The effects of loving-kindness and compassion meditation on altruistic behavior and its cognitive neural mechanisms
Guomin Jin, Dan Li
Advances in Psychological Science April 22, 2020 DOI: 10.3724/sp.j.1042.2020.00978 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Review Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Interventions | Loving-Kindness Meditation Compassion Meditation |
| Topics | Meditation |
| Key findings | LKM and CM can promote altruistic behaviors by enhancing empathy, emotion regulation, and prosocial motivation. |
Abstract
: Loving-kindness and compassion meditation is a type of meditation practice that aims to cultivate the unconditional kindness and compassion for oneself and others. Specifically, interventions related to such meditation practice mainly include Loving-Kindness Meditation (LKM) and Compassion Meditation (CM). A large number of studies have demonstrated that LKM and CM can promote practitioners’ altruistic behaviors. By reviewing its mechanisms, LKM and CM seem to influence practitioners’ altruistic behaviors by enhancing their empathetic responses to others’ distress, promoting emotion regulation, and improving prosocial motivation. Future research would benefit from selecting more ecologically valid measurements of altruistic behaviors, further exploring the dynamic neural processes of how LKM and CM influence on altruistic behaviors, and applying the practice of LKM and CM to clinical populations.
Comparable studies
Other narrative reviews on meditation, most cited first.
| Study | Year | Design | Participants |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mindfulness training as a clinical intervention: A conceptual and empirical review. Clinical populations | 2003 | Review | |
| Mindfulness: Theoretical Foundations and Evidence for its Salutary Effects | 2007 | Review | |
| Mindfulness Interventions | 2016 | Review | |
| Mind the Hype: A Critical Evaluation and Prescriptive Agenda for Research on Mindfulness and Meditation | 2017 | Review | |
| Mindfulness and acceptance: expanding the cognitive-behavioral tradition | 2005 | Review |
Citations in the library
Cites 2
- Compassion meditation enhances empathic accuracy and related neural activity Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience September 5, 2012
- Compassion-based emotion regulation up-regulates experienced positive affect and associated neural networks Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience February 19, 2015