The Social Mind: Scientific Investigation and Spiritual Interventions

Abstract

Psychology as an empirical science has targeted human cognition for more than a century. Typically, the focus of these investigations was on isolated mental processes, which were studied in individual participants in confined laboratory settings. The present commentary aims to show how a relatively recent paradigm shift, the (renewed) conception of humans as fundamentally social, can shape our understanding of the mind and our scientific approach to studying spirituality. In the first sections, I will shortly review advances of psychological research in core processes and capacities of social understanding (empathy, compassion, perspective taking) and social interaction (communication, cooperation) that are also considered relevant in spiritual practices and traditions. Subsequently, a large-scale intervention study, the Resource Project, is presented to exemplify how the investigation of meditation-based mental trainings can decidedly include social practices (so-called contemplative dyads) and how these practices benefit interpersonal capacities. Arguing that cognition, spirituality, and scientific endeavors are not confined to individual minds and brains but arise in the dynamic in-between of interacting agents, I will outline possible avenues for future inter-disciplinary research at the interface of religious sciences/theology and psychology.

1. Introduction

In the 19th century, experimental psychology started joining the scientific disciplines that contemplated the human condition, the essence of our experiences, and the mystery of cognitive processing. Early on in this development, psychologists undertook great effort to exclude metaphysical questions and to focus entirely on the empirical study of behavior and the mind. In favor of experimental measurability, mental concepts and faculties like perception, attention, memory, or intelligence were broken down into increasingly specified sub-processes, while others (emotions, subjective experiences, or spirituality, for instance) were excluded from the field of interest. Many early day psychologists were trained physicians or physiologists, some readily assuming that mental phenomena may be rooted in the physiological basis of the human nervous system (for enlightening details on the history of experimental psychology, see Boring 2008; Lück and Guski-Leinwand 2014).

In the course of its development, the scope of phenomena and questions studied by psychological science broadened enormously (including, amongst others, spiritual experiences and emotions) and so did the range of available and acceptable measurement methods. With the emergence and improvement of neuroscientific tools, like magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) or magnetoencephalography (MEG) in the 20th century, new hope arose that the mysteries of the mind would be solved by uncovering its neural mechanisms (for discussions with leading neuroscientists of that period, see Könneker 2007). Neuroscientific studies have inspired psychological theories aiming to explain whether, how, and why mental processes and conscious experiences arise from the activity of neurons (for recent introductions, overviews, and vivid discussions, see Blackmore 2017; Northoff and Lamme 2020; Seth and Bayne 2022). While these questions are by no means conclusively resolved, psychology keeps developing its methodological toolkit, the mental processes being investigated, and the theories put forward.

This article, which may be best described as a review and perspectives piece, starts by highlighting an exciting paradigm shift in general psychological research that has shaped our understanding of mental processes in the beginning of the 21st century and, as I will argue, can inspire the investigation of spirituality. The following section, “Socializing cognition”, shortly summarizes some basic mechanisms by which humans understand and interact with each other. Some of these capacities are deemed key in spiritual traditions, and the section “Socializing spirituality” describes a large-scale intervention study to exemplify how social practices can be included in meditation-based trainings and how they shape social abilities. Finally, I will derive potential paths for future research, considering the inherent social nature of cognition, spirituality, and scientific endeavors.

2. Socializing Cognition in Psychological Science

Traditionally, cognition is investigated in individual minds. Core questions concern how cognition can be conceptualized and how we link mental processes to neural processes and/or the morphology of the brain. Accordingly, and for decades, the majority of investigations of human perception, emotion, cognition, and decision-making took place with individual participants, who performed constrained tasks in psychological laboratories (or MRI scanners), such as detecting and categorizing stimuli on a computer screen, memorizing syllables or color sequences, or solving riddles.

