A Kindness-Based Meditation Study for Promoting Interpersonal Functioning in First-Year College Students

Objectives: First-year students face interpersonal challenges while transitioning to college that can negatively impact academic and psychosocial functioning.There is currently a need for brief, efficacious programming to address such problems.Accordingly, we designed a one-session skills-based meditation workshop for this population.Methods: 62 eligible incoming college students were randomized to the 90-minute workshop or a waitlist control group.Participants completed self-report measures of loneliness, social support, compassion for others, and roommate responsiveness before randomization and at the end of the semester.Results: Workshop participants reported a significant within-group reduction in loneliness over the semester, along with significantly greater semesters-end roommate responsiveness and compassion for a stranger in distress than waitlisted students.Conclusion: Findings suggest that participation in an early semester, single-session meditation workshop may beneficially influence social and emotional outcomes for incoming college students.With more research support, this workshop could be integrated into firstyear student programming.