After three weeks of mobile-app based mindfulness meditation training, people were more likely to give up their seat to a person on crutches displaying discomfort than those who completed cognitive skills training. Empathic accuracy—the ability to read others' emotions—did not improve with mindfulness practice, indicating that mindfulness-enhanced compassionate behavior does not rely on better emotional decoding. The experiment used an ecologically valid situation in a public waiting area to measure real compassionate responding.
Meditation has become popular in Western culture, with studies showing benefits like improved cognition, mental health, and increased gray matter. However, little research has examined its social impact. A key spiritual goal of meditation is reducing suffering and fostering compassion, but scientists have only recently started testing whether meditation actually increases compassionate states and behavior.