2014 Cristiano Crescentini - Effects of An 8-Week Meditation Program On The Implicit and

Consciousness and Cognition 30 (2014) 266280
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Consciousness and Cognition

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/concog
Effects of an 8-week meditation program on the implicit and

explicit attitudes toward religious/spiritual self-representations
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, Italy

Department of Psychology, University of Rome La Sapienza, Rome, Italy
c
Section of Neurosurgery, University-Hospital Santa Maria della Misericordia, Udine, Italy
d
Section of Neurology, University-Hospital Santa Maria della Misericordia, Udine, Italy
e
Perceptual Robotics (PERCRO) Laboratory, Scuola Superiore SantAnna, Pisa, Italy
b
a r t i c l e
i n f o
Article history:
Received 25 July 2013
Available online 19 October 2014
Keywords:
Mindfulness meditation
ReligiousnessSpirituality
Implicit association test
a b s t r a c t
Explicit self-representations often conict with implicit and intuitive self-representations,
with such discrepancies being seen as a source of psychological tension. Most of previous
research on the psychological effects of mindfulness-meditation has assessed peoples selfattitudes at an explicit level, leaving unknown whether mindfulness-meditation promotes
changes on implicit self-representations. Here, we assessed the changes in implicit and
explicit self-related religious/spiritual (RS) representations in healthy participants following an 8-week mindfulness-oriented meditation (MOM) program. Before and after meditation, participants were administered implicit (implicit association test) and explicit (selfreported questionnaires) RS measures. Relative to control condition, MOM led to increases
of implicit RS in individuals whit low pre-existing implicit RS and to more widespread
increases in explicit RS. On the assumption that MOM practice may enhance the clarity
of ones transcendental thoughts and feelings, we argued that MOM allows people to transform 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 rst roots in high order propositional processes of deliberative
reasoning in which well-articulated beliefs, motivations, and goals shape individuals explicit attitudes. The second source
relies instead on largely automatic and associative processes in which intuitive, gut evaluations and feelings, which people
may or may not be aware of, shape individuals implicit attitudes (Gawronski & Bodenhausen, 2006; Jordan, Whiteld, &
Zeigler-Hill, 2007). For example, when we have to make decisions in our daily life, for instance choosing whether to accept
or not a new job, we are frequently faced with situations in which we experience a psychological conict between rational,
reective evaluations and other more intuitive feelings. Of importance, these conicts do not only occur during appreciation
of 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
Corresponding author at: Department of Human Sciences, University of Udine, Via Margreth 3, 33100 Udine, Italy. Fax: +39 0432 558342.
E-mail address: cristiano.crescentini@uniud.it (C. Crescentini).
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2014.09.013
1053-8100/ 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
C. Crescentini et al. / Consciousness and Cognition 30 (2014) 266280
267
the self includes both explicit aspects that are available to our conscious thinking and, eventually, to verbal description, and
more implicit aspects that are barely available to us (Morin, 2006).
Methodologically, while explicit attitudes are measured directly with self-report questionnaires and scales, implicit attitudes are inferred indirectly from peoples 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 nameletter
task (Nuttin, 1985), which are more difcult to control or to fake and do not require self-reection or the intent to self-evaluate on the part of the respondent.
A large body of research has shown that explicit and implicit measures of self-attitudes are frequently unrelated or
weakly correlated to each other, with implicit measures explaining some variability in attitudes that self-report, explicit
measures do not, for instance in elds such as religious/spiritual behavior and feelings in which self-report measures are particularly susceptible to desirable responding and other confounding factors (Bosson, Swann, & Pennebaker, 2000; Jordan
et 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 different
forms of psychological suffering (Bosson, Brown, Zeigler-Hill, & Swann, 2003; Briol, Petty, & Wheeler, 2006; Gawronski
& Bodenhausen, 2006; Koole et al., 2009; Schrder-Ab, Rudolph, & Schtz, 2007; Schrder-Ab, Rudolph, Wiesner, &
Schtz, 2007; Zeigler-Hill & Terry, 2007), and this justies the large effort that has been made in order to understand which
could be the factors able to moderate the concordance between explicit and implicit attitudes, hence contributing to a more
coherent self-image. For instance, it has been shown that when people rely more on intuitive feelings towards the self and
less on conscious self-reection, the congruence between explicit and implicit self-attitudes is encouraged. In different
experiments, this was obtained by engaging people in self-evaluation under time-pressure or under heightened cognitive
load (Koole et al., 2001), or yet by asking participants to complete implicit measures using gut feelings vs. reective
thought (Jordan et al., 2007; Pelham et al., 2005). Moreover, the correspondence between implicit and explicit self-measures
is the higher the more the implicit attitudes are perceived as valid and accepted (Gawronski & Bodenhausen, 2006; Jordan
et al., 2007).
A potentially useful construct for the study of individuals self-attitudes is mindfulness. Mindfulness is an attribute of
consciousness 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 activated self-feelings, thoughts, and sensations are not attempted to be changed by the perceiver but are instead observed and
accepted. Mindfulness awareness, and its cultivation through meditation, would operate through erosion of habitual patterns of responding and of the use of evaluative language and thinking; this would promote self-insights and a greater acceptance of ones internal states including intuitive feelings, potentially leading to transformation of implicit self-attitudes and
perhaps to better tuning of ones 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 that
most of the previous studies on the impact of mindfulness meditation on psychological health have only considered explicit
self-report measures. While this may have exaggerated the ease with which people were seen to change their attitudes in
these previous studies (Chambers et al., 2008; Wilson, Lindsey, & Schooler, 2000), the sole investigation of explicit cognition
has also precluded the possibility of taking into account the effects of mindfulness on implicit cognition, both in isolation and
together with explicit cognition. In fact, only a few studies exist on dispositional or state mindfulness (independently from
continued 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 congruency
between explicit and implicit self-measures (Brown & Ryan, 2003; Koole et al., 2009). Although very valuable, these previous
