Meditation as an adjunct to a happiness enhancement program.

This study investigated the impact that meditation has on Fordyce's (1977, 1983) Personal Happiness Enhancement Program (PHEP). Experimental subjects were divided into two groups, both of which received instruction on the PHEP. Subjects in one experimental group were taught a meditation exercise in addition to the PHEP. A control group received no instruction. The Happiness Measure, Psychap Inventory, Beck Depression Inventory, and State-Trait Anxiety Scale were dependent measures. The three (groups) x two (pre-post) mixed ANOVAs with Student Newman-Keuls found that the meditation plus PHEP group significantly improved on all dependent measures over both the PHEP only group and the control group. The PHEP only group improved significantly over the control group on all measures except state anxiety.