Boosting prosocial career aspirations: Loving-kindness meditation relates to higher communal career goals in youth.
Scandinavian Journal of Psychology August 1, 2022 Una Tellhed, Annie Sollvén, Alexandru Tamas et al.
Listening to a brief loving-kindness meditation can increase communal career goals—wanting to help others and benefit society—in high-school students, potentially boosting interest in HEED occupations (Healthcare, Early Education, Domestic fields) that face labor shortages and are gender-skewed. In three experimental studies, high-school students (Studies 1 and 3) who listened to a 12-minute meditation recording rated stronger communal career goals compared to controls who did not listen or heard calm music. This effect did not replicate in university students (Study 2), possibly due to less flexible career goals or a ceiling effect. The authors propose this as the first demonstration of a method to raise communal career goals in youth.