Celebrity Endorsement and Meditation Intention: A Randomized Experiment

Meditation offers well-documented health benefits, yet persistence with meditation is low. Drawing on the Reasoned Action Approach, we tested whether celebrity meditators as a descriptive-norm cue improve attitudes toward and intention to meditate. In this randomized survey experiment (N = 2,035), participants viewed one of four images captioned "Meditating for just a few minutes a day can transform your mind". Compared to same-gender non-celebrities, the celebrity images did not increase intention to meditate (female: OR = 0.88, 95% CI 0.64–1.21; male: OR = 1.18, 0.85–1.63) or change attitudes (female: b = −0.09, −0.19 to 0.00; male: b = 0.06, −0.03 to 0.14; all Holm-adjusted p ≥ .24). In conclusion, a single exposure to a celebrity meditator may be insufficient to shift attitudes or intentions toward meditation.