Effects of meditation on psychological and physiological measures of anxiety

Eighty undergraduates were randomly assigned to four treatment groups: mantra meditation, an antimeditation control, a progressive-relaxation control, or a no-treatment control. After training and 2 weeks of practice at home, subjects were brought in for an outcome session consisting of statetrait anxiety self-report measures, as well as galvanic skin response and heart-rate measures of autonomic responding at rest, after practicing meditation in the laboratory, and after a stress manipulation. There was no evidence from any of the measures that meditation reduced anxiety beyond that shown in the three control conditions.