studies have, however, left unaddressed the issue of whether regular meditation practice during a mindfulness training period 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 mindfulness-oriented meditation training (MOM) on implicit and explicit religious/spiritual self-representations. Explicit and
implicit attitudes toward religiousness/spirituality (RS) were investigated in two groups of healthy, meditation nave, participants; the rst group was involved in a MOM training, while the other group was not involved in any meditation practice
and 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 mindfulness meditation training, although occurring within a secular context, may be associated with increases in explicit measures 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, in
the light of evidence suggesting that spirituality may be a possible mechanism by which mindfulness training leads to benecial outcomes such as improvements in medical and psychological symptoms (Carmody et al., 2008; Greeson et al., 2011),
268
it appears important to investigate the potential inuence of mindfulness meditation on RS at both levels of implicit and
explicit 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 scientic study of RS, including the benecial effects of mindfulness meditation, has so far neglected the contribution
of implicit measures that, as briey 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 associations
between the self and RS dimensions (RS-IAT). Generally speaking, the IAT is one of the most frequently used implicit tests to
measure 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 also
Crescentini 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 study
was to further validate initial applications of automatic self-concept research methods (i.e., RS-IAT) to the scientic study of
RS (LaBouff et al., 2010). On this view, we also aimed to extend to meditation research more recent and rened (in terms of
variety and psycholinguistic features of the stimuli employed) applications of RS-IAT showing fast plasticity of RS self-representations 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 stimuli from four categories of words two target categories (referring to the concept of self and other) and two attribute categories (RS and non-RS words) by pressing one of two response keys. In separate blocks, which are referred to as congruent
or incongruent on the basis of the expected direction of self-attribute associations (e.g., RS and self; see methods), each
response key is paired with one or the other target category and one or the other attribute category. Generally, the main
assumption of the IAT is that strongly associated concept-attribute pairs are easier to classify when they are associated to
the same response key than are weakly associated pairs. This difference is generally used to infer the individuals associations between the target category and specic evaluative attributes or traits investigated in an IAT.
Furthermore, to assess how specic the potential effects of MOM on implicit measures of RS self-representations were, we
employed another IAT which again called into question self/other-concepts but not RS dimensions. We thus developed a selfesteem-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 Temperament
and Character Inventory (TCI) (Cloninger, Przybeck, Svrakic, & Wetzel, 1994) and the index of core spiritual experiences
questionnaire (INSPIRIT) (Kass, Friedman, Lesserman, Zuttermeister, & Benson, 1991), as well as measures of dispositional
mindfulness (Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ) (Baer, Smith, Hopkins, Krietemeyer, & Toney, 2006), were also
collected.
Given the proposed intuitive nature of mindful awareness and the positive association between meditation and spiritual
experiences, we hypothesized that continued practice during an 8-week long MOM training could directly impact individuals implicit, as well as explicit, RS self-representations. We thus expected that the RS-IAT could be sensitive to manipulations 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 rst
session occurring on average 2.07 days before the MOM training starting date; the actual session time ranged from 8 days
before 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 these
two participants). Furthermore, the same measures were also administered to 14 out of the 15 participants (it was impossible to administer the tasks to one 47 year-old female participant after the MOM training) in a second session taking place
on average 6.57 days (range: 212 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 study
as control group. The latter sample of individuals was asked not to engage in any training course and was also tested in two
separate sessions. On average for the two groups, 69.5 days (range: 5581 days) passed between the two testing sessions. In
general, the two samples of participants were recruited through advertisements and by word of mouth from different professional contexts in the local population (master students, hospital employees -administrative personnel, nurses, physicians, general business employees). Participants were invited to take part to a psychological study that involved
responding to a series of questionnaires and performing computerized tasks at the beginning and at the end of an 8weekly-session training; the precise nature of the training and of the tests was explained only at the rst individual meeting,
thus reducing recruitment biases related to specic interest to meditation. Despite the limitations of a convenience sampling
procedure in terms of generalization of the results to the general population and the absence of an active control group (see
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Section 4 for further details), the fact that all recruited participants had no previous experience with mindfulness meditation
or with the outcome measures used in the study ensured that the research questions addressed in the current investigation
could adequately be answered. All participants reported normal or corrected-to normal vision, no past history of neurological or mental illness. Signed informed consent was obtained before participation in the study from all participants. The
study 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. The
training was based on the method recently proposed by Fabbro and Muratori (2012) which is in turn inspired by the Theravada schools of Buddhism (e.g., Gunaratana, 2002) as well as by western-based mindfulness programs such as the Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (Kabat-Zinn, 1982, 1990, 2003). The MOM training consisted of 8 weekly meetings of
about two hours each. Each meeting was organized in 3 phases: (a) 30 min of active teaching on topics related to meditative
practice (e.g., introduction to the basic historical and philosophical foundations of mindfulness; the relationship between
psychotherapy and meditation; the fundamentals of meditation practice), (b) 30 min of MOM practice, and (c) a nal
debrieng period of up to one hour where there was the opportunity for the participants to share their meditation experiences, gained both at home and throughout the course, with the other participants; the participants could also express
their difculties and ask questions to the instructor. Some typical topics of discussion could be related to the posture taken
