Compassionate Dictators? The Effects of Loving-kindness Meditation on Offers in a Dictator Game

Jochen Reb (Singapore Management University) Su Junjie (Singapore Management University)

Jayanth Narayanan (National University Singapore)

Paper Presented at the

23rd Annual International Association of Conflict Management Conference Boston, Massachusetts

June 24 – 27, 2010 Abstract: How to encourage people in positions of absolute power to show compassion to others is a topic of high practical and theoretical significance. Building on recent research that examines the influence of loving-kindness meditation (LKM) in fostering positive emotions and positive relations with others, we examined whether engaging in LKM would increase allocations to counterparts in a dictator game. In this game, allocators, or dictators, can unilaterally allocate any part of a given resource to the receiver, without any fear of reprisal. We found that participants who engaged in a short (8 min) LKM meditation before the dictator game gave more of the resource (SGD10) to the other party than participants who engaged in a neutral visualization exercise. Further, we found that this experimental effect was fully mediated through positive feelings towards the other party.

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Compassionate Dictators?

The Effects of Loving-kindness Meditation on Offers in a Dictator Game

Abstract

How to encourage people in positions of absolute power to show compassion to others is

a topic of high practical and theoretical significance. Building on recent research that examines

the influence of loving-kindness meditation (LKM) in fostering positive emotions and positive

relations with others, we examined whether engaging in LKM would increase allocations to

counterparts in a dictator game. In this game, allocators, or dictators, can unilaterally allocate any

part of a given resource to the receiver, without any fear of reprisal. We found that participants

who engaged in a short (8 min) LKM meditation before the dictator game gave more of the

resource (SGD10) to the other party than participants who engaged in a neutral visualization

exercise. Further, we found that this experimental effect was fully mediated through positive

feelings towards the other party.

Keywords: Dictator Game; Loving-kindness Meditation; Positive Feelings

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Compassionate Dictators?

The Effects of Loving-kindness Meditation on Offers in a Dictator Game

Introduction

When individuals have power over how to distribute valuable resources, such as money,

they often favor themselves over others. Particularly when their power is such that someone can

unilaterally dictate how the resource is to be distributed (i.e., the person has the power of a

dictator, as in a dictator game), rational self-interest would lead this dictator to allocate the entire

resource to him- or herself, leaving nothing to the other person. However, how people behave

towards another person in such situation depends not only on rational self-interest, but also to

some degree on how they perceive their relation to this person. For example, depending on their

social value orientation, people may perceive the relation as competitive or cooperative (van

Lange, 1999). When people feel positive feelings towards the other person, they tend to show

empathy and behave more altruistically or prosocially. The present paper addresses the question

of whether such compassionate behavior can be induced in a dictator game through a loving-

kindness meditation (LKM).

Dictator Game

A dictator game is played between two players, where one is an allocator, or dictator, and

the other a responder. Allocators are given a fixed amount of a resource (e.g., $10) with

instructions to split the fixed amount into two parts, such that each player gets a part of the

resource. Note that there is no restriction on how the allocator needs to split the fixed amount.

Theoretically, allocators can allocate any amount (make an offer) ranging from zero to the whole

amount to the responders and thus accordingly, leave everything to nothing respectively, to

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themselves. As for the responders, they can either choose to accept or reject the allocator’s offer.

The responders’ choices however, will have no consequence on the allocators’ outcome and this

is explained to allocators and responders. This means that if responders reject the offer, the

responders will receive nothing; but if they accept, they will receive the amount allocated to

them, i.e. the offer. Meanwhile, in both cases, whether responders decide to accept or reject their

offers, the allocators will always receive their share of the fixed amount (the fixed amount minus

the allocator’s offer to the responder). In other words the allocator is effectively able to dictate,

without fear of reprisal, how the amount is shared, which is why the social interaction is called a

dictator game.

Past research has shown that in dictator games, many allocators show prosocial behavior

by sharing non-trivial amounts of the initial endowment of resources with their responders

(Forsythe, Horowitz, Savin & Sefton, 1994; Hoffman, McCabe, Shachat, & Smith, 1994). A

common explanation is that the decision to allocate amount offered in dictator games results

from a concern for fairness which stems from personal standards and social norms on the part of

allocators (Bolton et al, 1998; Murnighan, Oesch, & Pillutla, 2001). Another, possibly

compatible, explanation is that sharing of resources is due to a feeling of empathy and

connectedness to the other person in the social interaction. In the present experiment, we

examine whether such a feeling can be induced through a loving-kindness meditation.

