Question

Meditation for anxiety An experiment that claimed to show that meditation lowers anxiety proceeded as follows. The experimenter interviewed the subjects and rated their level of anxiety. Then the subjects were randomly assigned to two groups. The experimenter taught one group how to meditate and they meditated daily for a month. The other group was simply told to relax more. At the end of the month, the experimenter interviewed all the subjects again and rated their anxiety level. The meditation group now had less anxiety. Psychologists said that the results were suspect because the ratings were not blind. Explain what this means and how lack of blindness could bias the reported results.

Short answer

We cannot take into the account the placebo effect. Result can be affected by belief in the treatment of patients.

Step-by-step solution

Given Information

It is given that an experiment is claimed to show that anxiety is lowered by meditation.

Explanation

Here, the patients are the subjects. The subjects know which treatment they received. The psychologists are also aware that which treatment was received by which subject. The reported results could be bias by lack of blindness as results can be influenced by placebo effect. There is no group that received a placebo such that we could compare with this group. Hence, placebo effect cannot be taken into consideration. Results could be affected by patients belief in treatment,