People Who Meditate and Do Yoga Have Bigger Egos, Study Finds

People Who Meditate and Do Yoga Have Bigger Egos, Study FindsPeople Who Meditate and Do Yoga Have Bigger Egos, Study Finds
A new study has revealed that meditation and yoga boosts people’s egos, contradicting the Buddhist teaching that such practices foster well-being by “quieting” the self.
The study, set to be published in the journal Psychological Science, examined this ego-quieting assumption against the self-centrality principle, which asserts that the practice of any skill makes it self-central, and consequently, breeds self-enhancement.
Researchers at the University of Mannheim in Germany carried out two experiments. First, they followed 93 yoga students for 15 weeks, assessing their level of self-enhancement after and without practice.
They measured self-enhancement in three ways: by comparing to the “average” yoga student, assessing narcissistic tendencies and administering a self-esteem scale. As it turned out, students showed significantly higher self-enhancement in the hour after practice, compared to non-practice in the previous 24 hours.
The second experiment followed 162 meditators, pooled from various related Facebook groups, in four weeks. Researchers administered another assessment scale that measured self-enhancement, which included items like “How central is it for you to be free from bias?” Apparently, the meditators also showed higher self-enhancement in the hour after practice, compared to non-practice in the previous 24 hours.
Interestingly, the researchers also assessed the participants’ well-being in two categories, namely (1) hedonic and (2) eudemonic. Hedonic well-being consists of affective and cognitive components, which includes items like “I am happy” and “The conditions of my life are excellent.”
Eudemonic well-being, on the other hand, consists of six components, namely (1) autonomy, (2) environmental mastery, (3) personal growth, (4) positive relations with others, (5) purpose in life and (6) self-acceptance. The measure includes items such as “For me, life has been a continuous process of learning, changing, and growth.”
Researchers found that well-being increased with self-enhancement, implying a link established through meditation (which supposedly improves well-being).
“Self-enhancement was higher in the yoga (Experiment 1) and meditation (Experiment 2) conditions, and those effects were mediated by greater self-centrality. Additionally, greater self-enhancement mediated mind-body practices’ well-being benefits,” the researchers wrote.
“Evidently, neither yoga nor meditation quiet the ego; instead, they boost self-enhancement.”
A copy of the study was published by the University of Southampton in the U.K.
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