during meditation, the best time to meditate at home, or some difculties as that of keeping a detached attitude, behaving
like 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 were
asked to mindfully and gently focus their attention on the different parts of the body; (iii) vipassana meditation, where subjects were encouraged to non-judgmentally observe their here-and-now mental experience, namely the ongoing stream of
internal thoughts and emotions as they arise.
At the end of the rst meeting, participants in the MOM training group were given a CD containing a recording of the
voice of the instructor guiding a MOM practice session of half an hour and were encouraged to listen to it as an aid for homework assignments which consisted of 30 min of daily meditation practice. Participants were required to keep a daily diary to
write down the times and duration of the practice. Moreover, to measure changes in dispositional mindfulness as due to the
MOM training, the participants were required to complete, in both the testing sessions conducted before and after the training, the FFMQ (Baer et al., 2006), which is a 39 item measure consisting of ve subscales (observing, describing, acting with
awareness, non-judging of inner experience, and non-reactivity to inner experience).
2.3. Experimental tasks
2.3.1. Implicit Association Test (IAT): Stimuli
The same procedure was used as by Crescentini et al. (2014) in order to select the stimulus words for the religiousspiritual/non-religiousnon-spiritual axis of the RS-IAT and for the goodbad axis of the SE-IAT. Thus, we ran a pilot study in
which 34 Italian individuals (range 1858 years-old; 19 female) not taking part in the experiment were asked to judge on
a 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 meaning has been learned for the rst time in spoken form or in writing), valence (ability of a word to elicit in the speaker and
listener positive or negative feelings), and religiousnessspirituality (the ease of a word to associate and to evoke religiousspiritual dimensions) of 190 words. A subset of 97 words with religiousspiritual (n = 52) or non-religiousnon-spiritual (n = 45) connotation were selected from the Measures of Religiosity book (Hill & Hood, 1999) and were chosen as
candidate stimuli for the RS-IAT. For the SE-IAT, 93 words with a positive (n = 47) or a negative (n = 46) valence were
selected, in part from past research on SE-IAT (Greenwald & Farnham, 2000). On the basis of these data, we selected 15 words
for each of the religiousspiritual, non-religiousnon-spiritual, good, and bad stimulus categories (Table 1; see also
Crescentini et al., 2014, Tables 1 and 2 for similar material). A series of one-way ANOVAs showed that stimuli used in the
two IATs were matched for imageability, age of acquisition, frequency of use in Italian language (CoLFIS database: Corpus
and Frequency Lexicon of Written Italian; Bertinetto et al., http://www.istc.cnr.it/grouppage/databases), and number of letters (all F(3, 56) < 1.74, p > .17, gp2 < 0.086). Similarly to Crescentini et al. (2014), one-way ANOVAs also showed that familiarity, concreteness, valence, and religiousnessspirituality 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 religiousspiritual
words were judged less familiar than good words (p < .01, all other p > .05), and less concrete than the other three categories
of words (all p < .01), with no difference between the latter three (all p > .05). Post hoc tests also showed that stimuli used in
the good category had more positive valence than the other three types of words and that religiousspiritual words were
judged more religiousspiritual than the other three types of words (all p < .01). Moreover, stimuli in the bad category
had more negative valence than the other three types of words (all p < .01) while stimuli in the non-religiousnon-spiritual
category were judged less religiousspiritual than words in the good category (p < .01) but as much religiousspiritual as
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Table 1
Word stimuli used in the RS-IAT and in the SE-IAT (Italian in parentheses).
ReligiousSpiritual
Non-religiousNon-spiritual
Good
Bad
Soul (Anima)
Believer (Credente)
God (Dio)
Divine (Divino)
Eternal (Eterno)
Faith (Fede)
Ethereal (Immateriale)
Inner (Interiore)
Meditation (Meditazione)
Omnipotent (Onnipotente)
Religious (Religioso)
Sacred (Sacro)
Saint (Santo)
Supernatural (Soprannaturale)
Spirit (Spirito)
Agnostic (Agnostico)
Atheist (Ateo)
Carnal (Carnale)
Cynical (Cinico)
Concreteness (Concretezza)
Body (Corpo)
Physical (Fisico)
Irreligious (Irreligioso)
Limited (Limitato)
Logical (Logico)
Material (Materiale)
Objective (Oggettivo)
Profane (Profano)
Tangible (Tangibile)
Earthly (Terreno)
Skillful (Abile)
Affable (Affabile)
Competent (Competente)
Available (Disponibile)
Excellent (Eccellente)
Excitement (Eccitazione)
Fabulous (Favoloso)
Favorable (Favorevole)
Gaiety (Gaiezza)
Magnicent (Magnico)
Honest (Onesto)
Perfect (Perfetto)
Pleasantness (Piacevolezza)
Triumph (Trionfo)
Virtuous (Virtuoso)
Blasphemous (Blasfemo)
Abrut (Brusco)
Bad (Brutto)
Illicit (Illecito)
Immoral (Immorale)
Indecent (Indecente)
Obscene (Osceno)
Hostile (Ostile)
Scandalous (Scandaloso)
Unfavorable (Sfavorevole)
Ugly (Sgradevole)
Unpleasant (Spiacevole)
Awful (Terribile)
Shameful (Vergognoso)
Vulgar (Volgare)
Table 2
Descriptive statistics for the stimulus words used in the RS-IAT and SE-IAT.
Word category
Imageability
Familiarity
Concreteness
AoA
Valence
Religiousness
Spirituality
Frequency
Number of
letters
Religiousspiritual
4.19
(.46)
3.67
(.35)
2.79
(.50)
4.28
(.62)
4.60
(.47)
5.72
(.38)
122.93
(107.38)
7.6
(3.05)
Non-religiousnonspiritual
4.22
(.86)
4.07
(1.01)
4.43
(.92)
4.88
(.91)
3.72
(.82)
2.56
(.26)
104.06
(217.16)
7.6
(1.99)
Good
4.50
(.49)
4.56
(.65)
4.19
(.35)
4.28
(.70)
5.49
(.44)
3.55
(.50)
86.40
(89.54)
8.67
(1.92)
Bad
4.52
(.43)
4.22
(.60)
4.05
(.49)
4.38
(.99)
2.38
(.21)
2.33
(.32)
60.06
(86.63)
8.2
(1.68)
Notes: Mean values for each stimulus category are based on judgments given on a seven-point scale (Imageability; Familiarity; Concreteness; Valence; and
ReligiousnessSpirituality) (a score of 7 denotes the highest score). For the Age of Acquisition (AoA) seven-point scale, 1 = 02 years and 7 = 1314 (or older)
years with intermediate scores denoting intermediate ages. See main text for the frequency variable. Standard deviations of the means are reported in
parentheses.
stimuli used in the bad category (p > .10). Overall, the pilot study corroborated the legitimacy of our RS and valence measures. 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 SelfOther 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 both
the RS-IAT and SE-IAT.
2.3.2. Implicit Association Test (IAT): Experimental procedure
As 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 in
front 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 keyboard with the index nger 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 incongruent condition blocks (see below) and familiarization blocks (blocks 1, 2, and 5 in Fig. 1) (Greenwald et al., 2003; LaBouff
et 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/nonspiritual (RS-IAT) and also associate the self with positive rather than with negative valence (SE-IAT). Thus, for the RS-IAT we
