Science of Meditation
Much of my work for the past 15 years has been dedicated to understanding the science, history, and philosophy of meditation practices. This deep dive began with a study on the effects of meditation and yoga with prisoners in the UK, in collaboration with the Prison Phoenix Trust. When the results of the study were publicly announced at a talk in St John’s College, Oxford, the actor Jeremy Irons was in the audience (he is a trustee of the Prison Phoenix Trust).
Following from that, I wrote The Buddha Pill, with clinical psychologist Catherine Wikholm, which has been translated into other languages, such as Dutch, and Portuguese. Some of the insights from the book were further explored in a series of academic articles on the prosocial effects of meditation, genetic expression mechanisms of meditation, or how people may react differently to meditation.
I became increasingly aware of frequent confusions and errors surrounding our understanding of meditation, and in collaboration with David Brazier and Mansur Lalljee, I edited the Oxford Handbook of Meditation with chapters from over 40 experts on the science, history, philosophy, anthropology, and clinical applications of meditation. I give regular talks and interviews about my meditation work.
Some of my favourite interviews are lively dialogues with other meditation writers, such as Pierce Salguero and Ron Purser.
I have also written critical commentaries on various aspects on the science of meditation, such as its use with children and ethical issues surrounding its cultural adaptation. I have also written a critical commentary on Sam Harris’ view of meditation and atheism, Am I an Illusion?
Related Articles
Believing in the powers of mindfulness: A thematic narrative approach and the development of a new scale
Mindfulness, vol 14
Interpersonal and individual effects of an app-based Christian and Islamic heart meditation intervention in healthy adults: protocol of a stratified randomised controlled trial
BMC Psychology, vol 12
Feasibility and preliminary outcomes of intensive mindfulness and yoga on prisoners with personality disorders: A randomised controlled preliminary study
Brain Behavior and Immunity Integrative, vol 2
Individual differences in meditation interventions: A meta-analytic study
British Journal of Health Psychology, vol 10
Introduction: Understanding and Studying Meditation
The Oxford Handbook of Meditation, Oxford University Press
Adverse events in meditation practices and meditation‐based therapies: a systematic review
Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica, vol 142
Can meditation make the world a better place? A systematic review and meta-analysis of the prosocial effects of meditation
Scientific Reports, vol 8
What is the molecular signature of mind-body interventions? A systematic review of gene expression changes induced by meditation and related practices
Frontiers in Immunology, vol 8
What is mindfulness-based therapy good for? Evidence, limitations and controversies
The Lancet Psychiatry, vol 3
Has the science of mindfulness lost its mind?
British Journal of Psychiatry Bulletin, vol 40
From exaggeration to silence in health-related science news and academic press releases: A mindful bias?
British Medical Journal, vol 350
Preliminary evidence that yoga practice progressively improves mood and decreases stress in a sample of UK prisoners
Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine, 2015
Participation in a 10-week course of yoga improves behavioural control and decreases psychological distress in a prison population
Journal of Psychiatric Research, vol 47
Varieties of Possession Experiences
Experiences of spiritual possession are often perceived in a negative light: to be possessed means to be out of control or, within some religions, to have an entity of a malignant nature taking control of one’s body and actions. But those possessed may also be regarded as a positive channel for various spiritual agents, including deceased humans, nature deities or godlike beings, or the Holy Spirit.
What are the characteristics of possession experiences? Are there commonalities of how they are experienced and expressed across cultures and spiritual traditions? And can we find particular psychological features in the possessed individual? These are largely unanswered questions that were explored in this project. In one study, we explored the cognitive, personality, and mental characteristics of individuals regularly experiencing possession (Mental Health and Possession).
We have also used a case study to further explore the difficulties of trying to categorise these experiences using our current understanding of mental illness. You can find here a brief summary of this study here.
We have produced a short video about this project with footage from the Afro-Brazilian rituals we collected data from.
Related Articles
Social Support, Help-Seeking Behaviors, and Positive/Negative Affect Among Individuals Reporting Mediumship Experiences
International Journal of Latin American Religions, vol 7
The mind possessed: well-being, personality, and cognitive characteristics of individuals regularly experiencing religious possession
Brazilian Journal of Psychiatry, vol 44
Can DSM 5 differentiate between non-pathological possession and dissociative identity disorder? A case study from an Afro-Brazilian religion
Journal of Trauma and Dissociation, vol 17(3)
Psychology of Atheism
I started working on the psychology of atheism early in my academic career, thanks to my doctoral supervisor at Oxford, Prof Mansur Lalljee. Because the focus of my DPhil was the psychology of alternative spirituality, he told me that I needed a comparison group of ‘normal people’. What would those be?, I asked him. ‘Atheists, of course!’.
