Abstract
Many individuals believe that meditation has the capacity to not only alleviate mental-illness but to improve prosociality. This article systematically reviewed and meta-analysed the effects of meditation interventions on prosociality in randomized controlled trials of healthy adults. Five types of social behaviours were identified: compassion, empathy, aggression, connectedness and prejudice. Although we found a moderate increase in prosociality following meditation, further analysis indicated that this effect was qualified by two factors: type of prosociality and methodological quality. Meditation interventions had an effect on compassion and empathy, but not on aggression, connectedness or prejudice. We further found that compassion levels only increased under two conditions: when the teacher in the meditation intervention was a co-author in the published study; and when the study employed a passive (waiting list) control group but not an active one. Contrary to popular beliefs that meditation will lead to prosocial changes, the results of this meta-analysis showed that the effects of meditation on prosociality were qualified by the type of prosociality and methodological quality of the study. We conclude by highlighting a number of biases and theoretical problems that need addressing to improve quality of research in this area.
Highlights
‘If every eight-year-old in the world is taught meditation, the world will be without violence within one generation’ — this quote, attributed to the current Dalai Lama, and circulating on online forums, tweets and Facebook pages[1], succinctly conveys the beliefs and expectations held by many about the powers of meditation
Previous articles have reviewed the clinical benefits of compassion meditation (CM) and loving kindness meditation (LKM), both of which include a concern with stimulating positive other-centred emotions[17,18,19]
Because of criticisms concerning the methodological quality in meditation research[20,26], we only included randomised controlled trials (RCTs) that investigated the effects of mindfulness on prosociality
Summary
‘If every eight-year-old in the world is taught meditation, the world will be without violence within one generation’ — this quote, attributed to the current Dalai Lama, and circulating on online forums, tweets and Facebook pages[1], succinctly conveys the beliefs and expectations held by many about the powers of meditation. The literature is often unclear in which way compassion meditation is different from loving-kindness, though some authors suggest that the former focuses more on the feeling of sharing suffering[19]. Prior studies employing these types of meditation were focussed on the clinical applications of meditation and, only partially looked at the prosocial effects of the interventions. It was concluded that the results for the clinical and social effects of the nine examined studies were encouraging, but inconsistent
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