A Longitudinal Study of the Effect of the Transcendental Meditation Program on Changes in Personality

The' Freiburger Personality Inventory was administered to a group of 37 subjects three times-before they learned the Transcendental Meditation technique, approximately seven weeks later, and approximately 55 weeks later. At the last testing, 12 subjects had discontinued meditation and were treated as a control group in the data analysis. Comparison of the mean pretest scores of the 25 meditating subjects with those of the 12 control subjects showed no significant differences. At the time of the third testing, approximately 55 weeks later, the 25 meditating subjects showed significantly better scores than the control group on the following five scales: Nervousness, Depression, Irritability, Inhibition, and Neuroticism. They also showed significantly greater improvements than controls on the following seven scales: Nervousness, Depression, Sociability, Inhibition, Extraversion, Neuroticism, and Masculinity (self-reliance). Compared to the norm, the meditating subjects showed significantly greater neuroticism at the time of learning TM. However, after approximately 55 weeks of regular practice of the TM technique, they showed significantly greater emotional stability (significantly less neuroticism) and significantly greater sociability than the norm. The changes in the various scales among the first, second, and third administrations suggest that regulative-compensatory processes producing a reduction in neuroticism dominate in the first few weeks of the practice of the TM technique, and that growth of individual creativity and integration continues throughout the rest of the first year.