At the same time, many scholars have emphasized that humans are fundamentally social, phylogenetically and ontogenetically embedded in societies that have shaped our biology and our cultures alike (Eibl-Eibesfeldt 1991; Hare 2017; Vygotsky 1978). An idea that re-gained influence in psychological science is that mental processes may be profoundly rooted in our social development and our interpersonal interactions and that we cannot fully understand concepts like cognition or consciousness without taking our social reality and context into account (for an overview, see Böckler et al. 2010). One of the theoretical advances inspiring this paradigm shift was the proposition that one and the same mental system may support the imagination, the execution, and the perception of an action (Prinz 1997). According to this framework, daydreaming about raising a finely cut glass of red wine involves similar mental representations as actually lifting the glass oneself and as witnessing our friend indulging in this joyful experience. The detection of brain areas (and even neurons) that are involved both in executing a particular action and observing this action in others supported this idea and provided evidence for a direct, nonverbal link between people that could assist social understanding, smooth coordination, and learning from each other (Rizzolatti and Craighero 2004).

While the role of these so-called mirror neurons in successful social interaction may have been initially overestimated, their discovery fueled several critical developments. For one, psychologists gained renewed interest in disciplines and approaches that emphasized the social grounding of individual cognition. Biologists and anthropologists, for instance, have linked the size of the human neocortex and/or our cognitive abilities (that both seemed to exceed those of our predecessors and fellow species) to the intricate requirements of navigating live in social groups, such as keeping track of social relationships, taking the mental perspective of other individuals, or influencing their behavior in our favor (for an overview, see Whiten and Van Schaik 2007). Adopting a comparative perspective, some researchers argued that humans possess a unique motivation to share and exchange emotional and cognitive states, including knowledge, which may have contributed to our success as a species (Hare 2017; Tomasello et al. 2005). Secondly, an exponentially rising number of studies set out to unravel further basic mechanisms of action coordination (e.g., Sebanz et al. 2006), joint problem-solving (e.g., Hall et al. 2018), team learning (e.g., Nokes-Malach et al. 2015), and cooperation (e.g., Thielmann et al. 2020), amongst others.

In the subsequent sections, I shortly review some core processes of social understanding (empathy, compassion, perspective taking; Section 2.1) and interaction (communication and cooperation; Section 2.2) that exemplify how inherently tuned we are to our social surroundings. As I will lay out subsequently, all these capacities are considered particularly relevant in spiritual practices and traditions and can be altered by targeted meditation-based trainings.

2.1. Understanding Others: Empathy, Compassion, and Theory of Mind

A question we often encounter in our everyday lives (and a presupposition of many cultural products, like novels, TV series, or pop songs) concerns whether there is ‘a window to our fellow humans’ souls’. (How) can we access their experiences, emotions, beliefs, or intentions? For over a hundred years, psychological researchers have investigated how humans process social stimuli, such as conspecifics’ eyes (e.g., their gaze direction) and faces (e.g., their emotional expressions; see Duchaine and Yovel 2015; Emery 2000; Kleinke 1986 for overviews). More recent empirical endeavors targeted social affect and social cognition via constructs like empathy, compassion, and mentalizing. “What is it like to be a bat?” asked Thomas Nagel in his famous thought experiment about consciousness. While we may not find out what it feels like to roam the night with the ability of echolocation, we have distinctive means of feeling and thinking like the humans around us. Three of these mechanisms will be shortly, and by no means comprehensively, described in the following.

Empathy. Of the great variety of definitions, I describe empathy as the vicarious feeling of the sensory or emotional state of an observed (or imagined) other that includes the knowledge that the other’s state is the source of one’s own affect (De Vignemont and Singer 2006). To exemplify, if I empathize with a kid who just dropped a valuable Ming vase on his foot, I immediately share and experience the negative affect that accompanies his physical pain and devastating shame, well knowing that it is the other’s experience that caused my feelings. Empathy is reflected in wincing when our neighbor pinches his toe and in tearing up when hearing about our friend’s breakup. In a groundbreaking study, Tania Singer and her colleagues administered painful stimulations (versus non-painful stimulations) to participants while they were lying in an MRI scanner. Critically, the participants experienced pain (or painless stimulation) in alternation with their partners who were sitting next to them outside the scanner. Not only did the authors find activation in a network of brain areas known as the “pain matrix” when participants felt pain themselves, but this network overlapped with the activation patterns found when participants knew their partners were feeling pain (Singer et al. 2004). By now, this partially comparable processing of one’s own and others’ states has been demonstrated for a variety of feelings and sensations (e.g., joy, embarrassment, disgust, pleasant touch), and it provides a quick, direct, and early developing route to other people’s experiences (Decety 2010).

