S23. The Unique Personality of SY Meditators

Do you know someone who is calm and disciplined, yet warm and forgiving, deeply appreciative of beauty, and quietly hopeful about life?A team of psychologists recently conducted a multi‑nation study and found that people who have been practicing Sahaja Yoga (SY) meditation for years do show a consistent and distinctive “group profile” in certain personality traits.

This article shares the science behind that study rather than trying to convince you to start meditating right away. You can treat it as a piece of “personality research on meditators” and see whether there are measurable links between meditation and character.

1. What question was this study trying to answer?

Over the past two decades, research on meditation has mainly focused on symptoms such as stress, depression, and anxiety. Many experiments have already shown that regular meditation can help reduce stress and improve mood and attention.But another, perhaps deeper, question is:

Does long‑term meditation gradually “sculpt” a particular kind of personality?

In psychology, there is a framework called VIA character strengths, which groups 24 universally valued traits into a taxonomy—for example: gratitude, forgiveness, self‑regulation, hope, spirituality, and so on.

Most people have about 3–7 traits that they use most naturally and frequently; these are called signature strengths—you can think of them as your “personality calling cards.”

In this joint study led by Tilburg University and other institutions, the researchers asked a very direct question:

If we compare long‑term Sahaja Yoga meditators with a matched group of non‑meditators, do we see a distinctive “group signature” across these 24 character strengths?

2. How was the study conducted? (Methods in plain language)

1. Two samples: SY practitioners vs. non‑meditators

• SY meditators

  • 310 participants from 43 countries.

  • Inclusion criteria: at least two years of daily SY practice, following Sahaja Yoga principles and techniques only.

• Control group (non‑meditators)

  • Researchers obtained a random sample of 3,000 people from the VIA Institute on Character database.

  • From this, they selected 1,611 participants whose age, gender, and continent of origin matched the SY sample as closely as possible.

The idea was to make the two groups similar in background so that the main difference is whether they practice SY regularly.

2. What did participants do?

Everyone completed the VIA‑IS 120‑item questionnaire:

• There are 24 character strengths, each measured by 5 items.

• Example items include “I rarely hold a grudge” (forgiveness) and “I am a true life‑long learner” (love of learning).

• Participants rated each item from 1 to 5, from “very much unlike me” to “very much like me.”

3. What kind of study design is this?

This is a cross‑sectional study:

• Both groups were measured at a single point in time.

• The researchers then compared the average scores.

A cross‑sectional design can show that two groups differ right now, but it cannot prove that meditation caused the differences.

4. How did they make sure the results weren’t just a fluke?

The team used several statistical tools. Instead of going into formulas, here is a practical way to understand them:

• Statistical tests (Z‑test + Mann–Whitney U test)

  • Imagine using two thermometers from different brands to check for fever; you only conclude “this person has a fever” if both show a high temperature.

  • Similarly, for each character strength, the researchers used both tests and only counted a difference as “real” if both showed statistical significance.

• Bonferroni correction

  • When you test 24 traits at once, some will appear significant by chance.

  • Bonferroni correction is like raising the passing score: instead of 60 out of 100, you now need 90 to pass.

  • Here, they tightened the significance threshold from 0.05 to about 0.001—very strict.

• Effect size (Cohen’s d)

  • This tells us not just whether there is a difference, but how big the difference is.

  • Rough guideline: 0.2 = small, 0.5 = medium, 0.8+ = large.

  • You can think of it as “how many natural standard‑deviation units apart the two groups are.”

All of this was done to make the findings as robust as possible and reduce the chance that they were simply due to luck.

3. The “seven signature traits” of SY meditators

The key finding: compared with the control group, long‑term SY meditators scored significantly higher on seven character strengths.

The seven signature strengths

Average scores (1–5 scale):

Character strength	SY mean	Control mean
Spirituality	4.50	3.36
Forgiveness	4.25	3.73
Gratitude	4.27	3.85
Self‑regulation	3.70	3.32
Teamwork	4.08	3.78
Appreciation of beauty & excellence	4.23	3.93
Hope	4.04	3.73

Researchers call these the signature strengths of SY practitioners as a group.Compared with non‑meditators, a “typical” long‑term SY meditator is more likely to:

• Seek inner meaning and connection with something higher (spirituality).

• Let go of grudges and forgive more easily (forgiveness).

• Feel and express gratitude more frequently (gratitude).

• Manage impulses and desires more effectively (self‑regulation).

• Enjoy working in groups and value “we” more than just “me” (teamwork).

• Be especially sensitive to beauty in art, nature, and human excellence (appreciation of beauty & excellence).

• Maintain an optimistic, hopeful outlook towards the future (hope).