expected people showing better classications (reected 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 other
and RS words are associated to the other key (i.e., the incongruent RS-IAT condition). An RS-IAT effect is found when a person
is faster and/or more accurate in congruent than incongruent conditions. This effect would be suggestive of automatic associations between the self and RS dimensions, indicating that a person automatically perceives the self as more religious
spiritual than non-religiousnon-spiritual (Crescentini et al., 2014; LaBouff et al., 2010). To be more specic, in the congruent
271
Fig. 1. Schematic structure of the ReligiousnessSpirituality (RS) IAT and Self-Esteem (SE) IAT. Each IAT consists of 7 blocks in which a series of stimulus
words 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 pressing
two corresponding response keys (e.g., in the rst block of the RS-IAT, religiousspiritual and non-religiousnon-spiritual words are presented one at a time
and have to be classied as being either religiousspiritual (left key) or non-religiousnon-spiritual (right key); right key response is the correct response in
the example). In the reported examples, the congruent condition occurs before than the incongruent condition in both the two IATs. The number of trials in
each 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-related
words and religiousspiritual words, and the right response key for other-related words and non-religiousnon-spiritual
words. Conversely, in the incongruent condition (blocks 6&7 of Fig 1, left part), participants had to press the left response
key for self-related words and non-religiousnon-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 left
response 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 left
response key for self-related words and bad words and the right key for other-related words and good words. Following
272
the same logic of the RS-IAT, an SE-IAT effect (i.e., better performance in congruent than incongruent blocks) would suggest
that 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 ones self-concept as compared to
others; in a similar way, in the SE-IAT congruency refers to the match between the SE attribute and ones self-concept as
compared to others. In our study, we expected to nd 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 until
the participant gave a correct response in each trial. Indeed, if an error occurred in a trial, a red X appearing below the word
stimulus prompted participants to correct the mistake by pressing the correct key. After response, the next stimulus
appeared after 500 ms, during which only the category labels were visible on the screen. For both participant groups, half
of participants performed rst the RS-IAT and second the SE-IAT; the reverse order was applied for the second half of participants. Moreover, for half of the participants in both groups, the positions of Blocks 1, 3, and 4 were switched with Blocks
5, 6, and 7 for both IATs. Finally, in both sessions and before the administration of each IAT, participants were shown a
printed list with all the words belonging to the four relevant categories and were asked to carefully read all the stimuli; this
was done to allow the participants to familiarize themselves with the stimuli before performing the tasks.
2.3.3. Explicit religiousness/spirituality measures
In 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 experiences
questionnaire (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, reecting ones tendency to identify the self as
an integral part of the universe as a whole. Similarly, the INSPIRIT questionnaire measures intrinsic religiousness/spirituality
and 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, carried out separately for the two IATs, aimed at testing the difference between the MOM and control groups (categorical predictor) 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 ANCOVAs
were carried out (one for the INSPIRIT and the other for the ST questionnaire) in order to test the difference between the
MOM and control groups (categorical predictor) in the overall pattern of INSPIRIT/ST responses after the training (dependent
variable), controlling for pre-existing explicit attitudes (i.e., the pattern of INSPIRIT/ST responses before the training; continuous predictor/covariate).
Since traditional ANCOVA designs for continuous and categorical predictor variables are appropriate when the latter two
variables do not interact in inuencing the outcome measures (homogeneity of regression slopes assumption), before running each ANCOVA we used the homogeneity of slope design to test whether the continuous and categorical predictors interacted in inuencing 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 categorical predictors interact in inuencing responses. Finally, if an interaction was found in the separate slope design, we
assessed group differences on the dependent variable at particular levels of the covariate (see below) using a factorial
ANOVA design (Green & Salkind, 2011).
For the IAT data, analyses were primarily performed on the mean D scores measuring the IAT effect, computed for both
the SE-IAT and RS-IAT following the improved algorithm procedure described by Greenwald et al. (2003). In particular, this
method includes data from both practice and test blocks (blocks 3 and 4, respectively for congruent conditions, and blocks 6
and 7, respectively for incongruent conditions in Fig 1), eliminates trials >10,000 ms (just one trial was removed in our
study), excludes from the analyses subjects for whom more than 10% of responses were faster than 300 ms (none of our subjects fell in this category), and removes and replaces error trials with the mean latency of the correct trials in the corresponding performance block plus a penalty of 600 ms. To compute the D score measure, the mean RT differences between critical
trials (i.e., block 6 minus block 3 and block 7 minus block 4) were divided by the pooled standard deviation of all trials in the
associated critical blocks (i.e., blocks 3&6 and blocks 4&7). Finally, the D score variable was computed as the equal-weight
average 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 correct
responses was applied in order to obtain better normalization of accuracy data before performing parametric analyses) and
on the mean RT data (log transformation of raw RTs applied, again to obtain better normalization of RT data) because we
wanted to be able to test for the potential effects of MOM separately on congruent vs. incongruent IAT trials and on RT
vs. accuracy data, with such effects being impossible to differentiate when relying only on D scores, in which responses
latencies are adjusted for accuracy and individuals latency variability. The results of the latency/accuracy analyses are
reported in the Supplementary materials.
Overall, similarly to the previous RS-IAT version (LaBouff et al., 2010), the resulting D score measures were used as indicators 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 indicated faster categorization in the congruent condition (self/religiousspiritual and other/non-religiousnon-spiritual) than
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in the opposed incongruent condition. In a similar fashion, the bigger the relative difference in response latencies or accuracy