Other than Prof Lalljee, I am indebted to the writer Fernando Pessoa for his thoughts on atheism at the start of The Book of Disquiet: I was a born in a time when the majority of young people had lost their belief in God, for the same reason their elders had had it: without knowing why. Pessoa’s insights led me to develop the Belief in Science scale and the Belief Replacement Hypothesis.
I have summarised some of the research on the psychology of atheism and my own views in this chapter: The Psychology of Atheism, which suggests that non-religious people would tend to find other beliefs, which fulfil the same functions as religious beliefs in providing meaning and helping to alleviate anxiety. I have explored this topic with anthropologist Sara Rahmani, by examining how some atheists are attracted to believing in the powers of mindfulness meditation. I have also looked at how science narratives may (or may not) help alleviate acute stress.
Together with a large interdisciplinary team, we carried out a large international survey on the beliefs of atheists (Understanding Unbelief), and produced with filmmaker Ariane Porto a documentary on Understanding Unbelief in Brazil, which includes footage of the last active church of Positivism in the world, originally created by August Comte in the 19th century.
Finally, for those interested in pilgrimage, I carried out work on atheists and agnostics who walk the way to Santiago, across northern Spain.
Related Articles
What do nonreligious nonbelievers believe in? Secular worldviews around the world
Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, vol 15(1)
Nonreligion, atheism, and mental health
Spirituality and Mental Health Across Cultures: Evidence-Based Implications for Clinical Practice, Oxford University Press
Atheists on the Santiago Way: Examining motivations to go on pilgrimage
Sociology of Religion, vol 80
Rise of pilgrims on the camino to Santiago: Sign of change or religious revival?
Review of Religious Research, vol 56
Scientific faith: Belief in science increases in the face of stress and anxiety
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, vol 49
Neuroscience of Religion
What happens in the brain when we are thinking about spiritual ideas? And what parts of the brain are more active when you are meditating on a religious image while experiencing pain?
Religious lore all over the world — from Indian fakirs laying on beds of nails to the silent martyrdom of Christian saints — suggest that faith or certain spiritual techniques can alleviate or make one less sensitive to pain. Together with pain experts, neuroscientists, and philosophers, I conducted an fMRI study to test the effects of religious belief on pain alleviation (An FMRI study measuring analgesia enhanced by religion).
The results showed that belief could indeed alleviate pain, mainly through a process of reappraisal (in other words, placing your pain within a meaningful context). You can also read about this study in The Guardian or the Sunday Daily Mail.
I carried out some further work on pain and religion at the pilgrimage site of Lourdes, for which we produced a video. You can also read an article about this work here.
In the past 15 years some psychologists and neuroscientists have suggested that spiritual ideas are processed by the part of our minds that thinks more intuitively, and less rationally. We conducted various experiments on this, which included brain stimulation, and we found no evidence that spiritual ideas, or religious people, used more of their intuition than reason.
The science of moral judgment and how the brain processes moral decisions has attracted much attention in the past two decades. I have also done some work on this, looking at the neural basis of moral judgments and how a utilitarian type of moral judgment may lead people to feel less empathy for others.
Related Articles
The scientific study of religious belief and pain modulation: Conceptual problems
Spirituality, Religiousness and Health, Springer Nature
Supernatural belief is not modulated by intuitive thinking style or cognitive inhibition
Scientific Reports, vol 7
Cold or Calculating? Reduced activity in the subgenual cingulate cortex reflects decreased emotional aversion to harming in counterintuitive utilitarian judgment
Cognition, vol 126(3)
‘Utilitarian’ judgments in sacrificial dilemmas do not reflect impartial concern for the greater good
Cognition, vol 134
The neural basis of intuitive and counterintuitive moral judgment
Social Cognitive and Affective Neurosciences, vol 7
An fMRI study measuring analgesia enhanced by religion as a belief system
PAIN, vol 139(2)
Psychology of Modern Spirituality
Much of modern spirituality emerged out of what used to be called the New Age movement. Ideas about trusting yourself and exploring inner reality using your own inner guidance (which are radically different from what religious traditions suggest) have now become mainstream.
I spent part of my doctoral time in Oxford hopping about New Age centres, channelling sessions and Pagan rituals. My original aim was to investigate how modern spiritual practices changed an individual’s cognition but, as I went along, I became increasingly drawn towards different questions — are the personality types of these people a bit unusual? Can they see more coincidences between life events than others? And are spiritual practices changing people or simply reinforcing their underlying personality and cognitive dispositions?
