Abstract

As the effects of mindfulness meditation (MM) are being revealed in various areas, there has been an increase in the number of studies showing that MM can even enhance altruism. On the other hand, lovingkindness-compassion meditation (LKCM), a unique meditation that is distinct from MM, can also be considered to be highly related to altruism. Several studies have compared the effects of the two types of meditation on altruism, but the results vary from study to study. Therefore, this study attempted to determine whether the altruistic effect of MM is somewhat limited, and whether LKCM has a better effect on altruism. Furthermore, we tried to clarify whether these differences appear due to the difference in the core mechanism of the two types of meditation. In order to clarify this, LKCM and MM were organized into an 8-week program to compare the effects of each other, and an untreated control group was additionally created to control for the time effect. As a result of the analysis, the interaction between the group and measurement period was not significant in stress and implicit altruism, and significant or marginally significant results were found in loving-kindness and compassion, mindfulness, altruism, altruistic behavior, affective empathy, and de-self-centeredness. In the LKCM program, there was an increase in loving-kindness and compassion, mindfulness, altruism, altruistic behavior, affective empathy, and de-self-centeredness over time. In the MM program, there was an increase in mindfulness and de-self-centeredness. As a result of path analysis, LKCM predicted altruism and altruistic behavior through affective empathy and de-self-centeredness, and had a tendency to predict implicit altruism through affective empathy. MM predicted altruism and altruistic behavior through de-self-centeredness, but it did not predict implicit altruism. In other words, LKCM could affect an individual's inner altruism by increasing affective empathy for others, whereas MM could reduce attachment to oneself and cause actions for others, but could not raise an individual's inner altruism. In the discussion, the limitations of this study and suggestions for future research were addressed.