between congruent and incongruent IAT blocks, the stronger the implicit associations a person holds with regard to RS (RSIAT) or SE (SE-IAT). In the analyses below (and in the Supplementary materials for latency/accuracy data), we refer to these
constructs 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 giving 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-score
items). For the INSPIRIT, the scores for each of its item range from 1 (low) to 4 (high), with higher scores indicating more
spirituality. The INSPIRIT score is the average rating of all answered questions (range = 14). The signicance threshold of
p < .05 was used in all statistical tests. In the analyses, effect sizes are reported as partial eta squared (gp2). Statistical trends
are discussed when .05 < p < .10.
3. Results
3.1. Efcacy 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 efcacy of the MOM training by evaluating the FFMQ scores at both Session 1 and Session 2. A series of 5
dependent-sample t tests showed that the MOM training led to signicantly increased scores in the describing (mean raw
scores 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 3.60
vs. 20.42 3.06, t(13) = 1.97, p < .07, gp2 = 0.231). Corroborating the data from the FFMQ, the data reported by participants
in their meditation diary showed that they satisfactorily complied with homework assignments. Indeed, inspection of the
diaries showed that the participants globally meditated on average 5.14 1.28 days a week. Of interest, however, home practice of mindfulness meditation exercises was not related to the extent of change in the mindfulness facets (range of Pearson
correlation coefcients: r = .34/.25, p = .23/.98). One possibility for this lack of relation, which cannot be excluded on the
basis of our data, is that measuring dispositional mindfulness by using the self-report FFMQ a few days after the completion
of the MOM course may have caused an inated/placebo effect whereby MOM participants were more prone to report
increased 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 and
RS-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 importance, this indicated the absence of differences between participant groups in implicit SE and RS before the MOM training
and this may rule out the possibility that any systematic selection biases could have been present at baseline (i.e., Session
1), potentially affecting the results obtained after the MOM course. On the basis of these initial data, we rst 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). Error
bars represent standard deviations of the means. Higher D scores indicate higher implicit Self-Esteem (i.e., larger SE-IAT effect) and higher implicit
ReligiousnessSpirituality (i.e., larger RS-IAT effect).
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effects of MOM training on the implicit association of the self to RS attributes. We ran a homogeneity of slope design with
Session 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 categorical predictor (F(1, 25) = 4.55, p < .05, gp2 = 0.154). We thus turned to a corresponding separate slope design which conrmed
the 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 main
effect 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 attitudes
by 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 independent variables. The latter factor was codied at three levels of Session 1 RS-IAT D score separately for MOM and Controls in
order to have a similar number of subjects for each level (Low: 0.5 standard deviation SD below the mean of the Session 1
RS-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 group
mean). The analysis showed the main effect of Session 1-Subgroup (F(2, 23) = 6.07, p < .01, gp2 = 0.345) and the interaction
between Group and Session 1-Subgroup (F(2, 23) = 4.92, p < .02, gp2 = 0.299). The latter interaction was supported by a large
effect size and this may ameliorate a possible concern related to limited cell size in the conditions compared in the factorial
ANOVA. Finally, the main effect of Group was not signicant (F(1, 23) = 1.71, p = .20, gp2 = 0.069). Duncan post hoc tests performed for the 2-way interaction showed that MOM participants 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 (p < .01; Fig 3). No difference 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 2
than controls in the Medium and High Session 1-Subgroups (both p < .01), there were no differences among the MOM participant subgroups in their level of implicit RS after the course (all p > .09). In sum, the MOM course increased implicit RS
particularly in those subjects who had a low pre-existing implicit RS attitude. More generally, these ndings indicate a role
of mindfulness meditation in modulating participants implicit RS self-representations. Consistent with this result, the analysis of the RS-IAT accuracy data (see Supplementary material and Figs. 1S and 2S) showed that the MOM training led to a
better ability to associate the self to RS dimensions particularly in those individuals who had a low pre-existing attitude
to 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 a
homogeneity 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-signicant two-way interaction (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 Session
2; the main effect of Group membership was not signicant (F(1, 26) = 0.12, p = .73, gp2 = 0.004). This latter result suggested
that 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 both
subject 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; and
Medium: 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 asterisk
indicates a signicant difference in the D score between subject groups.
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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, a
series of 4 independent-sample t tests only showed a signicant difference between MOM and control participants for
the 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 for
mean INSPIRIT and ST values). Thus, analogously to the implicit measures, the data on the explicit scales indicated no differences between participant groups before the MOM training. Moreover, also for the explicit RS measures we followed
the same rationale of the previous analyses. Thus, we rst carried out two homogeneity of slope designs (one on INSPIRIT
and one on ST scores) with Session 2 INSPIRIT (or ST) scores as the dependent variable, Session 1 INSPIRIT (or ST) scores
as a covariate, and Group membership (MOM/Controls) as a categorical predictor. Both analyses returned a non-signicant
two-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 other
for the ST scores. The ANCOVA carried out on the INSPIRIT scores showed the main effect of both the covariate (Session 1
INSPIRIT 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: mean
scores at Session 1: 2.32, SD = 0.72; mean scores at Session 2: 2.30, SD = 0.69). Similarly, the ANCOVA carried out on the
ST scores also showed the signicant contribution of the covariate (Session 1 ST scores) (F(1, 26) = 69.39, p < .01,
gp2 = 0.727) and a marginally signicant 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: mean
scores at Session 1: 0.48, SD = 0.19; mean scores at Session 2: 0.45, SD = 0.20). Thus, beyond the expected consistency
