Elsevier

Consciousness and Cognition

Volume 21, Issue 3, September 2012, Pages 1476-1481
Consciousness and Cognition

Short Communication
Zen meditation and access to information in the unconscious

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2012.02.010Get rights and content

Abstract

In two experiments and two different research paradigms, we tested the hypothesis that Zen meditation increases access to accessible but unconscious information. Zen practitioners who meditated in the lab performed better on the Remote Associate Test (RAT; Mednick, 1962) than Zen practitioners who did not meditate. In a new, second task, it was observed that Zen practitioners who meditated used subliminally primed words more than Zen practitioners who did not meditate. Practical and theoretical implications are discussed.

Highlights

► We examined whether Zen meditation increases access to unconscious information. ► Advanced Zen practitioners meditated in the lab or not. ► Meditation increased performance on the Remote Associate Test. ► Meditation increased the use of subliminally primed words.

Introduction

The capacity of consciousness is small. We can consciously think a myriad of different thoughts, but we can only think about one thing at a time. We can read and thereby occupy consciousness with a book, but as soon as we inadvertently switch our mental searchlight onto something else – let’s not forget to get some groceries before the shop closes! – the book is temporarily “erased” from consciousness.

Conversely, the capacity of the unconscious mind is, presumably, vast. Several different things can be accessible or temporarily primed at the same time (Wegner & Smart, 1997). That is, multiple thoughts can be unconsciously active simultaneously, for instance the answer to a question we were asked earlier that day (Yaniv & Meyer, 1987), the solution to a problem we have been mulling over for a while (Poincaré, 1913), the thought of a cold drink on a hot day (Aarts, Dijksterhuis, & De Vries, 2001), or an embarrassing memory we try to suppress (Wegner, 1994) can most likely all be accessible, but not conscious, simultaneously.

Under most (though not all) circumstances, better access to unconscious processes is useful. The opening quote by filmmaker Lynch (2006) represents the notion that better access to the unconscious fosters creativity (see also Bowers et al., 1990, Zhong et al., 2008). In addition, goals (and needs and other motives) lead things that are instrumental for fulfilling these goals to become more accessible or unconsciously activated (Aarts et al., 2007, Bargh et al., 2001). This means that better access to the unconscious may, in principle at least, foster goal pursuit. Indeed, the idea that improved access to unconscious, “inner” processes is functional is at the heart of various theories about self-regulation (Brown et al., 2007, Carver and Scheier, 1981, Duval and Wicklund, 1972).

The capacity to access unconsciously activated information differs between individuals (Crawley, French, & Yesson, 2002). For instance, research on transliminality (Thalbourne, 2000) – defined as the tendency for psychological material to cross (trans) the threshold (limen) into or out of consciousness (Thalbourne, 2000, p. 31, see also Crawley et al., 2002, p. 887) – shows that some people use subliminally primed information more than others.

Here, we aim to investigate whether we can intentionally improve access to the unconscious. One potential way is to engage in Zen-meditation. Zen-meditation, or Zazen, is a technique rooted in Buddhist psychology (Brown et al., 2007). During Zen-meditation, people usually sit in the lotus position with the goal to regulate their attention. Concretely, people focus their attention “inwards” to their breathing and count (generally from 1 to 10) each time they exhale. We hypothesize that Zen-meditation not only leads to diminished attention to the surroundings (as shown by Kubose, 1976; and by Travis, Tecce, & Guttman, 2000), but also to heightened receptiveness to unconsciously activated or accessible (“inner”) information. Indeed, popular notions of meditation sometimes emphasize improved access to our inner mental world as one of the most important – or even as the single most important – effect of meditation.

However, there is no direct evidence for the hypothesis that meditation fosters access to accessible but unconscious information. Recent reviews (Brown et al., 2007, Cahn and Polich, 2006) have listed a number of well-documented positive consequences of meditation that, explicitly or implicitly, are at best suggestive to the idea that meditation improves access to unconscious information. As alluded to above, we know that meditation increases the ability to concentrate (Kubose, 1976, Travis et al., 2000) but this primarily shows that people become better at ignoring distracting stimuli in the environment. However, it does not necessarily mean that access to the unconscious is improved. Likewise, meditation decreases experienced stress load (Davidson, Goleman, & Schwartz, 1976) and leads to a faster decrease in heart rate after exposure to stressful filmclips (Goleman & Schwartz, 1976), but it is not clear whether improved access to unconscious processes is (one of the) mediating processes.

