Can Compassion Be Trained
According to researchers, the real test of whether compassion could be trained was to see if people would be willing to be more altruistic towards strangers. The research tested this by asking the participants to play an Internet game called the “Redistribution Game” in which they were given the opportunity to spend their own money to respond to someone in need.
Participants played the Redistribution Game with two anonymous players: one was called the “Dictator” and the other the “Victim.” Players watched as the Dictator shared an unfair amount of money (only $1 out of $10) with the Victim. Then, they 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.
“We 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,” Weng says. “We 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?” asks Weng.
Compassion Training Reshapes the Brain
The study showed changes in brain structure of compassion meditation participants. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) before and after training. In the fMRI 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. The control group was exposed to the same images in the fMRI, and were asked to recast the images in a more positive light using cognitive reappraisal.
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. In particular, they found that activity was increased in the inferior parietal cortex, a region involved in empathy and understanding others.
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.
From Psychology Today by Christopher Bergland
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