Effect of Contemplative Monastic Debate Practice on Emotion Regulation and Experience

In this study, we set out to examine whether Monastic Debate practice can help with emotion regulation and reduce the experience of negative affect. Research on traditional contemplative practices—including mindfulness, loving-kindness meditation, and yoga—shows that they influence emotion regulation and emotional experience. However, systematic reasoning, appraisal, and emotion regulation in a social context are not usually part of these practices. Here, we investigated another contemplative practice called Monastic Debate , a Buddhist practice based purely on logic and reasoning that follows stringent rules established by Indian and later Tibetan masters. Monastic Debate is a practice in which the practitioner seeks to improve their understanding of Buddhist philosophy by engaging in a precisely described process of reasoning in interaction with one or more others. We recruited novice practitioners (non-monks) from a month-long winter debate retreat. During the experiment, participants completed the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS) and the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS). We observed a significant reduction in difficulty regulating emotions in our retreat group compared to the control group. Particularly, four subscales of DERS, namely nonacceptance, impulse, strategies, and goals, showed a significant reduction for the retreat group in comparison to the control group. We did not observe any significant differences in positive or negative emotional experiences between the retreat and control groups. The results suggest that the logical ability developed in a non-monastic population by participating in a 1-month Monastic Debate practice can help improve the ability to regulate emotions.