Last year a survey from University College London revealed that young people were more stressed out by Brexit than by Covid. Indeed, across the population, 27% said that they were stressed by Brexit, which was only marginally lower in February than at the end of the transition period.

The Brexit process also uncovered enormous chasms between people, especially in terms of the urban/rural divide that seemed to largely characterize the vote. Research from the Karolinska Institutet suggests that meditation could help not only reduce stress levels but also reduce so-called affective polarization between those on the leave and remain sides of the debate.

Bridging the divide

The researchers believe their work could help to heal the political divide in other countries as well, such as in the United States where the ideological divide is equally wide between Republicans and Democrats.

The study saw nearly 1,000 remain and leave voters randomly assigned to listen to one of two 10-minute audio recordings. One of the recordings was an audio-guided befriending meditation session that helped listeners to exhibit kindness and friendship both to themselves and to other people. The other recording featured general educational information about meditation.

After each recording the researchers assessed the affective polarization levels of each participant. This measures the divide between the positive feelings we have towards our own political group and the negative feelings we have towards our opponents.

The results show that those who listened to the meditation had lower levels of affective polarization than those who simply listened to information about meditation. The researchers believe that there is likely to be an underlying psychological mechanism behind this as the process of meditation helps to build perceived commonality between the two sides.

The researchers believe that the findings show how befriending meditation could help to close any ideological barriers between opposing groups. The researchers plan to test whether the results endure over the long term or whether they fade away.

“The results in this study build on previous findings and provide additional support for the potential benefits of meditation in political contexts,” they conclude.