Loving-kindness Meditation and Dictator Behavior

Loving-kindness meditation (LKM) is a practice used to increase feelings of warmth and

caring for others (Salzberg, 1995). LKM achieves this by having practitioners visualize and

focuse their attention on warm and tender feelings in an open-hearted way towards a target that

they already have such feelings for, such as a close loved one, before extending the positive

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emotions to themselves and an ever widening circle to include others as well. While LKM

originated in Buddhism, it has more recently received the attention of Western researchers.

Those researchers found that the practice has been shown to increase positive affect

(Frederickson et al, 2008). This induction of increased positive emotions has been found to

increase people’s positive feelings towards, and sense of connectedness with, others (Hutcherson

et al. 2008; Hejmadi, Waugh, Otake & Fredrickson, 2008).

Increased positive feelings of connectedness may promote greater empathy and prosocial

orientation. Such positive feelings, in turn, may influence an allocator’s behavior in a dictator

game. Specifically, because of the increased positive emotions towards the counterpart and the

sense of connectedness with, and empathy for, the other person, allocators may feel a stronger

desire to share resources with the other party. This could be the result, for example, of wanting to

treat the other party fairly or of wanting to be nice to the other party.

Hypotheses

Based on the above, we predict that participants who engage in a loving-kindness

meditation before playing a dictator game will, in the role of dictator, make larger allocations to

the other party. We further predict that this effect will be mediated through positive feelings

towards the other party.

Hypothesis 1: Allocators will offer more money to the other party in the LKM condition

than in a control condition.

Hypothesis 2: The effect of LKM on offers will be mediated through positive feelings

towards the other party.

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Method

Design and Procedure

The experiment employed a between-subjects design with two conditions: LKM vs.

control. After entering the lab, participants were randomly assigned to either the LKM condition

or the control condition. In what was ostensibly the first of two studies, participants were asked

to review an audio clip that was planned for use in a future study. Participants in the LKM

condition were assigned the LKM audio clip, whereas participants in the control condition were

assigned a neutral audio clip of similar length. Regardless of condition, participants were asked

to listen carefully to the clip (through headphones) with their eyes closed, in a darkened room

with the lights switched off, to help them focus. After listening to the clip, they were asked to

provide feedback on the audio clip on a computer based response form.

Participants were then asked to split up into two separate groups, before moving to a

different room to participate in the second study. In this new room, participants played the

dictator game. All participants were assigned the allocator role and received an initial amount of

SGD10 to be split up with a responder. The game was played with real monetary incentives

based on participants’ allocation decisions. After participants read the instructions, they were

asked to complete an offer slip that recorded how much they decided to offer to the responder.

They also completed a measure of positive feelings towards the counterpart at this point. The

experimenter collected the slip immediately after it was filled in and paid the participants

accordingly ($10 minus offer to the responder).

Manipulations

In the first part of the study, participants were randomly assigned to listen to either one of

two clips (either the LKM or the control condition [NEU] clip). Both clips lasted around 8

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minutes each. Each clip asked the participants to visualize and imagine themselves in the

contexts and scenarios as described as follows.

LKM condition. The LKM manipulation was derived from traditional practices of this

kind, but adapted to the purposes of Western laboratory research. Participants were asked to

sequentially imagine themselves as recipients of positivity before switching into the role of

senders/givers of such positivity. Participants were asked to visualize and imagine receiving

positive feelings such as warmth, kindness, wishes for health and well-being, etc., first from

loved ones that are next to them, before expanding the source of positivity to all those that they

feel are close to them. The visualization then asked the participants to imagine being filled to

overflowing with the positive feelings first, before asking them to switch focus and to redirect

their attention from receiving to sending out these positive feelings. Participants were asked to

silently and repeatedly wish a targeted other person well. (e.g., “may you be happy, may you be

free from pain, may you be free”, and other variations of a similar theme). Participants were first

asked to visualize the targeted other as someone close to them, before extending the positive

wishes to someone less related, such as an acquaintance, then to someone neutral, and finally

encompassing the whole globe.

Control condition (NEU). In the neutral or control condition, participants were asked to

visualize the sensory experiences in all five senses in various settings such as: a bookstore, train,

office-building elevator etc. For example, participants were asked to imagine how the sight of

books in the bookstore might look like, how the seat in the train might feel like, and how the

sound of the elevator might sound like, among other scenarios. The scenarios and contexts were

selected to be as affectively neutral as possible.

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Measures

Amount Offered. The behavioral dependent variable was the amount the allocator/dictator

offered to the counterpart. The possible values of the offer could range from $0 (nothing to the

other party) to $10 (total amount to the other party).

