Hype and hope? Mind-body practice predicts pro-environmental engagement through global identity

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2019.101340Get rights and content

Highlights

  • We compared practitioners of yoga and/or meditation with non-practitioners.

  • Practitioners report more climate policy support and pro-environmental behaviour.

  • Practitioners express a stronger global self-definition.

  • Practice indirectly predicts climate policy support through global self-definition.

  • It indirectly predicts pro-environmental behaviour through global self-definition.

Abstract

Humanity is facing global environmental challenges and a global identity has been found to predict pro-environmental engagement. As the origins of a global identity are not broadly understood, we aimed to contribute to investigating its predictors. One way to cultivate a global identity might be through the mind-body practices of yoga and meditation that an increasing number of people pursue, as it is one traditional goal of these practices to evoke a sense of connectedness with all humans. In our online survey study, we compared 113 mind-body practitioners with 145 non-practitioners and found that mind-body practice positively predicted one of two dimensions of a global identity – namely global self-definition –, pro-environmental behaviour, and climate policy support. Moreover, mind-body practice positively and indirectly predicted pro-environmental behaviour as well as climate policy support through a stronger global self-definition. We thus suggest that mind-body practices might bear the potential for contributing to a sustainable society and that their causal effects on global identity should be examined in future research.

Introduction

Humanity is facing global environmental challenges such as climate change or the spread of micro plastics in the oceans that can be only solved or attenuated by collective efforts (IPCC, 2014; Ripple et al., 2017; Rockström et al., 2009). These collective efforts require individual behaviour. The role of social influences and other group processes on people's engagement to limit environmental crises has therefore been increasingly discussed in recent years (for a review, see Fritsche, Barth, Jugert, Masson, & Reese, 2018). Specifically, research on global identity, defined as a sense of connectedness with people all over the world and a concern for their well-being (McFarland, Webb, & Brown, 2012; Reese, 2016; Reese, Proch, & Finn, 2015), found that it predicts pro-environmental attitudes and behaviours (Lee, Ashton, Choi, & Zachariassen, 2015; Leung, Koh, & Tam, 2015; Renger & Reese, 2017; Reysen & Hackett, 2016; Reysen & Katzarska-Miller, 2013; Rosenmann, Reese, & Cameron, 2016; Running, 2013). As the origins of a global identity and ways to foster identification with people all over the world are still not broadly understood (for an overview, see McFarland et al., 2019), we seek to address this gap.

One way to cultivate a global identity might be through the mind-body practices of meditation and yoga that an increasing number of people pursue. In the following, we use the term mind-body practice to include both. A traditional goal of mind-body practices is compassion and connectedness with all other humans and the natural world (Hofmann, Grossman, & Hinton, 2011; Singer & Bolz, 2013; Trautwein, Naranjo, & Schmidt, 2014). Certain techniques such as loving-kindness (or metta) meditation even specifically focus on its cultivation (Kristeller & Johnson, 2005). Research examining mind-body practice interventions revealed positive effects on social and nature connectedness (Aspy & Proeve, 2017; Hutcherson, Seppala, & Gross, 2008) and prosocial behaviour (Donald et al., 2019). However, to our knowledge, no research has explicitly examined the relation between mind-body practice and the sense of connectedness with people all over the world and a concern for their well-being.

Connectedness is often regarded as the more advanced secondary outcome of mind-body practices, while the primary goal – and initial core focus of psychological research on mind-body practices – is the cultivation of mindfulness, defined as an intentional and non-judgemental awareness of present moment experiences (Bishop et al., 2004; Kabat-Zinn, 1990). Research has found that people who are characterised by mindfulness as a trait feel more connected to nature (e.g., Howell, Dopko, Passmore, & Buro, 2011; for an overview, see Schutte & Malouff, 2018) and engage more in environmental protection (e.g., Geiger, Otto, & Schrader, 2018; for an overview, see Fischer, Stanszus, Geiger, Grossman, & Schrader, 2017; Geiger, Grossman, & Schrader, 2018). It has thus been argued that mind-body practice might contribute to a more sustainable society (for theoretical statements, see Ericson, Kjønstad, & Barstad, 2014; Patel & Holm, 2017). However, whether actual practice relates to pro-environmental engagement has been rarely investigated (for the only intervention study which found no effects, see Geiger, Grossman et al., 2018).

