The Impact of Loving-Kindness Meditation on Affective Learning and Cognitive Control

Research on meditation has examined many variables across a wide range of techniques. Research on loving-kindness meditation has investigated its impact on affective variables, but has not yet investigated its impact on cognition. The present study investigated the impact of loving-kindness meditation on an affective variable not yet examined in the literature—affective learning—as well as cognition. Participants were randomly assigned to a control condition or a three-session, loving-kindness meditation training. Our results suggest that the beginning stages of loving-kindness meditation training impact the tendency to learn to associate positivity with neutral stimuli and cognitive control. We discuss the implications of our findings and potential directions for future research.