English
 
Help Privacy Policy Disclaimer
  Advanced SearchBrowse

Item

ITEM ACTIONSEXPORT
  Compassion meditators show less anger, less punishment, and more compensation of victims in response to fairness violations

McCall, C., Steinbeis, N., Ricard, M., & Singer, T. (2014). Compassion meditators show less anger, less punishment, and more compensation of victims in response to fairness violations. Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, 8: 424. doi:10.3389/fnbeh.2014.00424.

Item is

Files

show Files
hide Files
:
McCall_2014.pdf (Publisher version), 2MB
Name:
McCall_2014.pdf
Description:
-
OA-Status:
Visibility:
Public
MIME-Type / Checksum:
application/pdf / [MD5]
Technical Metadata:
Copyright Date:
-
Copyright Info:
-
License:
-

Locators

show

Creators

show
hide
 Creators:
McCall, Cade1, Author           
Steinbeis, Nikolaus1, Author           
Ricard, Matthieu2, Author
Singer, Tania1, Author           
Affiliations:
1Department Social Neuroscience, MPI for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Max Planck Society, ou_634552              
2Mind and Life Institute, Hadley, MA, USA, ou_persistent22              

Content

show
hide
Free keywords: Prosocial behavior; Economic games; Social preferences; Altruistic punishment; Compassion; Altruism
 Abstract: Fairness violations elicit powerful behavioral and affective responses. Indeed, people are willing to incur costs to sanction unfair behavior. Here we study the possible impact of long-term mental training in socio-affective capacities such as compassion on altruistic punishment and compensatory behavior in economic games. To this end we recruited a group of long-term meditation practitioners (LTPs) who had engaged in an average of 40 K h of mental training exercises including compassion-related meditation, along with a group of meditation-naïve controls. Participants played several adaptations of the dictator game in which they had the opportunity to punish the dictator both when they were the recipients of the dictator's offer and when they were third-party witnesses to the dictator's treatment of an anonymous second player. Compared to controls, LTPs were less likely to punish when they were the victims of fairness violations. However, both groups punished equivalently when they witnessed others receiving unfair treatment. In post-task questionnaires, controls reported significantly more anger in response to unfair offers than LTPs, although fairness judgments did not differ between groups. These data suggest that because the LTPs were less angered by unfair treatment of themselves, they punished that behavior less. However, when they witnessed the unfair treatment of others, they engaged in norm-reinforcing punishment. Finally, when participants played an additional game which included the opportunity to recompense victims, LTPs were more likely to do so. Together these data point to differential approaches to justice whereby LTPs engaged less in vengeful, retributive justice and focused more on norm reinforcement and the restoration of equity. These differences suggest that social preferences are plastic and that altruistic responses to unfairness may be shaped by the prolonged cultivation of prosocial motivation, altruism, and compassion.

Details

show
hide
Language(s): eng - English
 Dates: 2014-07-292014-11-202014-12-09
 Publication Status: Published online
 Pages: -
 Publishing info: -
 Table of Contents: -
 Rev. Type: Peer
 Identifiers: DOI: 10.3389/fnbeh.2014.00424
PMID: 25538589
PMC: PMC4260514
Other: eCollection 2014
 Degree: -

Event

show

Legal Case

show

Project information

show

Source 1

show
hide
Title: Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience
  Abbreviation : Front Behav Neurosci
Source Genre: Journal
 Creator(s):
Affiliations:
Publ. Info: Lausanne, Switzerland : Frontiers Research Foundation
Pages: - Volume / Issue: 8 Sequence Number: 424 Start / End Page: - Identifier: Other: 1662-5153
CoNE: https://pure.mpg.de/cone/journals/resource/1662-5153