Spirituality showed the largest difference, with an effect size close to “large.” Forgiveness and gratitude showed medium differences; self‑regulation, teamwork, appreciation of beauty, and hope showed small to medium differences.

In practical terms: if you mixed 300+ SY practitioners and 1,600+ non‑meditators at an international gathering and assessed everyone with this questionnaire, these seven strengths would form a clear “SY personality contour” at the group level.

4. Two surprising results: judgment and book‑style learning

It is important to note that SY practitioners were not higher on everything. For most of the remaining 17 strengths, the two groups did not differ significantly.However, there were two traits where the control group scored higher:

1. Judgment (critical thinking / evaluative judgment)

2. Love of learning (especially reading‑based learning)

The authors’ interpretation fits SY’s spiritual perspective:

• In SY, meditation emphasizes mental silence, often described as thoughtless awareness—the mind is fully aware yet quiet, not rushing to judge oneself or others.

  • On questionnaire items like “I carefully evaluate information and form opinions,” SY practitioners may be less likely to agree strongly because their practice often involves suspending judgment rather than exercising it.

• For love of learning, two of the five items focus on reading books (“I read a wide variety of books,” “I love to read non‑fiction books for fun”), which reflects a Western, book‑centric understanding of learning.

  • Many SY practitioners learn through music (e.g., Indian instruments, devotional singing), art, agriculture, craftsmanship, and spiritual practice—forms of learning that the questionnaire doesn’t fully capture.

So these results don’t necessarily mean SY meditators “don’t like learning.” Instead, they remind us that how people learn can be more diverse than what a survey assumes.

5. Culture and spirituality: East–West differences “leveled out”

Another intriguing finding came from looking at geographic regions.

• In the control group:

  • Participants from non‑Western regions (e.g., Asia, South America) scored higher in spirituality than those from Western regions.

• In the SY group:

  • Spirituality scores were equally high for both Western and non‑Western practitioners—both averages were about 4.51.

In other words, before engaging in SY, cultural background seems to influence how “spiritual” people consider themselves. But among long‑term SY meditators, that gap disappears.SY, as a spiritually oriented practice, appears to bring people from different cultures to a similarly high level of spiritual orientation.

For readers, this suggests that:

Meditation is not only an individual inner practice; it may also create a kind of “shared personality space” that transcends cultural differences—at least on the dimension of spirituality.

6. What might this mean for everyday life?

From this study, we can cautiously but meaningfully say a few things:

1. The effects of meditation may extend beyond mood and stress.Long‑term SY practitioners, as a group, show higher spirituality, gratitude, forgiveness, self‑discipline, teamwork, appreciation of beauty, and hope—traits closely linked to subjective well‑being and life satisfaction.

2. These traits can be measured and compared scientifically.Using an established instrument (VIA‑IS), rigorous statistical tests, and a multi‑nation sample, the researchers moved beyond personal anecdotes and into quantifiable territory.

3. Communities of practice can foster “group signature strengths.”SY is one example of how a spiritual practice might cultivate a characteristic pattern of strengths.In principle, the same approach could be applied to sports teams, volunteer organizations, or even online communities to see what kinds of character they collectively encourage.

For each of us, a practical question might be:

What kinds of strengths are being intensified by the communities and practices I spend the most time in?And which strengths might they be unintentionally weakening?

If you’re curious about how a practice like Sahaja Yoga could combine a spiritual path with measurable psychological outcomes, you can treat this study as a rational invitation.It doesn’t promise miracles. It simply shows that long‑term SY practitioners tend to embody a warm yet disciplined personality profile that can be seen in the data.

If you’d like to know more about how Sahaja Yoga works—subtle system, chakras, Kundalini, and the notion of thoughtless awareness—you can explore the background pages on your site. Here, we’ve stayed intentionally at the level of scientific results and interpretation, letting your curiosity do the rest.

7. Scientific humility: what this study does not claim

Equally important is what the study does not say.

The authors clearly acknowledge several limitations:

• As a cross‑sectional study, it cannot prove that SY practice caused these traits to increase.

  • It is also possible that people who are naturally more spiritual, forgiving, or community‑oriented are simply more drawn to SY in the first place.

• The control sample came from an online strengths database; those participants may already have an interest in psychology and personal development, and they do not represent a perfectly random slice of the general population.

• The study did not directly compare SY with other forms of meditation using the same sample. So we cannot say “SY is superior to all other practices.” We can only say that, in this specific dataset, SY practitioners show a clear and distinctive pattern of strengths.

Precisely because these boundaries are drawn so carefully, the study feels more trustworthy. It does not decide for you; it simply opens a window.

Further Reading:

• Research Articles: Original Articles and Research Papers