Compassion. In addition to eliciting isomorphic feelings (feeling as the other), observing one’s fellow humans in emotionally meaningful situations gives rise to complementary emotions. Compassion can be described as the warm feeling for another, the sense of care, affiliation, and the wish to alleviate their suffering and promote their wellbeing. Though also triggered by the sight of others in pain, compassion differs from empathy in terms of valence, being experienced as a positive emotion, and in terms of underlying brain activation (Klimecki et al. 2013). The disposition to experience compassion may be rooted in our oxytocin-based mesolimbic system and in the particularly pronounced demand on our species to care for immaturely born and dependent offspring (Goetz et al. 2010). Compassion, compared to empathy, may be a protective factor against burnout in people who are regularly confronted with others’ suffering (e.g., health professionals) and appears to promote prosocial, generous, helpful behavior more consistently (Weisz and Cikara 2021).

Theory of Mind. Besides using these affective channels, we can (try to) cognitively infer what our conspecifics are interested in; how they feel; and what they know, believe, or plan to do. In psychological research, the ability or the process of thinking about another agent’s state of mind is referred to as Theory of Mind (also termed mentalizing or cognitive perspective taking; Böckler-Raettig 2019; Frith and Frith 2003). Comprising a range of cognitive sub-processes, such as knowing about social scripts, remembering others’ previous choices and behaviors, or imagining something that is not actually visible, Theory of Mind involves a distributed network of brain areas (Schurz et al. 2014) and can be dissociated from empathy and compassion (Kanske et al. 2015). For instance, while empathy works fast and automatic, taking the perspective of another is cognitively demanding and can easily fail. Nonetheless, Theory of Mind is incredibly important in our complex social world: Understanding ironic remarks, calling a bluff, following a conversation that we entered late, or convincing our friend to give up on the constant diets all require the extraordinary capacity to mentally put ourselves in the shoes of our interaction partners.

2.2. Interacting with Others: Communication and Cooperation

Communication. Humans are not restricted to interacting nonverbally; we also have language, a unique ability that some scholars consider a prerequisite of high-level cognition and consciousness (Dennett 2013). The psychological approach to the investigation of language has, for a long time, mainly consisted in asking individual participants to process or produce written or verbal words or sentences in the isolated setting of a computer lab (e.g., Friederici 1995; Levelt 1999). This differs quite drastically from our dynamic, everyday communication, where language is far from polished, we leave sentences unfinished, we convey fragmented information, or we use underspecified references (e.g., referring to someone as “Max” rather than “my colleague Max”). Nonetheless, some psychologists argue that dialogue, the spontaneous, situated talking to each other, is even easier for humans than monologue (Garrod and Pickering 2004). How can this be? For one, interaction partners effortlessly and flexibly align their utterances on all linguistic levels in the course of a conversation. To provide some examples, conversing people smoothly and often without even noticing adjust their talking speed to each other, imitate each other’s pronunciation and the grammatical structure of their sentences, and assimilate the use and meaning of words, which all facilitate mutual understanding. This interactive alignment is based on the similarity of mental representations that underlie perception and action (see introduction of Section 2) and is further supported by empathy, Theory of Mind, and the use of nonverbal signals such as gestures (Holler et al. 2018; Kuhlen and Abdel Rahman 2023). Maybe this is why conversations can feel so special because we co-create their structure and content as we proceed, bringing us closer to each other and giving rise to ideas neither could have developed alone.

