Loving-Kindness and Compassion Meditation: Potential for Psychological Interventions

By Stefan G. Hofmann, Paul Grossman, D. Hinton. Clinical Psychology Review, 2011

915 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Mindfulness-based meditation interventions have become increasingly popular in contemporary psychology. Other closely related meditation practices include loving-kindness meditation (LKM) and compassion meditation (CM), exercises oriented toward enhancing unconditional, positive emotional states of kindness and compassion. This article provides a review of the background, the techniques, and the empirical contemporary literature of LKM and CM. The literature suggests that LKM and CM are associated with an increase in positive affect and a decrease in negative affect. Preliminary findings from neuroendocrine studies indicate that CM may reduce stress-induced subjective distress and immune response. Neuroimaging studies suggest that LKM and CM may enhance activation of brain areas that are involved in emotional processing and empathy. Finally, preliminary intervention studies support application of these strategies in clinical populations. It is concluded that, when combined with empirically supported treatments, such as cognitive behavioral therapy, LKM and CM may provide potentially useful strategies for targeting a variety of different psychological problems that involve interpersonal processes, such as social anxiety, marital conflict, anger, and coping with the strains of long-term caregiving.

Subfields: Clinical Psychology, Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/f31cb13a982557f8c3d6defb28125b0bd3888485

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Citations in the corpus

The Relationship between Self-compassion and Other-focused Concern among College Undergraduates, Community Adults, and Practicing Meditators (2013, background): “As mentioned before, many Buddhist meditation practices intentionally cultivate compassion for both self and others, and aim to recognize that all beings suffer and want release from suffering (see Hofmann et al., 2011, for a review).”
Mindfulness and sustainability (2014, background): “In the end, this attitude is extended to all beings (Hofmann et al., 2011).”
The relevance of self‐compassion as an intervention target in mood and anxiety disorders: A narrative review based on an emotion regulation framework (2017, background): “…that directly and indirectly target self-compassion include loving-kindness meditation (LKM), selfcompassion meditation, and compassion meditation (Galante, Galante, Bekkers, & Gallacher, 2014; Hofmann et al., 2011; Shahar et al., 2015; Shonin, Van Gordon, Compare, Zangeneh, & Griffiths, 2015).”
Promoting Altruism Through Meditation: An 8-Week Randomized Controlled Pilot Study (2013, background): “Even though studies investigating the effects of the four immeasurables are few, interest in the field is rapidly growing (Hofmann et al. 2011).”
Washing Dishes to Wash the Dishes: Brief Instruction in an Informal Mindfulness Practice (2015, background): “2013), as well as reduced cognitive bias (Garland and Howard 2013) and clinical symptomology (Black et al. 2012; Grossman et al. 2004; Hofmann et al. 2011).”
A Comparative Study on the Efficacy of a Positive Psychology Intervention and a Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Clinical Depression (2017, background): “Likewise, although the CBT intervention addressed selfcriticism, the PPI adopted self-compassion techniques that have shown to be effective both alone and when combined with standard CBT in clinical populations (Hofmann et al. 2011).”
Mindfulness: Awareness Informed by an Embodied Ethic (2014, neutral): “In Buddhist practice, procedures exist explicitly aimed at enhancing these qualities like loving-kindness and compassion meditations (Hofmann et al., 2011; Salzberg, 2011).”
Self-Compassion When Coping With Venture Obstacles: Loving-Kindness Meditation and Entrepreneurial Fear of Failure (2019, background): “…warm feelings of loving- kindness and compassion toward (1) the self, (2) a good friend, (3) a neutral person, (4) a person associated with negative feelings, (5) all persons focused on in the exercise, dividing attention equally, and finally toward (6) the entire universe (Hofmann et al., 2011).”
The origins and nature of compassion focused therapy. (2014, background): “The development and cultivation of compassionate as part of our therapeutic interventions is now recognized as an important innovation requiring further research and development (Hoffmann et al., 2011).”
Can Paranoid Thoughts be Reduced by Targeting Negative Emotions and Self-Esteem? An Experimental Investigation of a Brief Compassion-Focused Intervention (2013, background): “Encouragingly, an extensive review of loving-kindness and compassion-focused interventions (Hofmann et al. 2011) found that even brief interventions seem to be sufficient to induce changes in emotions.”
Mindful mating: exploring the connection between mindfulness and relationship satisfaction (2013, neutral): “Mindfulness techniques are used to develop a perspective on thoughts and feelings, which encourages acceptance of them as transient events in the mind rather than identifying with them or getting entangled in elaborative thoughts or emotional reactions to situations (Kabat-Zinn, 1990). Mindfulness m”