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Meditation can help you build relationships with people
Last reviewed: 01.07.2025
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The ability of a person to feel and “read” the emotions of another person is called empathy. With the help of meditation, this ability can be significantly improved and developed. Such conclusions were reached by scientists from Emory University.
"Previous research has shown that both adults and children who are able to understand and empathize with the emotions of others have significantly better relationships with people," explains lead author of the new study, anthropologist Jennifer Mascaro, PhD, of Emory University in Atlanta.
The meditation, designed to cultivate compassion, was created by co-author of this study, Geshe Lobsang Tenzin Negi. Geshe Negi is an assistant professor in the Department of Religion at Emory University and director of the Emory-Tibet Collaborative.
The scientists' study aimed to examine the effects of compassion meditation on behavioral and neuroendocrine responses.
Most people think of meditation as an act aimed at the utmost concentration of consciousness on internal emotional processes, that is, at knowing oneself. The practice developed by Geshe Negi has a different goal - it is not aimed at increasing self-awareness, but at improving the understanding of other people, analyzing relationships with them and finding ways to improve these relationships. Geshe Negi's meditation helps people understand that all people in society are dependent on each other and each of us wants to be happy.
To test whether compassion meditation helps people better understand other people, the researchers gave the participants a test before and after the meditation course. They showed them black-and-white photographs that showed only the eyes of people displaying various emotions. The participants had to “read” the emotions depicted in each photograph from the eyes.
The test results were revealing: eight out of thirteen study participants after the meditation course were, on average, 4.6% better at recognizing emotions from eyes in photographs, while members of the control group who did not meditate showed no improvement in this area.
In addition, using magnetic resonance imaging, the scientists determined that after a course of meditation, the study participants showed increased activity of neurons in areas of the brain that influence the ability to empathize.
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