Effects of compassion meditation on a psychological model of charitable donation.
Emotion (Washington, D.C.) August 1, 2016 Yoni K Ashar, Jessica R Andrews-Hanna, Tal Yarkoni et al.
Two studies developed and tested a psychological model of compassionate behavior, measured as real-money charitable donations. Study 1 found that a combination of tenderness, personal distress, perceived blamelessness, and perceived instrumental value of helping predicted donations with high accuracy (r = .67), while perceived similarity did not add predictive power. Study 2, a randomized controlled trial, showed that a smartphone-based Compassion Meditation (CM) program increased donations relative to control conditions (placebo oxytocin and a Familiarity intervention), and changes in the Study 1 model mediated this effect. The Familiarity intervention decreased primary outcomes, while placebo oxytocin had no significant effects. The work offers a quantitative model and insights into CM's active ingredients.