between the individual scores at Session 1 and Session 2, the data on the explicit measures of RS showed increased scores
for MOM vs. Controls as a function of the testing session; in other words, the data indicate a modulatory role of MOM for
explicit 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 research
with the RS-IAT and other types of IATs has proved the existence of implicitexplicit correspondence (e.g., Hofmann,
Gawronski, Gschwendner, Le, & Schmitt, 2005; LaBouff et al., 2010). In order to assess such possible association, in the present study we tested for correlations (using the Pearson coefcient) between the individual INSPIRIT and ST scores and the
individual RS-IAT and SE-IAT D scores, expecting to nd signicant correlations only with the rst of the two IATs. We considered the whole group of 29 participants in these correlations and we focused on data from Session 1 only. We found that
the INSPIRIT scores correlated positively and specically with the RS-IAT D scores (r = .40, p = .03; r = .07, p = .73 for the SEIAT D scores). In a similar manner, the ST scores marginally correlated positively and specically 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 more
the participants explicitly judged themselves to be religious/spiritual, the more they showed an implicit attitude to associate
themselves to RS dimensions. Globally, these correlational results suggest a close link between implicit and explicit measures 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 separately for MOM and control participants. In more detail, we calculated explicit and implicit indexes of increased RS in both
participant groups by respectively subtracting the individual INSPIRIT and ST scores and the RS-IAT D scores observed in Session 1 from those measured in Session 2. We then tested for correlations between the explicit and implicit change indexes.
The only signicant correlation was between the RS-IAT D score index of increased RS and the INSPIRIT index of increased RS
for the MOM group (r = .72, p = .003; all other r < .47, p > .092). The signicant correlation in the MOM group indicated that
the more the participants explicitly felt to be more religious/spiritual after vs. before the MOM training, the more they
showed an increased implicit attitude to associate themselves to RS dimensions. Although the small samples suggest caution
in interpreting this result, which hence would be better considered as additional information conrming the correlation
involving the overall sample of participants (namely further showing a certain degree of implicit/explicit RS correspondence), the absence of such relation in the control group highlights the role of MOM in promoting congruent increases in
implicit 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 explicit
self-referential representations related to RS. To this end, we had a group of participants involved in an 8-week mindfulnessoriented meditation (MOM) training and a control group not involved in any training. In two different testing sessions both
participant groups had to complete implicit and explicit measures of RS. As expected, the data suggest that the MOM training
was able to affect both implicit and explicit RS dimensions. More specically, we found that participating in the MOM training increased implicit RS particularly in those subjects who had a low pre-existing implicit RS attitude. Thus, MOM participants with a low implicit RS attitude before the meditation course showed higher implicit RS at Session 2 than control
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participants with low implicit RS at Session 1. While these data suggest a role of mindfulness meditation in modulating participants implicit RS self-representations, a similar modulatory effect was not found for implicit SE (D score analysis, Section 3.2). Moreover, complementing these results concerning the RS-IAT, the analyses of the accuracy data highlighted a
positive modulatory effect of the MOM training on the performance of the congruent trials, at least in subjects who had a
low pre-existing attitude to associate the self with RS attributes (see Supplementary material). Moreover, the data on the
explicit measures of RS showed a more widespread modulatory role of MOM for explicit RS self-representations, in that
MOM participants globally reported to be more religious/spiritual and self-transcendent than controls after the meditation
course (Section 3.3). Finally, in the MOM group we found that implicit and explicit RS self-representations increased congruently 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 of
implicit RS vs. explicit RS self-representations by means of a MOM course lasting 8 weeks. Indeed, while explicit RS representations increased following the MOM training independently from the pre-existing levels of explicit RS, implicit RS
increased only for those participants who had particularly low pre-existing levels of implicit RS. If on the one hand explicit
attitudes are considered as more recently acquired attitudes that coexist with implicit attitudes, on the other hand the latter
may be more difcult to transform because they may reect 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 asymmetric
or symmetric changes in explicit and implicit attitudes). Moreover, as mentioned in the Introduction, explicit measures may
also be more subject to desirable responding and other confounding factors which may contribute to overestimate the
observed changes.
The present ndings extend in a number of important ways the results of those few previous studies that tried to put into
relations the independent elds of implicit (social) cognition and meditation research (Brown & Ryan, 2003; Hutcherson
et al., 2008; Koole et al., 2009; Levesque & Brown, 2007; Sauer et al., 2011; Strick et al., 2012). First of all, these previous
studies 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 expert
or nave 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 persons
not 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 more
on longer lasting changes in individuals trait, rather than state, mindfulness (Cahn & Polich, 2006) (see also the results
on the FFMQ reported in Section 3.1), and on the related effects on implicit and explicit self-referential RS. Accordingly, participants in the current study were neither explicitly instructed to be mindful nor asked to meditate before or during the
experiment. Moreover, in the second testing session included in our study the experimental material was administered to
MOM participants after, on average, about one week from the end of the course (Section 2.1), thus avoiding that performing
the task immediately after 2 h of engagement with mindfulness meditation could potentially affect, among others, state
mindfulness levels.
An additional point of novelty of the current study concerns more specically the type of self-attitude investigated,
namely RS. While the few previous studies investigating the relation between mindfulness and implicit cognition have
focused 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 research
on 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 quite
surprising that, while many traditional sources speak of meditation as a spiritual practice, empirical research on this aspect is