Cooperation. Humans do not only exchange thoughts, words, and ideas, but they also exchange resources—money, power, time, and access to opportunities, amongst others. To raise children together, arrange a potluck, or live peacefully in societies, we need to share the responsibilities and duties as well as the benefits. While laws and rules support the regulation of our lives as citizens, stable and peaceful coexistence heavily relies on “private” interpersonal attitudes and acts. Prosocial behavior comprises decisions and actions that are costly to the individual (e.g., in terms of energy, money, or time) and beneficial to others. Despite and in contradiction to the old-as-life narration of the purely egoistic human, people do not only care about themselves, but they share, help, and support each other, including strangers, all the time, offering seats, sharing meals, donating to charity, or volunteering (Bregman 2020; Depow et al. 2021). In many situations, this does not require emotional and cognitive effort, and people consider the prosocial alternative as the easiest and most obvious option (Zaki and Mitchell 2013). Cooperation, where two or more individuals join efforts to achieve a common goal, is omnipresent among humans, testified by inventions and institutions no individual could ever have created alone. However, cooperation can also fail: Freely accessible but limited resources are exhausted by overuse, a phenomenon known as the “tragedy of the commons” and reflected, for instance, in overfished oceans and polluted air. To counteract these vicious circles, humans actively employ mechanisms to maintain cooperation: We establish and repair trusting relationships, forgive each other and ask for forgiveness, and implement and adhere to social norms (Rand and Nowak 2013). Supporting so-called virtuous circles, acting prosocially elicits immediate positive feelings, benefits life satisfaction (Gilbert 2015), and is contagious: Receiving and even observing generosity or helpfulness increase the tendency to act comparably towards others (Micheli et al. 2024).

The above examples of mechanisms of social understanding and interaction show how the inclusion of interpersonal processes in the study of the human mind has advanced psychology as a scientific discipline and expanded our understanding of humans as fundamentally social, for instance, in terms of our affective and interactive dispositions. What started with the implementation of controlled two-person setups in confined laboratory experiments quickly brought forward calls for a “second-person” approach (Schilbach et al. 2013), encouraging the investigation of full-blown, realistic, true-to-life social interactions. Studies started addressing interactions involving numerous individuals with distinct and complementary tasks and roles and revealed, amongst others, the intricate synchronization and coordination principles and requirements of musicians in orchestras or athletes in sports teams (Eccles and Tenenbaum 2004; Keller et al. 2014; Koban et al. 2019).

Beyond the sensory, cognitive, and motor skills that are necessary for successful group performances, researchers focused on the qualia of joint actions. How does it feel to act with others, what states do interacting people experience and become aware of? For instance, if you sing in a choir, practice yoga in a group, or work on a project with a team, you may have experienced precious moments of group flow, a state of collectiveness where you and your group collaborate effortlessly and appear to achieve everything with optimum creativity and productivity (Pels et al. 2018), or joint agency, a feeling of unity and synergy where the joint outcome appears to extend the sum of individual contributions (Pacherie 2012). These experiences can, in fact, feel elusive, otherworldly, even spiritual, entailing a sense of connection not merely on the level of our bodies but on the level of our souls (Loehr 2022). And of course, for many people, interaction, connection, and affiliation are experienced not merely with human but with higher beings, with deities or spiritual entities. The subsequent section outlines how the psychological investigation of spiritual practices has also started to apply a social focus, both in terms of the implementation of the practices and the effects being tested.

3. Socializing Spirituality in Psychological Science

While religious beliefs and practices appear to lose impact in secularized Western societies, people’s interest in spiritual and contemplative programs, often inspired by Eastern traditions, steadily increased over the last decades. Meditation-based trainings of “mindfulness”, a mental state of calmness, equanimity, and attentive presence, experienced a veritable boom, with ever increasing openings of meditation courses and retreats. Psychological science has accompanied this development. For instance, psychological research targeted spirituality—the “search for the sacred”, independent of religious denomination—as a personality trait, accessing, amongst others, its role in life satisfaction (Peterson and Seligman 2004). More recent studies took increasing interest in meditation practices. Fruitful dialogues between long-term practitioners and scientists ensued, for instance, between Buddhist monk Matthieu Ricard and neuroscientist Wolf Singer, and so did research on the effects of meditation on the human mind and brain. Investigating interventions such as the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction program (Kabat-Zinn 2005), psychological studies revealed their beneficial influence on mental capacities—for instance, sustained attention, enhanced working memory, and cognitive control—as well as on mental and physical health (Böckler and Singer 2022; Eberth and Sedlmeier 2012; Grossman et al. 2004).

