Loving-Kindness and Reliable Prosocial Response
This project asks whether practices that cultivate loving-kindness can transform good intentions into reliable prosocial responses. A preregistered six-week randomized controlled trial compared loving-kindness meditation, guided engagement with loving-kindness books, and a control condition.
The reading-based intervention produced stronger and longer-lasting changes in aggression and prosociality than meditation alone. Current work is consolidating the thesis research into a manuscript and examining what the findings reveal about sustained engagement, automatic tendencies, and robust psychological change.
Current pipeline
- Finalizing the article and analytic decisions
- Distinguishing immediate from persistent intervention effects
- Developing extensions involving identity, habits, and effortless prosociality