Do contemplative practices make us more moral?

Mindfulness meditation has both positive and negative effects on moral functioning, distributed across multiple dimensions of moral cognition and behavior. A multifactor construct that assesses outcomes across several aspects of morality reveals that contemplative practices do not uniformly improve morality; instead, they produce a mix of beneficial and detrimental influences on different moral actions. The study provides an empirically rigorous investigation into the impact of mindfulness on morality, showing that the effects are complex and not captured by unidimensional measures.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Contemplative practices are a staple of modern life and have historically been intertwined with morality. However, do these practices in fact improve our morality? The answer remains unclear because the science of contemplative practices has focused on unidimensional aspects of morality, which do not align with the type of interdependent moral functioning these practices aspire to cultivate. Here, we appeal to a multifactor construct, which allows the assessment of outcomes from a contemplative intervention across multiple dimensions of moral cognition and behavior. This offers an open-minded and empirically rigorous investigation into the impact of contemplative practices on moral actions. Using this framework, we gain insight into the effect of mindfulness meditation on morality, which we show does indeed have positive influences, but also some negative influences, distributed across our moral functioning.