Calming Meditation Increases Altruism, Decreases Parochialism
Karl Frost
bioRxiv Preprint Server April 10, 2017 preprint DOI: 10.1101/060616 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Experiment with treatment and control format |
|---|---|
| Intervention | Breath awareness practice |
| Topics | Meditation |
| Citations | 5 |
| Key findings | A short, facilitated breath-awareness practice that produces calm reduces parochialism and increases altruism. |
Abstract
It has been proposed that cultivating calm will increase altruism and decrease parochialism, where altruism is defined as self-sacrifice in support of others, regardless of group affiliation or identity, and parochialism is defined as prosocial self-sacrifice restricted to fellow members of a group. Such could be the case with a calming meditation practice. An alternate hypothesis, coming from the study of ritual, proposes that shared practices lead to bonding, increasing parochialism, but not altruism generally. These contradictory hypotheses of the potential effects of shared cultural practices of calming meditation were explored via a formal behavioral experiment using a simple treatment and control format with a short, facilitated breath awareness practice known to produce calm. Altruism and parochialism were measured through anonymous play in Public Goods games performed with both in-group and out-group individuals. The sum of contributions of the two plays gave a measure of altruism, while the difference between the two gave a measure of parochialism. The analysis of the results using Bayesian AICc model comparison methods supports the first hypothesis that calming practices reduces parochialism and increases altruism. The hypothesis of intentional shared practice as parochialism inducing was not supported by the results in this case of a shared calming practice.
Comparable studies
Other experimental studies on meditation, most cited first.
| Study | Year | Design | Participants |
|---|---|---|---|
| The benefits of being present: Mindfulness and its role in psychological well-being. Cancer patients (clinical intervention study) | 2003 | Mixed methods: scale development, correlational, quasi-experimental, laboratory, experience-sampling, and clinical intervention study | |
| Loving-kindness meditation increases social connectedness. | 2008 | Controlled laboratory experiment | |
| Mindfulness and mind-wandering: Finding convergence through opposing constructs. | 2012 | Two studies: correlational study and experimental study | |
| Mental Training Enhances Attentional Stability: Neural and Behavioral Evidence | 2009 | Experimental study | |
| Mindfulness meditation and substance use in an incarcerated population. Incarcerated population | 2006 | Quasi-experimental with treatment-as-usual control condition |
Citations in the library
Cited by 2
- Effects of Brief Mindfulness Meditation and Compassion Meditation on Parochial Empathy and Prosocial Behavior Toward Ethnic Out-Group Members. Mindfulness March 27, 2023
- Does your mindfulness benefit others? A systematic review and meta‐analysis of the link between mindfulness and prosocial behaviour British Journal of Psychology August 9, 2018
Cites 9
- How Does Mindfulness Meditation Work? Proposing Mechanisms of Action From a Conceptual and Neural Perspective Perspectives on Psychological Science October 14, 2011
- Loving-kindness meditation increases social connectedness. Emotion October 1, 2008
- Mindfulness Meditation Reduces Implicit Age and Race Bias Social Psychological and Personality Science November 24, 2014
- Enhanced response inhibition during intensive meditation training predicts improvements in self-reported adaptive socioemotional functioning. Emotion April 1, 2011
- Compassion training alters altruism and neural responses to suffering. Psychological Science July 1, 2013
and 4 more in the library