I also explored the ways in which you think about your most important life stories change depending on whether your beliefs are religious, spiritual, or atheistic.
This work also made me interested in exploring conspiracy theories. Some years ago, The Da Vinci Code novel became a bestseller and was turned into a film. I watched a documentary on how some people actually believed the conspiracy theories of the novel. I set up with other colleagues an experiment to understand what made people believe in the Da Vinci Code conspiracy beliefs. It turned out that the major reason making one believe in these ideas was historical ignorance.
Related Articles
Past life meditation decreases existential death anxiety and increases meaning in life among individuals who believe in the paranormal
Journal of Cognition and Culture, vol 23
Assessing Implicit Spirituality in a non-WEIRD Population: Development and Validation of an Implicit Measure of New Age and Paranormal Beliefs
The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, vol 30
Self-Directedness predicts quality of life in individuals with psychotic experiences: A one-year follow up study
Psychopathology, vol 50(4)
How to tell a happy from an unhappy schizotype: Personality factors and mental health outcomes in individuals with psychotic experiences
Revista Brasileira de Psiquiatria, vol 39(2)
Inside the spiritual mind: Cognitive implications of religious versus spiritual engagement
Present day spiritualities: Contrasts or overlap?, Brill
Unusual but sound minds: Mental health indicators in modern spiritual individuals
British Journal of Psychology, vol 104(3)
The functional nature of conspiracy beliefs: Examining the underpinnings of belief in the Da Vinci Code conspiracy
Personality and Individual Differences, vol 51
Holistic individualism in the Age of Aquarius: Measuring individualism/collectivism in New Age, Catholic and atheist/agnostic groups
Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, vol 47(2)
Empowerment in the New Age: A motivational study of autobiographical life stories
Journal of Contemporary Religion, vol 21(6)
A psychological study of New Age practices and beliefs
Journal of Alternative Spiritualities and New Age Studies, vol 2
Personality and cognitive predictors of New Age practices and beliefs
Personality and Individual Differences, vol 39
Psychology of Belief
Our lives are permeated by beliefs we hold, whether consciously or unconsciously. My work has explored the varieties of beliefs people have, including religious, spiritual, and secular, and how these beliefs matter for our everyday lives. Some of this work has looked at how beliefs may have implication for health and healing, for how we deal with stress, and how they change our experience of grief.
On the other hand, beliefs may also affect us negatively in a variety of ways: here we found that when atheists have a high esteem for certain objects, they feel more anxious or depressed when those objects are destroyed.
Understanding beliefs from cultures different from our own is often not easy, and even specialists can make errors when trying to find commonalities across belief systems or when thinking about spirituality as a human universal characteristic.
Related Articles
Examining the relationship between metacognitive trust in thinking styles and supernatural beliefs
Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, vol 65
A many-analysts approach to the relation between religiosity and well-being
Religion, Brain & Behavior, vol 13(3)
Cambridge Psycholinguistic Inventory of Christian Beliefs: A registered report of construct validity, internal consistency and test-retest reliability
Behavior Research Methods, vol 54(1)
The effects of belief in God and science on acute stress
Psychology of Consciousness: Theory, Research, and Practice, vol 6(2)
‘And the pain just disappeared into insignificance…’: The healing response at Lourdes – performance, psychology and caring.’
International Review of Psychiatry, vol 26(3)
Religious belief and the alleviation of pain
Omega: Indian Journal of Science and Religion, vol 13(2)
Introduction to the special issue: New trends in the cognitive science of religion
International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, vol 23(1)
Concepts and misconceptions in the scientific study of spirituality
Religion, Spirituality and Social Sciences: Challenging marginalization, Policy Press
Religion in Portugal
Religions of the World: A Comprehensive Encyclopedia of Beliefs and Practices, vol 3
New Religious Movements in Portugal: Past, Present and Future
Sociedade e Estado, vol 14(1)
The Nontheistic Sacred: The Psychological Functions of Metal Music and Artifacts
The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 33(3)
Diagnosing Prolonged Grief Disorder: Cultural Challenges to the DSM-5-TR Criteria
Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry, vol 49
The psychological impact of threat and lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic: exacerbating factors and mitigating actions
Translational Behavioral Medicine, vol 11(7)
The aetiology of social deficits within mental health disorders: The role of the immune system and endogenous opioids
Brain, Behavior, & Immunity, vol 1
What’s wrong with research literatures? And how to make them right
Review of General Psychology, vol 13(2)