Is Informal Practice Associated with Outcomes in Loving-Kindness and Compassion Training? Evidence from Pre-Post and Daily Diary Assessments

We investigated whether informal meditation practice (i.e., engagement of meditative techniques outside a period of formal meditation) was associated with outcomes in smartphone-based loving-kindness and compassion training. Clinically distressed meditation-naïve participants (n = 351) completed measures of psychological distress, loneliness, empathy, and prosociality at baseline and following a two-week intervention. Informal practice, psychological distress, and loneliness were also assessed daily. Steeper increases in informal practice were correlated with pre-post improvements in distress (r = -.18, p = .008) and loneliness (r = -.19, p = .009) but not empathy or prosociality. Using a currently recommended analytic approach for establishing cross-lagged effects in longitudinal data (latent curve model with structured residuals), higher current-day informal practice was associated with decreased next-day distress but not decreased next-day loneliness. No cross-lagged associations emerged from distress or loneliness to informal practice. Findings suggest that further investigation into a potential causal role of informal practice is warranted. Future studies manipulating informal practice are needed.