Can mindfulness meditation improve performance? Evidence from a college classroom

ABSTRACT We conducted a randomized experiment in an academic setting to test two research questions: first, does participating in guided meditations improve student performance? Second, does mindfulness meditation reduce reliance on mental heuristics? Our results document that students who are asked to complete brief meditations immediately before exams perform better compared to students in a control group. Moreover, detailed analysis of exam responses suggests their improved performance may result from less dependence on heuristics to simplify complex questions. Our research thus proposes mindfulness meditation as a tool for educators, individuals, and policymakers to use in efforts to reduce bias in decision-making.

• Publication year

  2025

• Venue

  Education Economics

• Publication date

  2025-04-10

• Fields of study

  Not labeled

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1080/09645292.2025.2484579
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

• Behavioral Economics

  2025cited by this paper
• Mindfulness and Academic Performance Meta-Analyses on Interventions and Correlations

  2023cited by this paper
• The influence of mindfulness-based interventions on the academic performance of students measured by their GPA. A systematic review and meta-analysis

  2022cited by this paper
• The cognitive challenges of effective teaching

  2021cited by this paper
• Choice architecture improves pension selection

  2021cited by this paper
• How can economists use the cognitive challenges framework to enhance economic education?

  2020cited by this paper
• Are your students absent, not absent, or present? Mindfulness and student performance

  2019cited by this paper
• A Community-Based Randomized Controlled Trial of an Educational Intervention to Promote Retirement Saving Among Hispanics

  2019cited by this paper
• Mindfulness as an Intervention for Recalling Information from a Lecture as a Measure of Academic Performance in Higher Education

  2018cited by this paper
• Contamination, association, or social communication: An examination of alternative accounts for contagion effects

  2018cited by this paper
• One size fits all? Tailoring retirement plan defaults

  2018cited by this paper
• Effects of Mindfulness Meditation on College Student Anxiety: a Meta-Analysis

  2018cited by this paper
• An introduction to behavioral economics

  2018cited by this paper
• Students' persistent preconceptions and learning economic principles

  2017cited by this paper
• Decision-Making Approaches and the Propensity to Default: Evidence and Implications

  2016cited by this paper
• Behavioral Economics and Public Policy 102: Beyond Nudging

  2015cited by this paper
• Debiasing the Mind Through Meditation

  2014cited by this paper
• Mindfulness Training Improves Working Memory Capacity and GRE Performance While Reducing Mind Wandering

  2013cited by this paper
• Stepping out of history: mindfulness improves insight problem solving.

  2012cited by this paper
• Toward the Integration of Meditation into Higher Education: A Review of Research Evidence

  2011cited by this paper
• Mindfulness practice leads to increases in regional brain gray matter density.

  2011cited by this paper
• Looking Up

  2011cited by this paper
• The Applications of Mindfulness with Students of Secondary School: Results on the Academic Performance, Self-concept and Anxiety

  2010cited by this paper
• The intentional mind and the hot hand: Perceiving intentions makes streaks seem likely to continue.

  2010cited by this paper
• Examining the protective effects of mindfulness training on working memory capacity and affective experience.

  2010cited by this paper
• Mindfulness meditation improves cognition: evidence of brief mental training.

  2010cited by this paper
• The effects of mindfulness on executive processes and autobiographical memory specificity.

  2009cited by this paper
• Heuristics and Biases in Retirement Savings Behavior

  2007cited by this paper
• Product Contagion: Changing Consumer Evaluations through Physical Contact with “Disgusting” Products

  2007cited by this paper
• How to obtain informed consent

  2006cited by this paper
• Using Self-Report Assessment Methods to Explore Facets of Mindfulness

  2006cited by this paper
• Meditation can reduce habitual responding.

  2005cited by this paper
• The hot hand fallacy and the gambler’s fallacy: Two faces of subjective randomness?

  2004cited by this paper
• The Evaluation of a Mind/Body Intervention to Reduce Psychological Distress and Perceived Stress in College Students

  2002cited by this paper
• Heuristics and Biases: The Psychology of Intuitive Judgment

  2002cited by this paper
• The Effect of Meditation on the Academic Performance of African American College Students

  1999cited by this paper
• Choice in Context: Tradeoff Contrast and Extremeness Aversion

  1992cited by this paper
• Differential effects of relaxation techniques on trait anxiety: a meta-analysis.

  1989cited by this paper
• Operation of the laws of sympathetic magic in disgust and other domains.

  1986cited by this paper
• The Hot Hand in Basketball: On the Misperception of Random Sequences

  1985cited by this paper
• Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases.

  1984cited by this paper
• On the psychology of military incompetence

  1981cited by this paper
• The Relaxation Response †.

  1974cited by this paper

• No citing papers are available for this paper.