Psychology Research:
Mindful Meditation Benefits

Study reveals the remarkable impact of meditation on basic cognitive mechanisms during learning

Summary: The University of Aberdeen's Computational Social Cognition Lab recently conducted a study on the benefits of mindful meditation and its impact upon short-term decision-making abilities. 

Excerpts From the Psypost.org article:  "Recent research published in the Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology suggests that even brief periods of mindfulness meditation can have a profound impact on our ability to learn and make decisions. Participants who practiced mindfulness meditation not only enhanced their ability to learn from unexpectedly positive outcomes but also demonstrated increased openness to new experiences, favoring exploration of novel options over reliance on familiar choices.

“Perhaps the most remarkable finding was the significant impact of brief mindfulness on the learning process, particularly its ability to heighten sensitivity to positive surprises,” Golubickis told PsyPost. “This nuanced alteration suggests that even short periods of mindfulness meditation can profoundly influence our cognitive responses to unexpected positive outcomes, underscoring the potential for mindfulness to enhance how we perceive and learn from our experiences.”

The mindfulness group also displayed increased response caution, as evidenced by a higher decision threshold in the RL-DDM analysis. This finding implies that mindfulness meditation leads individuals to require more evidence before making a decision, reflecting a more deliberate and less impulsive approach to choosing among uncertain options.

Additionally, the researchers found that mindfulness meditation influenced the tendency to explore rather than exploit, as indicated by changes in drift rate scaling—a measure of how strongly participants favored options with the highest expected value. This shift towards exploration suggests that mindfulness encourages a more balanced approach to decision-making, where the value of gathering new information and experiencing novel outcomes is appreciated alongside the safety of sticking with known, rewarding options.

“Anchored in the fundamental premise that learning primarily occurs through making a mistake and receiving feedback, our study illuminates how a brief mindfulness intervention can refine this learning mechanism,” Golubickis explained. “Specifically, it enhances how we process and benefit from feedback that surpasses expectations.”

“Consider a situation where someone anticipates a modest improvement in their skill after practice but experiences a significant leap instead. Mindfulness also cultivates a disposition towards open-minded exploration, encouraging individuals to venture beyond known territories, show a willingness to consider competing viewpoints, and embrace new possibilities and alternative viewpoints.”

My interpretation: recall that mindfulness meditation and self-hypnosis are fundamentally two slightly different ways to achieve and maintain the alpha state. Generally speaking, the goal of mindfulness meditation is primarily relaxation and/or de-stressing.  Self-hypnosis, by comparison, is generally done in order to make some inner change.  The label "mindfulness meditation" spans both categories, and can be used for both purposes.  While these resarch subjects didn't enter into the mindfulness medication specifically for problem-solving and decision-making, they nevertheless carried the benefits of that mind-state back into their wakeful consciousness afterwards.

Original: Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology

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