Typically, intervention studies implement circumscribed techniques that are taught to and repeatedly practiced by previously naïve participants over a predefined period (mostly a few days to eight weeks). Examples of practices aiming to increase mindfulness include Breathing Meditations (Anapansati), in which practitioners observe the comings and goings of their breath, or Body Scans, in which practitioners focus on each part of their body, one after the other, kindly refocusing their attention on the subject in question (breath or body), should the mind wander. The cognitive capacities in question are measured before participants start the training (representing the so-called baseline measurement or pre-measurement) and after they complete the training (post-measurement). To enhance scientific rigor, control groups that either do not practice at all (so-called passive control groups) or that practice techniques lacking the specific quality of meditations (active control groups) are included, and their change in cognitive capacities from pre to post are compared to the changes in the meditation groups. Ideally, participants are assigned randomly to the control and intervention groups to reduce confounding effects of demographic or personality variables. If, and only if, participants randomly assigned to the meditation group show significantly larger improvements in the assessed capacity from pre to post than participants in the control groups, the results can be interpreted as indicating a causal influence of the training on the mental capacity.

Considering these strict (and resource intense) requirements, it may not surprise that intervention studies are particularly numerous when trainings are simple, when they can be practiced individually and flexibly (e.g., at home, at work), and when it is possible to measure the cognitive capacities in a straightforward manner (e.g., with simple tasks or questionnaires). So again, psychological science focuses on the impact of individual acts (meditation) on individual cognitive capacities (e.g., the ability to control one’s attention). The contrast to what spirituality can mean and intend in the reality of those living it is obvious. For one, spiritual and/or religious practices are not restricted to individual contemplation. Prayer circles, joint chanting, singing and worship, group discussions, teachings, and contemplative dialogues are just a few examples. Furthermore, religious and spiritual routines do not predominantly seek to sharpen practitioners’ cognitive skills but seek to strengthen their social connectedness and their willingness to take responsibility and care for their fellow beings. Accordingly, to understand the psychological processes that are required and strengthened by spiritual and religious exercises, their scientific examination needs to include community practices and social skills.

In the following sections, I will review a large-scale intervention study that I helped shape, the ReSource Project. This project was inspired and informed by prior highly collaborative, multi-method investigations of meditation effects, such as the Shamata Project (https://saronlab.ucdavis.edu/shamatha-project.html accessed on 1 October 2024). The reason for outlining the ReSource Project in some detail is that, while also measuring the effects of meditation interventions on the level of individual minds, this project explicitly included social practices and interpersonal capacities when investigating the effects of meditation-based mental trainings.

3.1. The ReSource Project: Interactive Practices

The ReSource Project (for detailed descriptions, see Singer et al. 2016; for an overview, see https://www.resource-project.org/ accessed on 1 October 2024) was a large-scale 9-month longitudinal intervention study, spearheaded by Tania Singer at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, that took place in Leipzig and Berlin (Germany) between 2013 and 2016. Approximately 330 participants from diverse backgrounds, aged between 20 and 55 years, who had no prior meditation experience, were randomly assigned to different meditation-based modules or passive retest control groups. The project implemented three distinct training modules (details below). Each module lasted for three months (13 weeks) and started with a 3-day intensive spiritual retreat, where participants learned the core exercises, practiced repeatedly, and spent many hours in silence. After each initial retreat, participants attended weekly 2 h group sessions with experienced teachers to discuss and consolidate their practice. In addition, participants meditated at home daily with a custom-made internet platform and smartphone applications providing audio guides and facilitating the core practices of each module. The three modules were as follows.

The Presence Module aimed at cultivating deliberate attention, a sense of presence, and awareness of one’s internal sensations. This module most resembled classic mindfulness intervention programs (Kabat-Zinn 2005), with core exercises being Breathing Meditations (focusing on one’s breath, refocusing attention when getting distracted) and Body Scans (systematic engagement and disengagement of attention to sensations in various parts of the body). In addition, walking meditations and meditations on sensory perception, such as vision, sound, and taste, were taught. All practices required a deliberate focus of attention on moment-to-moment experiences, monitoring distractions, and reorienting towards the object of attention.

The Affect Module focused on the enhancement of affective (emotional) social skills, such as care and compassion for oneself and for others, gratitude, and prosocial motivation. Core exercises were a contemplative dialogue between pairs of participants, the so-called Affect Dyad (details will be outlined below), and Loving-kindness Meditations (Salzberg and Kabat-Zinn 2004). During the latter, participants practiced eliciting feelings of warmth and care towards beloved others, then towards themselves, and, finally, towards strangers and all of humanity, supported by the mental repetition of phrases like “May you be happy” and “May you live with ease”. Additional meditations included forgiveness meditations and the development of self-compassion (Neff 2011).

