In our inaugural blog post we described a study which found that doing kind acts can lead to better mood and more satisfying relationships for socially anxious people. Now we have come across a small study showing that meditation can lead to acts of kindness⁽¹⁾.

Researchers at Northeastern University, Massachusetts General Hospital, and Harvard University set out to investigate whether people who completed one of two eight-week meditation courses (mindfulness-based or compassion-based) would be more likely to show compassion toward other people compared to participants assigned to a wait-list control group.

They used a very interesting, real-life situation in their study: giving up a seat for someone in pain. When each participant arrived at the laboratory waiting area, he or she sat in the only unoccupied seat. Female confederates (paid by the researchers to play the role of other participants) occupied two other seats. One minute later, another female confederate appeared, with crutches and a walking boot, showing obvious signs of pain. The researchers were looking to see whether the real participant offered his or her seat to the woman in pain.

The results are quite compelling. Meditators were five times more likely than non meditators to give up their seats! Furthermore, those who completed the mindfulness-based meditation course were just as likely as those from the compassion-based course to give up their seats, even though the latter course targeted compassion more directly. Also noteworthy is that these findings occurred within a set-up conducive to the classic “bystander effect” – a phenomenon wherein an individual is less likely to offer assistance in the presence of other people. Meditators appeared to be less susceptible to this effect than non meditators; despite witnessing two confederates ignore the woman in pain, 50% of meditators gave up their seats compared to 16% in the control group. The researchers speculated that meditation may increase compassionate behavior by increasing one’s ability to notice others in pain and/or by leading to changes in perspective taking.

What can we take away from the research presented in our first two blog posts? Well, we saw that meditation can lead to acts of kindness, and acts of kindness can lead to more satisfying relationships in the socially anxious. We also know from earlier research that mindfulness meditation can lead to more satisfying relationships(2). Perhaps one of the ways it does that is by facilitating kindness.

In our previous blog post we encouraged you to include more acts of kindness in your daily routine. In light of this recent study, perhaps that will be easier to do the more you meditate! If you are working through our book, that would mean setting aside more time to practice the mindfulness exercises (available to download at http://www.newharbinger.com/mindfulness-and-acceptance-workbook-social-anxiety-and-shyness, under Accessories). You may even want to find a meditation group in your area and surround yourself with meditators!

References:

1. Condon, P., Desbordes, G., Miller, W., DeSteno, D. (In press). Meditation increases compassionate responses to suffering. Psychological Science.

2. Bihari, J.L.N. and Mullan, E.G. (published online Sept. 1, 2012). Relating mindfully: A qualitative exploration of changes in relationships through mindfulness-based cognitive therapy. Mindfulness, DOI 10.1007/s12671-012-0146-x.

Please share any comments you have about this blog post. We look forward to hearing from you.

With that difficulty in mind, our intention for this blog is for it to play a role (albeit small) in keeping you informed about interesting research findings, studies in progress, new books, and other relevant developments.

To start off, we are sharing some interesting research findings about “acts of kindness” that recently caught our attention. Researchers at the University of British Columbia investigated whether doing kind acts would lead to better mood and more satisfying relationships in socially anxious students. A third of the students were asked to do kinds acts (about 6 times per week for 4 weeks), another third were asked to do behavioral experiments (of the types used in cognitive behavior therapy for social anxiety), and the remaining third were asked to simply record daily events.

At the beginning and end of the study, the students rated their mood and how satisfied they were with their relationships (with acquaintances, coworkers, friends, and close friends), among other things. Two main findings from the study were that positive mood and relationship satisfaction both increased significantly in the acts of kindness group but not in the other two groups. The kind acts included holding the door for someone, picking someone up from work, buying a friend lunch, visiting a sick relative, and thanking the bus driver, to name a few. Just over a third of the kind acts were directed to strangers, about a third to friends, and another third to family members, acquaintances, romantic partners, and others. (Read the full abstract of the study here).

Now, in our experience, most socially anxious individuals identify kindness toward others as one of their values; however, fears of looking foolish or saying/doing the wrong thing can get in the way of acting on this value (and other relationship values). Perhaps the findings from this study might provide some extra motivation for you to incorporate more acts of kindness into your daily routine, if that fits with your values and goals. By doing so, you would of course be engaged in values-based actions (a main goal in ACT) and those actions might lead to more satisfying relationships. As for the possibility of improving your mood by acting with kindness, that would be another bonus!

For those of you who are working through our book (or planning to), we recommend that you consider including a few specific acts of kindness on your goal-stepping worksheets in chapters seven and eight (again, if it fits with your valued goals).

Our blog is also intended as a place for dialogue and discussion, so please share your comments about this post, and future posts too. We welcome suggestions for topics you’d like us to blog about in the future.