Meditation & Social Connection

During my graduate career, I was fortunate to receive a Francisco Varela Research Grant from the Mind and Life Research Institute for research on meditation. Our research demonstrated that a certain form of Buddhist meditation, Loving-Kindness Meditation, can increase one's feeling of well-being as well as connection with and positive regard toward others (Hutcherson, Seppala & Gross, 2008). We measured social connection both through self-report measures as well as "implicit" measures so as to control for potential bias due to demand characteristics.

We were very happy with these results because a sense of belongingness and connection to others is a fundamental human need (Baumeister & Leary, 1995; Maslow, 1943) associated with important mental and physical health benefits. Perceived social connectedness, for example, predicts psychological well-being, improved recovery from disease, and a longer lifespan. Conversely, those who are not socially connected are more vulnerable to anxiety, depression, antisocial behavior, and even suicide (Berkman & Syme, 1979; Cacioppo, Hawkley, Crawford, et al. 2002; Pressman, Cohen, Miller, al.2005). In addition, a lack of social connectedness is correlated with health risks similar to those associated with cigarette smoking, blood pressure, and obesity (House, Landis & Umberson, 1988; Orth-Gomer & Johnson, 1987).

A weakness of our study is that we measured the effects of a single, short dose of meditation administered to undergraduate students. Althought our results were significant, we cannot make general claims about the effects of this meditation on social connectedness over the long run. However, if even such a short administration of meditation leads to significant changes in social connectedness, one might hypothesize that continued practice over longer periods, as meditation is usually done, might lead to long-lasting effects reflected in neuronal changes in the brain, as shown by Sara Lazar. Ongoing research in North American as well as European neuroscience labs is asking exactly this question: can meditation lead to the behavioral consequences of social connectedness i.e. empathy, compassion and even prosocial behavior? Antoine Lutz recently showed that monks who have been practicing meditation for thousands of hours (this is one objective way in which researchers determine whether someone is a meditation "expert") showed altered brain circuitry, in particular enhanced empathetic responding (Lutz, Brefczynksi-Lewis, Johnstone & Davidson, 2008).

Behavioral research findings that show that meditation actually leads to prosocial or compassionate behavior would demonstrate more clearly the effects of meditation on social connectedness. Current popular icons of meditation such as His Holinesses the Dalai Lama, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, and Thich Nhat Hahn are known for their compassion. These exemplars suggest that meditation may indeed lead to a more prosocial orientation towards others. However, until research proves this hypothesis, we cannot assume causation as these compassionate individuals may have been drawn to meditation because of their pre-existing prosocial traits. Research investigating the effects of meditation on prosocial behavioral are ongoing and their results will shed further light on these hypotheses.