We Can Train Our Brains to be More Compassionate--Research

Adults can learn to be more compassionate, according to a study by academics at the University of Wisconsin-Waisman Madison's Center's Center for Investigating Healthy Minds. The study examined whether teaching adults compassion could lead to an increase in altruistic conduct and associated changes in the brain networks that underlie compassion. It was published in?Psychological Science,?a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.?

“Our fundamental question was, ‘Can compassion be trained and learned in adults? Can we become more caring if we practice that mindset?’” says Helen Weng, lead author of the study. “Our evidence points to yes.”

In the study, the researchers taught young adults how to practice compassion meditation, an old Buddhist practice that heightens empathy for others who are suffering. Participants practiced wishing that someone else's pain would end after visualizing a period when they had experienced it. They repeated lines like, “May you be free from suffering. “May you have joy and ease.”

The participants trained with several types of individuals, beginning with a loved one—someone they were naturally compassionate towards, such as a friend or family member. They then worked on having compassion for themselves and a stranger. Finally, they developed compassion for the "difficult individual," such as a problematic friend or co-worker, with whom they were actively at odds.?

Weng explains, "It's kind of like weight training." Using this methodical technique, we discovered that individuals may develop their compassion "muscle" and respond to the pain of others with compassion and a desire to assist.?

The effectiveness of cognitive reappraisal, a technique that teaches people to reframe their ideas to feel less negative, as compared to compassion training in a control group. For two weeks, both groups spent 30 minutes each day listening to guided audio instructions that were broadcast over the Internet. “We wanted to find out if people may start to alter their emotional routines in a short amount of time,” adds Weng.?

The true test of whether compassion could be taught was if individuals would be willing to be more charitable, even to strangers. To test this, the researchers gave the participants the option to take part in a game called the "Redistribution Game," in which they may use their own money to help someone in need. The "Dictator" and the "Victim," were two anonymous individuals, and they played the game online. They observed as the Dictator gave the Victim an unfairly small sum of money (just $1 out of $10). They then choose how much of their own money, out of a total of $5, to spend to make up for the unequal division and transfer money from the Dictator to the Victim.?

Weng reports “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.”

“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.?Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), the study examined changes in brain activity both before and after training. Participants watched images of human suffering in the MRI machine, such as a screaming child or a burn victim, and used their practiced techniques to feel compassion for the subjects. The same photographs were shown to the control group, but they were asked to reappraise them more favorably.?

The persons who were the most altruistic after receiving compassion training also exhibited the biggest changes in brain activity when considering human suffering, according to the researchers, who assessed how much brain activity had changed from the start to the end of the course. They discovered that the inferior parietal cortex, a part of the brain involved in empathy and understanding others, had higher activity. Additionally, compassion training boosted activity in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and the nucleus accumbens, two brain areas involved in emotion regulation and good emotions.?

“People seem to become more sensitive to other people’s suffering, but this is challenging emotionally. They learn to regulate their emotions so that they approach people’s suffering with caring and wanting to help rather than turning away,” explains Weng.

Similar to athletic ability and academic aptitude, compassion appears to be a trait that may be developed through practice and instruction.?“The fact that alterations in brain function were observed after just a total of seven hours of training is remarkable,” explains UW-Madison psychology and psychiatry professor Richard J. Davidson, founder and chair of the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds and senior author of the article.

“There are many possible applications of this type of training,” Davidson says. “Compassion 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. Compassion training also may benefit people who have social challenges such as social anxiety or antisocial behavior.”

Weng is also enthusiastic about how compassion training might benefit society as a whole.?. “We 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 — what changes do they see in their own lives?”

Training in compassion and reappraisal can be found on the website of the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds.?“I think we are only scratching the surface of how compassion can transform people’s lives,” says Weng.