explicitpsychological processes. As a few examples, individuals with high explicit self-esteem but low implicit self-esteem exposetraits of a narcissistic personality (Bosson et al., 2003); on the contrary, people with the opposite configuration, i.e. with highscores on measures of implicit self-esteem and low scores on measures of explicit self-esteem, seem to be subject to mal-adaptive forms of perfectionism (Schröder-Abé, Rudolph, & Schütz, 2007; Schröder-Abé, Rudolph, Wiesner, et al., 2007;Zeigler-Hill & Terry, 2007; see also Briñol et al., 2006; Koole et al., 2009). On this view, future studies should try to extendto individuals involved in a mindfulness meditation program and to RS and/or SE measures the results of those few previousstudies that showed a stronger relation between implicit and explicit affect and self-esteem in meditation naïve individualswith high vs. low dispositional mindfulness (Brown & Ryan, 2003) or in subjects who were engaged in a brief meditationexercise before vs. after completing implicit and explicit self-measures (Koole et al., 2009). This would allow one testingthe idea that continued meditation practice fulfills significant self-regulatory functions, possibly by letting intuitive self-feel-ings and attitudes to be more easily integrated (i.e., becoming more attuned) into explicit attitudes (Brown & Ryan, 2003;Koole et al., 2009; Vago & Silbersweig, 2012). At present, basing on our correlational analyses we can only speculate thatmindfulness meditation promotes congruent increases in implicit and explicit RS.

Yet related to the tests and scales, we should note that because of its exploratory nature, religiousness and spiritualitywere considered as a single construct in the current study, and used interchangeably as compared to non-RS when buildingthe RS-IAT (Crescentini et al., 2014; LaBouff et al., 2010). However, although the two terms are highly correlated, with mostpeople defining themselves as both religious and spiritual, some recent research considers religiousness and spirituality asdistinct constructs with only the former defined as linked to institutionalized practices and beliefs and the latter as more


subjective and experience-based (Emmons & Paloutzian, 2003; Kapuscinski & Masters, 2010; Wuthnow, 1998; Zinnbauer &Pargament, 2005). Thus, future studies interested in the relation between mindfulness and implicit spirituality could attemptto use an IAT more specifically focused on the S side of the RS multidimensional construct. Such a S-IAT would be more easilygeneralizable to populations of different culture and faith traditions.

In relation with this issue, the use in the current study of an RS-IAT requiring self- vs. other-judgment apparently clasheswith the spiritual tradition (i.e., Buddhism) that underlies mindfulness meditation techniques which aims to reduce duality,and in particular the separation between self and other (Albahari, 2006; Gombrich, 2009). Nevertheless, in the overall con-text of recent researches on the effects that different cultural and religion backgrounds can have on the neurocognitive basesof self-representation (e.g., Chiao et al., 2009, 2010; Zhu, Zhang, Fan, & Han, 2007), some recent studies have shown that Bud-dhist (but also Christian) participants engaged in self-referential processing during trait judgment tasks remembered self-related trait words better than other-related trait words (Han et al., 2008, 2010). This was held to reflect the involvementof specific neural substrates (dorsal medial prefrontal cortex, DMPFC) in the elaboration (reappraisal and evaluation morein particular) of information related to the self in Buddhists (or Christians) regardless of practicing the doctrine of imperma-nent or no-self – ‘‘Anatta’’–, or the spiritual request for self-transcendence that would shape a minimal subjective sense ofself (selflessness) in Buddhists or Christians, respectively (Han et al., 2008, 2010; see also Wu, Wang, He, Mao, & Zhang,2010). These findings may be seen to ameliorate any doubts about the utility of using self–other discrimination tasks to eval-uate the effects of MOM trainings as we did in the present study.

A few other issues need to be borne in mind. The main aim of the present study was to investigate the impact of a MOMtraining on implicit and explicit RS, rather than directly studying the effects on participants’ psychological health. Althoughan implicit measure of self-esteem was also collected (SE-IAT), the use of an explicit measure of SE and of markers of psy-chological well-being would have allowed us to also test for any potential role of mindfulness meditation in fostering posi-tive effects on explicit SE and in the promotion of psychological health. Such possible effects could also have been put intorelation with the effects on the implicit and explicit RS. Secondly, the current longitudinal study was the first to put intorelation the effects of a MOM training, and thus of changes in individuals’ trait mindfulness, on implicit and explicit RS. How-ever, the lack of a follow-up evaluation precludes any exact knowledge about how long lasting the changes in individuals’ RScould be. As already mentioned, this point may also hold for changes in dispositional mindfulness (measured through theself-report FFMQ), as these changes could have been overestimated by the subjects when measured shortly after an 8-weeklong MOM course. A further limitation of the current study concerns the lack of an active control group, which makes moredifficult to definitively ascribe to meditation practice the changes observed in RS. However, the fact that the MOM trainingwas delivered to healthy participants and that the two groups of individuals were matched for initial levels of explicit RS (asmeasured by the ST and INSPIRIT) may be seen to ameliorate any possible confound related to self-efficacy effects (Bandura,1997; Wahbeh, Elsas, & Oken, 2008) or to differences in explicit motivation to participate in a MOM training as a way toincrease RS. That said, it is advisable that future studies aimed at testing mindfulness meditation as an active ingredientin promoting changes in individuals’ RS will benefit from more rigorous active control conditions (MacCoon et al., 2012).In particular, different elements that are part of a meditation training should be told apart, considering what MOM trainingmay add to well-being as compared to any other psychological training course that requires participants to meet in groupand relax. What this study can state, however, is that MOM training is effective in changing self-representations related toreligiousness/spirituality, although we do not know exactly which are the specific psychological processes leading to thesechanges.

In conclusion, the present study tested the effects of an 8-week mindfulness meditation program on implicit and explicitself-referential religious/spiritual representations. We showed that continued meditation led to increased implicit RS in sub-jects who showed a low pre-existing implicit RS self-attitude; we also documented more widespread increases in explicit RSafter the meditation course and an overall congruency between increases in implicit and explicit RS in the MOM participants.These findings were attributed to a possible role of mindfulness meditation in favoring an experience of suspension of over-identification with one’s self which in turn would foster intuitive experiences of transcendental connection with thingsbeyond the self. Finally, we believe that future studies interested in pinpointing the beneficial effects of mindfulness med-itation in both clinical and non-clinical populations should continue to take into consideration the implicit and explicitaspects of spiritual growth and spiritual commitment.

Conflict of Interest

The authors report no conflicts of interest.

Acknowledgments

This research was supported by grants from the BIAL Foundation (Bursaries for Scientific Research, No. 66/10, to the fifthand second author) and from the Mind and Life Institute (Mind and Life Contemplative Fellowship 2012-04-001, to the fifthand second author). The first author was supported by a Post-Doctoral research fellowship funded by the University of Rome.The third author was supported by a Post-Doctoral research fellowship funded by Philips.


Appendix A. Supplementary material

Supplementary data associated with this article can be found, in the online version, at http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2014.09.013.

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