Our research thus brings together two recent strands of research on predictors of prosocial and pro-environmental engagement: mind-body practice and mindfulness, on the one hand, and global identity, on the other hand. In our study, we compared mind-body practitioners (yoga, meditation, or both) with non-practitioners. We examined whether they differ in their global identity and pro-environmental engagement, and whether the cultivation of global identity might be a potential mechanism by which mind-body practice could encourage pro-environmental engagement.

Section snippets

Mind-body practice

An increasing number of people all over the world practice meditation and yoga (e.g., Clarke, Barnes, Black, Stussmann, & Nahin, 2018; Statista, 2017, 2018). These ancient contemplative mind-body techniques originate in Buddhist philosophy, but are today widely implemented beyond spiritual contexts in various styles. In meditation, attention is typically focussed on an object, thought, or body sensation such as the breath, with the goal to quiet the mind and cultivate awareness (Kabat-Zinn, 1994

Procedure and participants

We conducted this study using an online questionnaire programmed with the software package SoSci Survey (www.soscisurvey.de, Leiner, 2019). With the aim to include people with and without mind-body practice, we recruited study participants with flyers and e-mails on the campus of a German university, in several yoga and meditation centres, online forums, and via personal networks in December 2018 and January 2019. Psychology students had the possibility to earn class credit for participating

Mind-body practice

We asked participants whether they practice meditation (yes, no) and yoga (yes, no) and built the dichotomous predictor variable mind-body practice as 0 (none) and 1 (meditation, yoga, or both). Moreover, we asked practitioners how long they have been practicing and how much time they spend practicing (for results see Supplemental Material 1.2.1).

Global identity

We adapted the German version (Reese et al., 2015) of the Identification with all Humanity Scale (McFarland et al., 2012) to measure global identity.

Comparison of mind-body practitioners and non-practitioners

Table 2 shows the descriptives of the assessed variables differentiated for mind-body practitioners and non-practitioners. Practitioners expressed a stronger global identity overall. Differentiating the two dimensions showed that only global self-definition but not self-investment was higher. They reported more pro-environmental behaviour and climate policy support. Regarding mindfulness, the overall score was higher for practitioners compared to non-practitioners. However, differentiating the

Discussion

An increasing number of people pursue the mind-body practices of yoga and meditation. While individual benefits on well-being and psychological health have been widely studied for decades (Brown & Ryan, 2003), social or societal implications of this trend only recently received more scholarly attention (Donald et al., 2019). We were specifically interested in their potential to motivate engagement to tackle global environmental challenges for a sustainable society (Fischer et al., 2017). In

Conclusion

We brought together two recent promising strands of research on predictors of prosocial and pro-environmental engagement: global identity and mind-body practice. We found that people who pursue the mind-body techniques of yoga and/or meditation express a stronger connectedness with people all over the world, report more pro-environmental behaviour, and are more in favour of climate policies. Moreover, practice indirectly predicted pro-environmental behaviour and climate policy support through

Declarations of interest

None.

Funding

This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Acknowledgements

We thank the students in the research seminar for their valuable support in designing the questionnaire and collecting the data: Katrin Benitz, Mirja Feyerabend, Colin Gekeler, Lea Köhler, Laura Kommerscheidt, Alex Kosirew, Annika Leyendecker, Mona Nadig, Jul Nebel, Josra Redjeb, Saskia Scheinert, Amina Sefovic, Kristina Speckert, and Ida Wagner. Moreover, we thank Lea Heidbreder, Claudia Menzel, the editor Sander van der Linden as well as three anonymous reviewers for their very helpful

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