Other psychological experiments have demonstrated that meditation (or other ways to increase mindfulness) leads to a greater concordance between unconscious and conscious reports of self-related attributes (Brown and Ryan, 2003, Trash and Elliot, 2002), but again, whether increased access to the unconscious is the cause of this greater correspondence is not yet clear. Koole and colleagues (Koole, Govorun, Cheng, & Gallucci, 2009) recently showed that meditation led to increased congruence between implicit and explicit self-esteem, but this can have different causes. It is possible that the increased congruence is caused by people relying more on implicit self-esteem when assessing their own explicit self-esteem, because they have better access to their implicit (i.e., unconscious) self-esteem. However, there are other possible explanations. We know that the correlation between implicit and explicit self-esteem increases when people complete the questionnaire assessing explicit self-esteem faster (Koole, Dijksterhuis, & Van Knippenberg, 2001) and even after participants are primed with the concept of honesty (Dijksterhuis, Albers, & Bongers, 2009). It is very well possible that the effects reported by Koole et al. (2009) were caused by greater honesty among meditators rather than increased access to unconscious processes per se. In sum, a strict test of this assumed important effect of meditation has not yet been reported. Finally, there is also suggestive evidence from EEG studies. Aftanas and Golocheikine (2001) measured delta, theta and alpha bands among (relatively experienced) meditators. They found that meditation led to changes in local theta and lower alpha power as well as to theta coherence changes. These changes are associated with both a positive emotional state, and, more importantly here, with internalized attention.

We conducted two experiments in which we invited Zen-meditators to participate. Some were asked to meditate immediately prior to the experiment, whereas others were not. Hence, we only investigated short-term effects of meditation. We made sure that the people who did not meditate also engaged in a relaxing activity just prior to the experiment.

We used two different research paradigms. In both experiments, meditators and non-meditators completed a number of RAT (Remote Associates Test; Mednick, 1962) trials. In RAT trials, participants are presented with three words and asked to report an associated fourth word – e.g., the words book, maps, and world are given and participants have to report atlas. In this paradigm, participants activate (or not) an answer unconsciously, but it has to be accessed before it can be reported consciously. In Experiment 2, we extend the procedure with a second, new paradigm. In this paradigm, participants are subliminally primed with words, after which the probability that these words appear (semi-spontaneously, more information follows) in consciousness is assessed. Whereas the accessible information in the RAT is derived from an associative process of the participant herself, in Experiment 2 the source is external. However, in both paradigms the key process – the probability that accessible information appears in consciousness – is the same.

Section snippets

Participants

Sixty-three Zen practitioners (30 males and 33 females, age M = 47.81, SD = 11.55) were recruited through a national network of Zen meditation centers (Zen.nl) to participate in the study. Their experience with Zen meditation ranged from 6 months to over 5 years. The Zen practitioners were randomly assigned to either a meditation or a control condition.

Procedure and materials

All participants were tested in the lab in groups of 4–10 participants between 6 and 9 PM. They were randomly assigned to one of the two conditions.

Correct RAT answers

Confirming the predictions, the number of correct solutions to the RAT items was higher in the meditation condition (M = 7.00, SD = 1.98) than in the control condition (M = 5.94, SD = 1.98), F(1, 61) = 5.48, p = .02, η2 = .08.

The data clearly supported our hypothesis. Zen meditation improved access to the unconscious. Experiment 2 served multiple goals. First, we wanted to replicate our findings and to investigate whether increased transfer of accessible information to consciousness could be found in a

Participants

Thirty-four Zen practitioners (17 males and 17 females, age M = 48.06, SD = 7.71) were recruited through Zen.nl to participate in the study. Their experience with Zen meditation varied from less than 6 months to 10 years. The Zen practitioners were randomly assigned to either a meditation or a control condition. Exit questions indicated that two participants from the control condition had meditated beforehand on the same day, even though we had instructed all participants to refrain from meditating

Correct RAT answers

As in Experiment 1, the number of correct solutions to the RAT was higher in the meditation condition (M = 6.82, SD = 1.55) than in the control condition (M = 4.87, SD = 2.29), F(1, 30) = 8.16, p < .01, η2 = .21.

Response latencies of RAT answers

The difference between conditions in response latencies of the RAT were analyzed using the number of correct RAT answers as covariate. As expected, participants in the meditation condition exhibited shorter response latencies (M = 13.22 s, SD = 4.93) than did participants in the control condition (M = 16.37 

General discussion

The findings of our experiments show that a period of 20 min of meditation increases access to the unconscious. As access to the unconscious is important in many psychological domains, our data are potentially highly relevant in a wide array of areas. The RAT, the paradigm we used in both experiments, is one of the paradigms most often used to study creativity, and hence, one may conclude on the basis of our findings that meditation increases creativity. However, the effects shown are relevant

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    This research was supported by an NWO-VICI Grant (453-05-004) awarded to the last author, Now at Department of Psychology, Utrecht University, The Netherlands.

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