Positive Feelings. Positive feelings towards the other party were measured with five

items on a 5 point Likert scale (1 = “Not at all”, 3 = “Neutral”, 5 = “To a great extent”): “I was

thinking about what is the right thing to do when I made my decision”, “I was thinking about

treating the other person fairly when I made my decision”, “Although I have not met them, I felt

that the other person belongs to me”, “I felt that the other person is someone who is just like

me”, and “I put myself in the shoes of the other person when I made my decision.” Coefficient

alpha was .78.

Participants

Fifty-four students at a Singaporean university participated in exchange for course credit

and monetary compensation depending on their responses. One participant was excluded for

having played the game before in an experiment, one for not providing the mediation measures,

and three for failing to understand the instructions, leaving forty-nine participants for the data

analysis.

Results

Hypothesis 1

Consistent with Hypothesis 1, participants who engaged in a LKM before participating in

the dictator game gave more money to their counterpart (M = 4.06, SD = 2.61) than participants

in the control condition (M = 2.52, SD = 2.57), F(1, 47) = 4.33, p < .05, ηp2 = .08. Thus,

participants in the LKM condition were less likely to use their position of dictatorial power to

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allocate all resources to themselves at the expense of their counterpart. The result held when

including gender as a second factor in the ANOVA. Gender itself did not predict allocated

amount, nor did it interact with the manipulation.

Hypothesis 2

Consistent with the mediation hypothesis (Hypothesis 2), LKM induced more positive

feelings towards the other party (M = 3.63, SD = .91) than did the control condition (M = 2.83,

SD = .87), F(1, 47) = 9.65, p < .01, ηp2 = .17. Second, positive feelings towards the counterpart

were positively related to the allocated amount, r(49) = .47, p < .01. Third, when entering both

the independent variable (LKM) and the presumed mediator into a simultaneous regression,

positive feelings towards the counterpart continued to predict amount offered, B = 1.17, SE(B) =

.39, t(46) = 2.99, p < .01, but the independent variable (LKM) became non-significant, B = .61,

SE(B) = .75, t(46) = .82, ns (see Figure 1). Finally, a Sobel test of mediation was significant, z =

2.18, p < .05. Thus, these results suggest that positive feelings towards the counterpart fully

mediated the effect of the loving-kindness manipulation on the amount offered to the other party.

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Figure 1 about here

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Discussion

How to encourage people in positions of absolute power to show compassion to others is

a topic of high practical and theoretical significance. Building on recent research that examines

the influence of loving-kindness meditation (LKM) in fostering positive emotions and positive

relations with others, we examined whether engaging in LKM would increase allocations to

counterparts in a dictator game. In this game, allocators, or dictators, can unilaterally allocate any

Compassionate Dictators

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part of a given resource to the receiver, without any fear of reprisal. We found that participants

who engaged in a short (8 min) LKM meditation before the dictator game gave more of the

resource (SGD10) to the other party than participants who engaged in a neutral visualization

exercise. Further, we found that this experimental effect was fully mediated through positive

feelings towards the other party.

The present experimental research complements existing studies using self-report data

(e.g., Hutcherson et al. 2008) and shows that in addition to changes in self-report measures, an

LKM intervention can also affect behavior (increased offer). Our study raises a number of

interesting directions for future research. For example, while this experiment shows a short-term

effect of the LKM manipulation in a lab setting on a immediately subsequent task, future

research could examine whether engaging in (regular) LKM affects behavior that is temporally

and spacially separated. Fredrickson et al. (2008) provide some evidence in this direction by

sowing that employees from the same company who practiced LKM for about an hour each

week for nine weeks showed enhanced positive emotions in a wide range of situations, especially

when interacting with others.

Another direction would be to examine additional dependent variables, such as helping

behavior, trusting behavior, or organizational citizenship behaviors. Similarly, future research

could test a variety of mediation models that include feelings of compassion and loving-

kindness, positive affect, desire for fairness, and empathy as possible mediators.

While loving-kindness meditation is a practice that originated in Buddhism, we see a

range of possibilities for the fruitful scientific study of this practice.

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References

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Figure 1: Mediation of the Effect of Loving-kindness Meditation on Amount Offered in Dictator

Game through Positive Feelings towards Counterpart

Notes. Standardized regression coefficients for the relationship between the LKM manipulation

and amount offered in dictator game as mediated by the positive feelings. The standardized

regression coefficient controlling for positive feelings is in parentheses.

* p < .01, ** p < .05

-.413*

-.290** (-.116)

.417*

LKM

Positive Feelings

Amount Offered