Individual Differences in Affective States During Meditation

Previous research has shown the positive effects of meditation on physical and mental health, but little is known about what psychological processes occur during meditation. The current study investigated experience of affective states in Zen meditation during a 3-day meditation retreat using a single-case design. We used a novel push-button method to measure affective states and multilevel models to analyze the 6 single-case studies. As expected, we found that participants were more likely to have a no-self/spiritual or joy/elation experience toward the end of a meditation session than toward the beginning. Contrary to what we expected, there was no relationship between the meditation session variables and having an anguish/suffering experience. Individual differences had a non-negligible influence on the relationships for all 3 affective states, meaning that meditation did not produce the same results in the participants. We conclude by discussing how our method can be incorporated into future studies of meditation, or other religious variables.