Mindfulness Meditation Activates Altruism

Clinical evidence suggests that mindfulness meditation reduces anxiety, depression, and stress, and improves emotion regulation due to modulation of activity in neural substrates linked to the regulation of emotions and social preferences. However, less was known about whether mindfulness meditation...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Scientific reports 2020-04, Vol.10 (1), p.6511-6511, Article 6511
Main Authors: Iwamoto, Sage K., Alexander, Marcus, Torres, Mark, Irwin, Michael R., Christakis, Nicholas A., Nishi, Akihiro
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
631/181/1403
631/477/2811
Adult
Altruism
Anxiety - psychology
Charities
Cooperation
Demography
Donations
Emotions - physiology
Female
Humanities and Social Sciences
Humans
Male
Meditation
Meditation - psychology
Mindfulness
Mindfulness - methods
multidisciplinary
Science
Science (multidisciplinary)
Social Behavior
Video Games - psychology
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Summary:Clinical evidence suggests that mindfulness meditation reduces anxiety, depression, and stress, and improves emotion regulation due to modulation of activity in neural substrates linked to the regulation of emotions and social preferences. However, less was known about whether mindfulness meditation might alter pro-social behavior. Here we examined whether mindfulness meditation activates human altruism, a component of social cooperation. Using a simple donation game, which is a real-world version of the Dictator’s Game, we randomly assigned 326 subjects to a mindfulness meditation online session or control and measured their willingness to donate a portion of their payment for participation as a charitable donation. Subjects who underwent the meditation treatment donated at a 2.61 times higher rate than the control (p = 0.005), after controlling for socio-demographics. We also found a larger treatment effect of meditation among those who did not go to college (p 
ISSN:2045-2322
2045-2322
DOI:10.1038/s41598-020-62652-1