The impact of short-term meditation on ego-depletion in college students / 中华行为医学与脑科学杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective To explore the impact of short-term meditation on ego-depletion in college students.Methods Sixty college students without any meditation and mental calculation experience were recruited voluntarily,and were allocated randomly and equally into three groups the control group,the rest group,and the meditation group(n=20 in each group).Participants completed the positive affect and negative affect scale and the first handgrip test.A difficult mental calculation task was used to induce ego depletion.After that,the control group performed the second handgrip test immediately,and the rest group had a 5-min break,while the meditation group had a 5-min meditation practice following a meditation audio.Participants then reported the task difficulty and the impulse to write down intermediate answers during the mental calculation task.They also finished the positive and negative affect scale again.The task difficulty and impulse scores,the number of response items and correct items,the change of the handgrip time and the mood between pretest and posttest were compared among three groups.Results There were no differences in the task difficulty score,the impulse score,the number of response items and correct items among the three groups (all P>0.05).The handgrip time was shorter in posttest ((71.91±24.58) s) than in pretest ((91.39±37.63) s) in the control group (P0.05).There were no differences in the change of positive and negative affect between pretest and posttest (all P>0.05).Conclusions hort-term meditation buffers ego depletion in college students,which cannot be attributed to affect.