The Effects of Focus of Meditation on Pain Tolerance, Compassion, and Anxiety Levels

Abstract

Sixty-one individuals participated in a study to examine whether practicing a meditation with a spiritual focus would demonstrate higher pain tolerance and faster pain awareness (cold-pressor task), increased implicit compassion (lexical decision task), and reduced state anxiety levels (State Anxiety Inventory) relative to control conditions. Study participants attended initial training in meditation and then were randomly assigned to either a spiritual, religious, attachment security, or neutral meditation condition. Participants then meditated for 20 minutes a day and were tested at the end of two weeks. Results show that while meditation condition differences were not found for the pain tolerance and anxiety measures, individuals in the spiritual meditation condition demonstrated higher pain awareness. Also, both spiritual and religious meditation groups reported increased implicit compassion levels relative to controls. These findings are discussed in relation to previous similar research (Wachholtz & Pargament, 2005) and the call for increased investigations of underlying psychological mechanisms of meditation and mindfulness interventions.