Abstract

The pubertal changes during adolescence often lead to exploring new encounters and better understanding and interest in others. For adolescents, social cognition is understanding their social world characterized by neural activities in the brain. Social cognitive dysfunctions can significantly impact an adolescent’s ability to appropriately identify, interpret, interact, and respond to social cues. Early identification and interventions to address these minor deficits are crucial to alleviate the negative impacts on adolescents’ social cognition and, thus, their mental health. This is the first attempt in India to examine the effectiveness of Yoga on adolescents with low social. Quasi-experimental research with a pre-test-post-test design was used. Five hundred adolescents were screened using the Need for Social Cognition Scale (NFSC). The Edinburgh Social Cognition Test (ESCoT) was used for pre- and post-assessment. A paired sample t-test shows Social Cognition after Yoga was significantly higher than the pre-test scores with a large effect size. The Wilcoxon Sign Ranked Test in the waitlist control group found that social cognition after yoga training does not significantly differ from the pre-test results. Yoga in a therapeutic setup can result in more positive outcomes when incorporated with psychotherapy as a non-pharmacological method, especially among adolescents with minor social-cognitive impairments, and it may result in diverse benefits to mitigate their social-cognitive dysfunction. The results help validate and promote Yoga to improve adolescents’ social cognition.