The effect of brief mindfulness exercises on state-materialism was investigated in three studies with undergraduate participants using an experimental design. It was hypothesized that scores would be reduced on materialism questionnaires that were presented before and after either a 5-minute mindfulness audio presentation or a mind-wandering audio as a control measure. Experiment 1 had the hypothesis that a breathing meditation would reduce scores on materialism questionaries compared to a mind-wandering control exercise. Experiments 2 and 3 had the additional hypothesis that a breathing meditation, a body scan and a loving kindness meditation would be significantly different in their effect on reducing level of materialism. The results found no significant differences between the mindfulness and the mind-wandering manipulations. There were also no significant differences between the different types of mindfulness manipulations. The results indicate that while previous research has shown that materialistic thoughts can be increased with priming manipulations, more investigation is necessary determine if it is possible to decrease state-materialistic thoughts.
David Watson (Wed,) studied this question.