Brief loving-kindness meditation (LKM) increases feelings of love and has a small-to-medium significant effect on prosocial behavior compared to active control groups (d = 0.303). However, its effects on donations to unknown others were mixed across three experiments. Age and the type of prosocial measure used moderate the effects. The findings suggest that LKM can nurture prosocial emotions and lead young individuals to donate, but these emotions may not be sufficient to lead adult meditators to share resources with unknown others.
Loving-kindness meditation (LKM) can elicit both positive emotions like compassion and gratitude and negative emotions like guilt in novice practitioners, especially those with greater self-discrepancy and lower self-esteem. Two experimental studies with community and student samples (55 and 33 participants) using brief interventions found that LKM activates empathetic emotions more than an active control, with guilt arising from memories of past failures to feel compassion or difficulty sending loving-kindness to disliked others. The findings suggest instructors should prepare naïve meditators for possible negative emotions during early LKM practice.