The Perspective Module targeted the cultivation of socio-cognitive skills, like perspective taking on oneself and on others as well as metacognitive awareness (awareness of one’s thoughts and the fact that they do not necessarily reflect reality). Core exercises were another contemplative dialogue, the so-called Perspective Dyad (details outlined below), and an Observing-thoughts Meditation (Ricard 2015). During the latter, participants attended the comings and goings of their thoughts in a non-judgmental fashion. Additional exercises included adopting viewpoints of others who were experienced as largely different from oneself and reflecting on the role of our thoughts for our everyday actions.

While exceptionally ambitious, the ReSource Project resembles previous psychological intervention studies on effects of spiritual practices, for instance, in its focus on high levels of experimental control and scientific rigor and by measuring the effects of meditation practices on individual states and capacities (rather than states and skills of the groups that meditated together). What I consider key aspects that expand the project beyond prior studies are that (i) two of the modules, the Affect and the Perspective Module, explicitly focused on the cultivation of interpersonal capacities (compassion, prosocial motivation, taking others’ perspectives) and that (ii) meditation practices were not carried out individually but rather jointly in the form of contemplative dialogues. What are contemplative dialogues or contemplative dyads? In the scope of the ReSource project, two kinds of contemplative dyads were implemented: one in the Affect Module (the “Affect Dyad”) and one in the Perspective Module (the “Perspective Dyad”).

The Affect Dyad was implemented as a 10 min partner exercise, carried out by two participants together, that could be completed face to face or through an online application, and participants practiced daily during the Affect Module (Kok and Singer 2017). In this contemplative dialogue, two participants met and fully committed their attention to each other. One participant reported two situations they had recently encountered: one that elicited gratefulness and one that was experienced as difficult. While describing these situations, the narrator exercised not to engage in interpretations or judgments, cultivating gratitude and acceptance of difficult emotions. The other participant listened attentively without giving feedback, advice, or judgment, cultivating empathic listening. The roles were subsequently switched. Participants were randomly assigned to a new dyad partner every week throughout the module.

The Perspective Dyad also took approximately 10 min and was completed by pairs of participants through a voice-based internet platform throughout the Perspective Module (Kok and Singer 2017). We developed this contemplative dialogue based on the Internal Family System model (IFS; Holmes 1994; Schwartz 2013). In the framework of this model, people’s “inner parts” represent relatively stable patterns, which are characterized by distinct emotions, thoughts, and/or behaviors. These parts can be activated by specific situations; many people, for instance, report “inner critics” to take the stage when they did not (or fear to not) reach goals in performance-related settings. Typically, inner critics comprise feelings of disappointment and anxiousness, thoughts like “I am not good enough, again” or “I should have tried harder”, and rigid behaviors. The IFS model, applied both in psychotherapy and coaching settings, comprehensibly yet playfully visualizes mental and behavioral patterns and the dynamic relations of inner parts (both within a person and between people). In our study, participants were familiarized with the IFS model and learned to identify (some of) their inner parts. At each time, participants had at least six inner parts that they could use during the dyadic partner exercise. During the Perspective Dyad, two participants met online and fully committed their attention to each other. One person started as the narrator and shortly described a recently experienced situation. Critically, the situation was then recounted from the perspective of one of their inner parts, which was randomly selected by an algorithm of the custom-made online platform (which could mean, for instance, re-telling a job interview from the perspective of one’s inner clown or describing the joyful meeting of an old friend from the perspective of the inner critic). For the narrator, this exercise trained the ability to de-couple from an experienced reality and to flexibly adopt different inner perspectives. The listener, who was familiarized with the inner parts of their partner, tried to identify the inner part that was being voiced by actively engaging in perspective taking. The roles were subsequently switched. Participants were randomly assigned to a new dyad partner every week throughout the module.

