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Compassion training alters altruism and neural responses to suffering.
Open accessAbstract
Compassion is a key motivator of altruistic behavior, but little is known about individuals' capacity to cultivate compassion through training. We examined whether compassion may be systematically trained by testing whether (a) short-term compassion training increases altruistic behavior and (b) individual differences in altruism are associated with training-induced changes in neural responses to suffering. In healthy adults, we found that compassion training increased altruistic redistribution of funds to a victim encountered outside of the training context. Furthermore, increased altruistic behavior after compassion training was associated with altered activation in brain regions implicated in social cognition and emotion regulation, including the inferior parietal cortex and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), and in DLPFC connectivity with the nucleus accumbens. These results suggest that compassion can be cultivated with training and that greater altruistic behavior may emerge from increased engagement of neural systems implicated in understanding the suffering of other people, executive and emotional control, and reward processing.
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“Findings from longitudinal studies also found that short-term compassion meditation training can promote altruistic behavior and increase the tendency to approach, rather than avoid, the suffering of others [38].”
From Potential therapeutic effects of meditation for treating affective dysregulation (2014) · cites this paper as [38]
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“Levine136 emphasizes that it is not uncommon for patients to experience tingling, trembling, shaking, or limb jerking as they track their body sensations.”
From Fear and the Defense Cascade (2015) · cites this paper as [136]
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“The repeated practice of these sensorimotor interventions enables the individual to learn that the freeze state is temporary and will pass.136,169”
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“The practice of fostering a state of engaged, but nonreactive, curiosity (mindfulness) helps the individual decouple the physical sensations from the associated feelings of fear.136,138,169”
From Fear and the Defense Cascade (2015) · cites this paper as [136]
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“Behavioral research has shown that short-term training of loving-kindness and compassion is associated with increases in daily positive affect (Kok et al., 2013), prosocial behavior (Leiberg et al., 2011;Weng et al., 2013), resilience (Fredrickson et al., 2008) and empathy (Mascaro et al., 2013).”
From Compassion-based emotion regulation up-regulates experienced positive affect and associated neural networks (2015) · cites this paper as Weng et al., 2013
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Metadata
- Authors
- Weng, H. Y., Fox, A. S., Shackman, A. J., Stodola, D. E., Caldwell, J. Z. K., Olson, M. C., Rogers, G. M., & Davidson, R. J.
- Affiliations
- University of Wisconsin–Madison (US)
- Venue
- Psychological Science
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 2013-05-21
- Volume
- 24
- Issue
- 7
- Pages
- 1171-1180
- ISSN
- 0956-7976 (ISSN-L)
- 1467-9280
- PMC
- PMC3713090
- OpenAlex
- W2102589785
- Cited by
- 602
- References
- 65
- Citations by year
- 2026: 24 · 2025: 39 · 2024: 40 · 2023: 45 · 2022: 47 · 2021: 62 · 2020: 55 · 2019: 52 · 2018: 51 · 2017: 51 · 2016: 43 · 2015: 48 · 2014: 38 · 2013: 4
- FWCI
- 48.88
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Locations
- Psychological Science (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (acceptedVersion)
- PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
- Funders
- National Institute of Mental Health (T32MH018931)
- National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (P01AT004952)
- Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (P30HD003352)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Mindfulness and Compassion Interventions
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Psychological Well-being and Life Satisfaction
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neural and Behavioral Psychology Studies
- Keywords
- compassion training, altruism, compassion, inferior parietal cortex, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, nucleus accumbens, social cognition, emotion regulation, reward processing
- MeSH terms
- Adult, Altruism, Brain, Brain Mapping, Emotions, Empathy, Female, Humans, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Male, Motivation, Neural Pathways, Nucleus Accumbens, Pain, Parietal Lobe, Social Behavior, Stress, Psychological, Prefrontal Cortex, Meditation, Young Adult, Functional Neuroimaging
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