From April 1979 to January 1987, the "misery index"—the sum of the monthly inflation and unemployment rates—decreased in the U.S. and Canada during and following months when more than 1,500 people (approximately the square root of 1% of the U.S. population) participated daily in the group practice of Maharishi’s Transcendental Meditation and TM-Sidhi program at Maharishi International University in Iowa. Smaller declines were found for both countries when the group size averaged 1,100–1,500.

Reference: Cavanaugh, 1987.

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Population influenced: United States and Canada.

Coherence group: Permanent national coherence-creating group of Transcendental Meditation and TM-Sidhi program participants at Maharishi International University in Fairfield, Iowa, U.S.A.

Dependent variables: Monthly Misery Index (sum of inflation and unemployment rates) for the U.S.A. and Canada, 1979-1987.

Experimental design: Box-Jenkins time series impact assessment analysis of the effect of the TM-Sidhi group.

Results: The coherence-creating group had a highly significant impact on the U.S. and Canadian Misery Index. The effect was larger when the group was larger, and the effect was more pronounced in the country where the group was located (United States) than in the neighboring country (Canada).

Conclusions: The Maharishi Effect improves the performance of key economic variables, even across national boundaries.

Reference: Cavanaugh, K.L. (1987). Time series analysis of U.S. and Canadian inflation and unemployment: A test of a field-theoretic hypothesis. Proceedings of the American Statistical Association, Business and Economics Statistics Section (pp. 799-804). Alexandria, VA: American Statistical Association. (Reprinted in Scientific Research on Maharishi's Transcendental Meditation and TM-Sidhi Program: Collected Papers, Vol. 5, pp. 3188-3206.)