lower as compared to any other area whereby the effects of meditation are recognized (Baer, 2010). Nonetheless, spiritual
growth and spiritual commitment are increasingly accepted as a valid treatment goal; for instance, in the context of treatments based on mindfulness meditation, the spiritual effects of meditation have been considered to be important mediators
of the therapeutic effects in areas such as physical health, emotional regulation, interpersonal relationships, and also in substance 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 experiences (Baer, 2010). Religiousness and spirituality are universal phenomena, being ubiquitous in peoples lives, and can be
dened as the complex of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that reect the ultimate concerns of people in relation to unseen
realities/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 identication with ones self promoted by mindfulness meditation (Baer, 2010). Indeed, mindfulness meditation is characterized
by an attitude of openness and acceptance of present-moment experience, in which thoughts and feelings are observed as
events in the mind without over-identifying the self with them and without reacting to them. Therefore, the development of
a mindful awareness, cultivated through mindfulness meditation, may foster intuitive experiences of non-self or extendedself in the practitioners. These may include individuals experiences of a sense of relationship with a high, transcendent
power and of an intuitive feeling of connection with nature and other individuals at large. Such a possibility would account
for the increase in explicit RS observed in the current study using the ST and INSPIRIT measures, which indeed make explicit
reference to transcendental representations of the self and to belief in the existence of God as a criterion for spirituality, and
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for the increase in implicit RS whereby religious and spiritual terms were more easily related to the self in the RS-IAT, at least
by 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 prepost MOM effects found on the
RS-IAT for a subset of participants may highlight the importance of continued mindfulness meditation practice in changing
automatic, implicit self-attitudes (Hutcherson et al., 2008). Indeed, systematic practice of such a technique is believed to
gradually transform habitual patterns of responding and to facilitate the uncovering of previously inaccessible feelings about
the self (Brown & Ryan, 2003; Chambers et al., 2008; Koole et al., 2009). Thus, it appears particularly important in promoting
changes in implicit attitudes, which are thought to reect robust evaluative representations, having their origins in longterm personal experiences (Gawronski & Bodenhausen, 2006; Wilson et al., 2000). The fact that only those subjects with
low pre-existing implicit RS were able to transform their implicit RS attitude after a two-month long MOM course might
suggest that these individuals were less spiritually mature than the other individuals before the course, in that their evaluative automatic self-representations concerning RS were less well developed and dened (technically in the RS-IAT this
would reect into a reduced difference between congruent and incongruent trials and hence to lower D scores). Thus, the
practicing of rituals and spiritual behaviors, even in a non-overtly religious context such as that of a MOM course, may have
taken root particularly in these subjects, powerfully inuencing their implicit religious/spiritual self-concepts and helping
them 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 spiritual
maturity (e.g., Vaughan, 2002).
Undoubtedly, we cannot answer the question whether a longer MOM course would have allowed all participants, independently of their pre-existing implicit RS attitudes, to transform their implicit religious/spiritual self-concept, as already
happened for explicit RS with an 8-week course (see also below for a further discussion about the limitations of not having
a follow-up evaluation). Nonetheless, the absence of an effect of the MOM training on implicit self-esteem in the current
study, a result that parallels similar ones found in previous researches employing brief, single meditation exercises (Koole
et al., 2009), further suggests that not all types of implicit self-attitudes are subject to changes by protracted mindfulness
meditation, with some implicit responses globally appearing more resistant to change than others (e.g., implicit self-esteem
vs. implicit RS self-representations). Overall, these results highlight the need to broaden the aims of the current study by
further examining the effects of brief and continued meditation practice on different types of implicit self-representations
and by using diverse measures of implicit cognition (e.g., IAT in the current study and nameletter preferences in Koole
et al., 2009).
Although aspects of RS experiences other than intuitive experiences of non- or extended-self, such as meaning and inner
peace, may have contributed to our results being also linked to mindfulness meditation (Carmody et al., 2008), the present
study highlights how important it is to further explore, either directly or indirectly with explicit and implicit tests, the spiritual component of meditation. This is to foster our knowledge both of the benecial effects on health arising from the practice and of the basic psychological processes and mechanisms of actions that underpin mindfulness-based therapies. In our
opinion, crucial aspects that need to be addressed by future research include trying to extend the present ndings by also
taking into account medical and psychological symptoms in experiments more explicitly focused on the salutary effects
of mindfulness and spirituality. Moreover, RS scales and tests more secular in nature than the INSPIRIT and the actual version
of the RS-IAT could be used to further investigate the different facets of the multidimensional construct of spirituality in secular 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 meditation
practice on implicit and explicit self-attitudes concerns the congruency between the implicit and explicit measures. As
already mentioned in the Introduction, concordance between explicit and implicit self-attitudes is important for psychological health. A number of psychological problems have indeed been reported following conicts between implicit and explicit
psychological processes. As a few examples, individuals with high explicit self-esteem but low implicit self-esteem expose
traits of a narcissistic personality (Bosson et al., 2003); on the contrary, people with the opposite conguration, i.e. with high
scores on measures of implicit self-esteem and low scores on measures of explicit self-esteem, seem to be subject to maladaptive forms of perfectionism (Schrder-Ab, Rudolph, & Schtz, 2007; Schrder-Ab, Rudolph, Wiesner, et al., 2007;
Zeigler-Hill & Terry, 2007; see also Briol et al., 2006; Koole et al., 2009). On this view, future studies should try to extend
to individuals involved in a mindfulness meditation program and to RS and/or SE measures the results of those few previous
studies that showed a stronger relation between implicit and explicit affect and self-esteem in meditation nave individuals
