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Review
. 2023 Apr 12:14:1038051.
doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2023.1038051. eCollection 2023.

Spreading positive change: Societal benefits of meditation

Veronika Engert  1   2 , Olga Maria Klimecki  3 , Philipp Kanske  2   3 ; Mindful Universities Research Group
Affiliations
Review

Spreading positive change: Societal benefits of meditation

Veronika Engert et al. Front Psychiatry. .

Abstract

Research over the past decades has revealed a variety of beneficial effects of meditation training. These beneficial effects span the levels of health and well-being, cognition, emotion, and social behavior. Around the same time, sociologists have shown that traits and outcomes on the individual level have the potential to spread in communities over three or more degrees. This means, for example, that changes can spread from one person to the next, and on to yet another person. Here, we propose that meditation-induced changes may likewise spread through the social networks of meditation practitioners. Such spreading may happen by positively influencing others through prosocial actions, improved cognitive functioning, and increased positive affect. Positive affective states and their underlying physiological correlates may also be shared in the literal sense. We argue that the spreading of positive meditation effects could provide the basis for collective responses to some of the urgent challenges we face in our current time and society and call for future meditation research to examine the phenomenon.

Keywords: attention; emotion; meditation; perspective-taking; social behavior; stress.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest. The reviewer A-LS declared a shared affiliation with the author VE to the handling editor at the time of review.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Schematic representation of pathways through which meditation effects may spread to others. As a basic mechanism, recipients may simply benefit from meditation-induced effects on the practitioner’s prosocial behavior, cognitive functioning and emotional functioning. They may additionally modify their own subsequent behavior, cognitions or emotions. In the most literal sense of the word spreading, the positive affective states and underlying physiological correlates of a practitioner may also be directly shared.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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