Can mental training in compassion lead to altruistic behavior and better health

The first time I ever tried a loving-kindness med­i­ta­tion, I was over­come by a feel­ing of com­plete… futil­ity. Men­tally extend­ing com­pas­sion to oth­ers and wish­ing them free from suf­fer­ing seemed nice enough, but I had a hard time believ­ing that my idle thoughts could increase kind­ness in the real world.

Turns out I was wrong.

A new study, just pub­lished online by Psy­cho­log­i­cal Sci­ence, shows that train­ing adults in a loving-kindness-style “com­pas­sion med­i­ta­tion” actu­ally makes them sig­nif­i­cantly more altru­is­tic toward others.

The study sug­gests not only that it’s pos­si­ble to increase com­pas­sion and altru­ism in the world, but that we can do so even through rel­a­tively brief training.

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Source material from Sharp Brains