A new study by researchers at the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds at the Waisman Center of the University of Wisconsin-Madison shows that adults can be trained to be more compassionate<\/strong>. The report, published Psychological Science<\/em>, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, investigates whether training adults in compassion can result in greater altruistic behavior and related changes in neural systems underlying compassion.<\/p>\n \u201cOur fundamental question was, \u2018Can compassion be trained and learned in adults?<\/strong> Can we become more caring if we practice that mindset?\u2019\u201d says\u00a0Helen Weng, lead author of the study and a graduate student in clinical psychology. \u201cOur evidence points to yes.\u201d<\/p>\n In the study, the investigators trained young adults to engage in compassion meditation, an ancient Buddhist technique to increase caring feelings for people who are suffering. In the meditation, participants envisioned a time when someone has suffered and then practiced wishing that his or her suffering was relieved. They repeated phrases to help them focus on compassion such as, \u201cMay you be free from suffering. May you have joy and ease.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n Participants practiced with different categories of people, first starting with a loved one, someone whom they easily felt compassion for, like a friend or family member. Then, they practiced compassion for themselves and, then, a stranger.<\/strong> Finally, they practiced compassion for someone they actively had conflict with called the \u201cdifficult person,\u201d such as a troublesome coworker or roommate.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s kind of like weight training,\u201d Weng says. \u201cUsing this systematic approach, we found that people can actually build up their compassion \u2018muscle\u2019 and respond to others\u2019 suffering with care and a desire to help.\u201d<\/p>\n Compassion training was compared to a control group that learned cognitive reappraisal, a technique where people learn to reframe their thoughts to feel less negative<\/strong>. Both groups listened to guided audio instructions over the Internet for 30 minutes per day for two weeks. \u201cWe wanted to investigate whether people could begin to change their emotional habits in a relatively short period of time,\u201d says Weng.<\/p>\n The real test of whether compassion could be trained was to see if people would be willing to be more altruistic \u2014 even helping people they had never met. The research tested this by asking the participants to play a game in which they were given the opportunity to spend their own money to respond to someone in need (called the \u201cRedistribution Game\u201d). They played the game over the Internet with two anonymous players, the \u201cDictator\u201d and the \u201cVictim.\u201d They watched as the Dictator shared an unfair amount of money (only $1 out of $10) with the Victim<\/strong>. They then decided how much of their own money to spend (out of $5) in order to equalize the unfair split and redistribute funds from the Dictator to the Victim.<\/p>\n \u201cWe found that people trained in compassion were more likely to spend their own money altruistically to help someone who was treated unfairly than those who were trained in cognitive reappraisal<\/strong>,\u201d Weng says.<\/p>\n \u201cWe wanted to see what changed inside the brains of people who gave more to someone in need. How are they responding to suffering differently now?\u201d asks Weng. The study measured changes in brain responses using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) before and after training. In the MRI scanner, participants viewed images depicting human suffering, such as a crying child or a burn victim, and generated feelings of compassion towards the people using their practiced skills<\/strong>. The control group was exposed to the same images, and asked to recast them in a more positive light as in reappraisal.<\/p>\n The researchers measured how much brain activity had changed from the beginning to the end of the training, and found that the people who were the most altruistic after compassion training were the ones who showed the most brain changes when viewing human suffering. They found that activity was increased in the inferior parietal cortex, a region involved in empathy and understanding others<\/strong>. Compassion training also increased activity in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and the extent to which it communicated with the nucleus accumbens, brain regions involved in emotion regulation and positive emotions.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople seem to become more sensitive to other people\u2019s suffering, but this is challenging emotionally. They learn to regulate their emotions so that they approach people\u2019s suffering with caring and wanting to help rather than turning away,<\/strong>\u201d explains Weng.<\/p>\n Compassion, like physical and academic skills, appears to be something that is not fixed, but rather can be enhanced with training and practice. \u201cThe fact that alterations in brain function were observed after just a total of seven hours of training is remarkable,\u201d explains UW-Madison psychology and psychiatry professor\u00a0Richard J. Davidson, founder and chair of the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds and senior author of the article.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are many possible applications of this type of training,\u201d Davidson says. \u201cCompassion and kindness training in schools can help children learn to be attuned to their own emotions as well as those of others, which may decrease bullying<\/strong>. Compassion training also may benefit people who have social challenges such as social anxiety or antisocial behavior.\u201d<\/p>\n Weng is also excited about how compassion training can help the general population. \u201cWe studied the effects of this training with healthy participants, which demonstrated that this can help the average person. I would love for more people to access the training and try it for a week or two \u2014 what changes do they see in their own lives?\u201d<\/p>\n Both compassion and reappraisal trainings are available on the\u00a0Center for Investigating Healthy Minds\u2019 website. \u201cI think we are only scratching the surface of how compassion can transform people\u2019s lives<\/strong>,\u201d says Weng.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Other authors on the paper were Andrew S. Fox, Alexander J. Shackman, Diane E. Stodola, Jessica Z. K. Caldwell, Matthew C. Olson, and Gregory M. Rogers.<\/p>\n The work was supported by funds from the National Institutes of Health; a Hertz Award to the UW-Madison Department of Psychology; the Fetzer Institute; The John Templeton Foundation; the Impact Foundation; the J. W. Kluge Foundation; the Mental Insight Foundation; the Mind and Life Institute; and gifts from Bryant Wanguard, Ralph Robinson, and Keith and Arlene Bronstein.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" From the Association for Psychological Science press release via ScienceDaily: Until now, little was scientifically known about the human potential to cultivate compassion \u2014 the emotional state of caring for… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5,6],"tags":[42,189,12],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13267"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13267"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13267\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13535,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13267\/revisions\/13535"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"mental](\"http:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/mental-health.jpg\")
Until now, little was scientifically known about the human potential to cultivate compassion<\/strong> \u2014 the emotional state of caring for people who are suffering in a way that motivates altruistic behavior.<\/p>\n