• HOME
  • NEWS
  • EXPLORE
    • CAREER
      • Companies
      • Jobs
    • EVENTS
    • iGEM
      • News
      • Team
    • PHOTOS
    • VIDEO
    • WIKI
  • BLOG
  • COMMUNITY
    • FACEBOOK
    • INSTAGRAM
    • TWITTER
  • CONTACT US
Wednesday, March 29, 2023
BIOENGINEER.ORG
No Result
View All Result
  • Login
  • HOME
  • NEWS
  • EXPLORE
    • CAREER
      • Companies
      • Jobs
        • Lecturer
        • PhD Studentship
        • Postdoc
        • Research Assistant
    • EVENTS
    • iGEM
      • News
      • Team
    • PHOTOS
    • VIDEO
    • WIKI
  • BLOG
  • COMMUNITY
    • FACEBOOK
    • INSTAGRAM
    • TWITTER
  • CONTACT US
  • HOME
  • NEWS
  • EXPLORE
    • CAREER
      • Companies
      • Jobs
        • Lecturer
        • PhD Studentship
        • Postdoc
        • Research Assistant
    • EVENTS
    • iGEM
      • News
      • Team
    • PHOTOS
    • VIDEO
    • WIKI
  • BLOG
  • COMMUNITY
    • FACEBOOK
    • INSTAGRAM
    • TWITTER
  • CONTACT US
No Result
View All Result
Bioengineer.org
No Result
View All Result
Home NEWS Science News Chemistry

10-minute meditation could help reduce Brexit polarization

Bioengineer by Bioengineer
May 11, 2022
in Chemistry
Reading Time: 3 mins read
0
Share on FacebookShare on TwitterShare on LinkedinShare on RedditShare on Telegram

In a new study, a brief, audio-guided, befriending-themed meditation reduced affective polarization between people on the “Remain” versus “Leave” sides of the U.K.’s Brexit referendum. Otto Simonsson of the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden, and colleagues present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on May 11, 2022.

The European Union flag pictured next to the Union Jack.

Credit: Rocco Dipoppa, Unsplash CC0 (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)

In a new study, a brief, audio-guided, befriending-themed meditation reduced affective polarization between people on the “Remain” versus “Leave” sides of the U.K.’s Brexit referendum. Otto Simonsson of the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden, and colleagues present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on May 11, 2022.

In a nationwide referendum in 2016, the British electorate voted for the U.K. to leave the European Union. Since then, research has identified significant levels of affective polarization between “Remainers” and “Leavers.” Prior research has also shown that a brief befriending meditation can reduce affective polarization between Democrats and Republicans in the U.S., but whether similar effects might extend to the U.K. has been unclear.

Now, Simonsson and colleagues have explored the potential effects of meditation in a study of 501 Remainers and 433 Leavers. They randomly assigned each participant to listen to one of two 10-minute audio recordings. One was an audio-guided befriending meditation that instructed listeners to bring friendship and kindness to themselves and to others. The other instead featured educational information about meditation. The researchers then assessed participants’ levels of affective polarization—the divide between positive feelings toward one’s own political group and negative feelings toward the other.

Statistical analysis of the results found lower levels of affective polarization for people who listened to the meditation versus for those who listened to the informational recording. Additional questions answered by the participants suggested that the underlying psychological mechanism for this effect may involve an increase in perceived commonality between sides for those who listened to the meditation.

These findings suggest that an audio-guided befriending meditation could help boost perceived commonality between opposing political groups, and thereby reduce affective polarization. Such a strategy could be employed in public campaigns in the U.K. to address polarization between Remainers and Leavers, the authors suggest.

The authors also suggest various areas for future research, such as whether popular meditation-based apps can impact affective polarization, and the short- versus long-term effects of meditation on affective polarization.

The authors add: “The results in this study build on previous findings and provide additional support for the potential benefits of meditation in political contexts.”

#####

In your coverage please use this URL to provide access to the freely available article in PLOS ONE: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0267493  

Citation: Simonsson O, Goldberg SB, Marks J, Yan L, Narayanan J (2022) Bridging the (Brexit) divide: Effects of a brief befriending meditation on affective polarization. PLoS ONE 17(5): e0267493. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0267493

Author Countries: Sweden, U.K., U.S.A., Singapore

Funding: This study was funded by Singapore Ministry of Education Academic Research Fund Tier 1 (T1 17/2019/115) and National University of Singapore Research Fund to JN. OS was supported by the Sweden-America Foundation. SG was supported by a grant (K23AT010879) from the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health.



Journal

PLoS ONE

DOI

10.1371/journal.pone.0267493

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Bridging the (Brexit) divide: Effects of a brief befriending meditation on affective polarization

Article Publication Date

11-May-2022

COI Statement

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Share12Tweet7Share2ShareShareShare1

Related Posts

One of the proteins identified

Story tip: Plant, microbe matchmaking for better bioenergy crops

March 28, 2023
Maia Williams

Spotting the brightest gamma-ray burst ever recorded

March 28, 2023

Tiny yet hazardous: New study shows aerosols produced by contaminated bubble bursting are far smaller than predicted

March 28, 2023

Chinese space telescopes accurately measure brightest gamma-ray burst ever detected

March 28, 2023

POPULAR NEWS

  • ChatPandaGPT

    Insilico Medicine brings AI-powered “ChatPandaGPT” to its target discovery platform

    66 shares
    Share 26 Tweet 17
  • Northern and southern resident orcas hunt differently, which may help explain the decline of southern orcas

    44 shares
    Share 18 Tweet 11
  • Skipping breakfast may compromise the immune system

    43 shares
    Share 17 Tweet 11
  • Insular dwarfs and giants more likely to go extinct

    35 shares
    Share 14 Tweet 9

About

We bring you the latest biotechnology news from best research centers and universities around the world. Check our website.

Follow us

Recent News

Revolutionary battery technology to boost EV range 10-fold or more

‘Chemical cube’ tools for building new drugs and agrochemicals

Detecting coral biodiversity in seawater samples

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 48 other subscribers
  • Contact Us

Bioengineer.org © Copyright 2023 All Rights Reserved.

No Result
View All Result
  • Homepages
    • Home Page 1
    • Home Page 2
  • News
  • National
  • Business
  • Health
  • Lifestyle
  • Science

Bioengineer.org © Copyright 2023 All Rights Reserved.

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password?

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In