with high vs. low dispositional mindfulness (Brown & Ryan, 2003) or in subjects who were engaged in a brief meditation
exercise before vs. after completing implicit and explicit self-measures (Koole et al., 2009). This would allow one testing
the idea that continued meditation practice fullls signicant self-regulatory functions, possibly by letting intuitive self-feelings 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 that
mindfulness 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 spirituality
were considered as a single construct in the current study, and used interchangeably as compared to non-RS when building
the RS-IAT (Crescentini et al., 2014; LaBouff et al., 2010). However, although the two terms are highly correlated, with most
people dening themselves as both religious and spiritual, some recent research considers religiousness and spirituality as
distinct constructs with only the former dened as linked to institutionalized practices and beliefs and the latter as more
278
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 attempt
to use an IAT more specically focused on the S side of the RS multidimensional construct. Such a S-IAT would be more easily
generalizable 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 clashes
with 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 context of recent researches on the effects that different cultural and religion backgrounds can have on the neurocognitive bases
of self-representation (e.g., Chiao et al., 2009, 2010; Zhu, Zhang, Fan, & Han, 2007), some recent studies have shown that Buddhist (but also Christian) participants engaged in self-referential processing during trait judgment tasks remembered selfrelated trait words better than other-related trait words (Han et al., 2008, 2010). This was held to reect the involvement
of specic neural substrates (dorsal medial prefrontal cortex, DMPFC) in the elaboration (reappraisal and evaluation more
in particular) of information related to the self in Buddhists (or Christians) regardless of practicing the doctrine of impermanent or no-self Anatta, or the spiritual request for self-transcendence that would shape a minimal subjective sense of
self (selessness) in Buddhists or Christians, respectively (Han et al., 2008, 2010; see also Wu, Wang, He, Mao, & Zhang,
2010). These ndings may be seen to ameliorate any doubts about the utility of using selfother discrimination tasks to evaluate 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 MOM
training on implicit and explicit RS, rather than directly studying the effects on participants psychological health. Although
an implicit measure of self-esteem was also collected (SE-IAT), the use of an explicit measure of SE and of markers of psychological well-being would have allowed us to also test for any potential role of mindfulness meditation in fostering positive effects on explicit SE and in the promotion of psychological health. Such possible effects could also have been put into
relation with the effects on the implicit and explicit RS. Secondly, the current longitudinal study was the rst to put into
relation the effects of a MOM training, and thus of changes in individuals trait mindfulness, on implicit and explicit RS. However, the lack of a follow-up evaluation precludes any exact knowledge about how long lasting the changes in individuals RS
could be. As already mentioned, this point may also hold for changes in dispositional mindfulness (measured through the
self-report FFMQ), as these changes could have been overestimated by the subjects when measured shortly after an 8-week
long MOM course. A further limitation of the current study concerns the lack of an active control group, which makes more
difcult to denitively ascribe to meditation practice the changes observed in RS. However, the fact that the MOM training
was delivered to healthy participants and that the two groups of individuals were matched for initial levels of explicit RS (as
measured by the ST and INSPIRIT) may be seen to ameliorate any possible confound related to self-efcacy effects (Bandura,
1997; Wahbeh, Elsas, & Oken, 2008) or to differences in explicit motivation to participate in a MOM training as a way to
increase RS. That said, it is advisable that future studies aimed at testing mindfulness meditation as an active ingredient
in promoting changes in individuals RS will benet 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 training
may add to well-being as compared to any other psychological training course that requires participants to meet in group
and relax. What this study can state, however, is that MOM training is effective in changing self-representations related to
religiousness/spirituality, although we do not know exactly which are the specic psychological processes leading to these
changes.
In conclusion, the present study tested the effects of an 8-week mindfulness meditation program on implicit and explicit
self-referential religious/spiritual representations. We showed that continued meditation led to increased implicit RS in subjects who showed a low pre-existing implicit RS self-attitude; we also documented more widespread increases in explicit RS
after the meditation course and an overall congruency between increases in implicit and explicit RS in the MOM participants.
These ndings were attributed to a possible role of mindfulness meditation in favoring an experience of suspension of overidentication with ones self which in turn would foster intuitive experiences of transcendental connection with things
beyond the self. Finally, we believe that future studies interested in pinpointing the benecial effects of mindfulness meditation in both clinical and non-clinical populations should continue to take into consideration the implicit and explicit
aspects of spiritual growth and spiritual commitment.
Conict of Interest
The authors report no conicts of interest.
Acknowledgments
This research was supported by grants from the BIAL Foundation (Bursaries for Scientic Research, No. 66/10, to the fth
and second author) and from the Mind and Life Institute (Mind and Life Contemplative Fellowship 2012-04-001, to the fth
and second author). The rst 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.
279
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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Consciousness and Cognition

Effects of an 8-week meditation program on the implicit and

Department of Human Sciences, University of Udine, Udine, Italy

C. Crescentini et al. / Consciousness and Cognition 30 (2014) 266280

C. Crescentini et al. / Consciousness and Cognition 30 (2014) 266280

C. Crescentini et al. / Consciousness and Cognition 30 (2014) 266280

C. Crescentini et al. / Consciousness and Cognition 30 (2014) 266280

C. Crescentini et al. / Consciousness and Cognition 30 (2014) 266280

C. Crescentini et al. / Consciousness and Cognition 30 (2014) 266280

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C. Crescentini et al. / Consciousness and Cognition 30 (2014) 266280

C. Crescentini et al. / Consciousness and Cognition 30 (2014) 266280

3.3. Explicit measures of religiousness/spirituality

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Appendix A. Supplementary material

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