Mindfulness Meditation Activates Altruism
Scientific Reports April 16, 2020 Sage K. Iwamoto, Marcus Alexander, Mark Torres et al.
A brief online mindfulness meditation session increased charitable donations by a factor of 2.61 compared to a control condition, after accounting for socio-demographics. The effect was larger among participants without a college education and those under 25, who gave almost nothing in the control condition. The findings suggest that human altruism is highly context-dependent and that mindfulness meditation may boost social cooperation, especially in people with a low baseline willingness to contribute.