What makes these contemplative dialogues special, in my view, is that they involve core characteristics of social interactions that are lacking (or less prevalent) in individual contemplation: the proactive co-creation of the situation with its norms and implications (for instance, how serious do we take this exercise? What is a good way for us to start it? How do we signal attentive listening in this particular dyad?); the need for at least some level of spontaneity and the possibility of surprise; the dynamic relationship in which each partner is the object of the other’s attention, emotion, and thought; and, simultaneously, the subject attending, feeling for, and thinking about the other. While still constrained in the number of participants (only two) and in the extend of the interaction, the dyads are one step in the direction of conceptualizing and exploring contemplative practices as social practices.

3.2. The ReSource Project: Fostering Social Affect, Cognition, and Behavior

Intervention studies are not only characterized by their implementation of the practices and techniques in question but also by the mental skills, processes, and states they find altered. With studies on individual psychological capacities steadily increasing, the ReSource Project decidedly included a variety of social faculties. As shortly outlined before, a practice-induced change in specific skills, states, or processes can only be inferred when the training group shows a significantly larger alteration from baseline to post-measurement than the control group.

In the ReSource Project, approx. 90 participants were part of a control group that did not complete any training but was measured in the capacities of interest exactly like the meditation groups (for details, see Singer et al. 2016). Each module lasted three months, and most participants (approx. 160) underwent each module, one after the other, while some participants (approx. 80) only completed the Affect Module. Measurements took place at baseline (before the training started) and then every three months at the end of each module. The effects of the Affect Module, for instance, are measured as the difference in participants’ capacity right before they start this module and right after they end the module 13 weeks later. Overall, we assessed numerous constructs (mental and physical health, sleep quality, well-being, emotional states, cognitive skills, brain structure, chronic and acute stress, etc.) with various methods (experimental tasks, standardized questionnaires, structural and functional magnetic resonance imaging, etc.; for detailed descriptions, see Singer et al. 2016). For the present purpose, I will exclusively focus on core social constructs. Of course, interpreting the results of the ReSource Project requires considering the studies’ weaknesses. As in most meditation-based intervention research, participants in the ReSource Project were not blind to the purpose of the study nor to their group assignment (meditation versus control group), and these factors can confound the results by enhancing the probability of socially desired responses, at least in self-report-based measures. Furthermore, our participants were considerably healthy and privileged, which renders it especially important to replicate the findings in more representative samples.

Social affect. The calls to “love thy neighbor as thyself” and to have “compassion for all beings, rich and poor alike” are central to Christianity and Buddhism, respectively. Compassion, the warm feeling of care and concern for another being and the intent to alleviate their suffering, is a core construct across religions and denominations (Singer and Klimecki 2014). Several studies prior to the ReSource Project revealed increased compassion and concomitant activation increases in neuronal networks associated with affiliation and care after practicing Loving-kindness Meditation (Engen and Singer 2015; Klimecki et al. 2014). The ReSource Project expanded these findings by providing evidence for significantly enhanced compassion after the Affect Module but not after any of the other modules or in the control group (Trautwein et al. 2020). Given that the video-based measure of compassion we used in this study did not explicitly ask participants to apply their practiced skills (e.g., loving kindness) when performing the task, these findings suggest a heightened tendency to spontaneously experience compassion for others. Interestingly, while compassion as the warm and caring feeling for another was higher after the Affect Module, empathy as the vicarious feeling as another was not altered.

Social cognition. Numerous biblical passages, religious parables, or kōans (short anecdotes, dialogues, or questions supporting teaching in Zen-Buddhism) require their recipients to change perspective. How would I act, think, or feel in another’s shoes or in another situation (e.g., if I knew the future)? Theory of Mind, the ability and process of reasoning about the mental states of others, is, hence, an obvious object of investigation. Considering the social desirability of interpersonal skills and the difficulty of giving unbiased accounts of one’s own abilities, our aim in the ReSource Project was to not merely rely on participants’ self-reports (e.g., their response to questions like “How dedicated are you to take the perspective of other people?” or “How important do you consider care and compassion for others?”) but to use more objective measures. We developed and validated a novel (and relatively demanding) video-based task in which participants answered questions about the mental states of several narrators they saw in short video clips. Our results indicated that the Perspective Module elicited significantly increased accuracy rates in this Theory of Mind measure (Trautwein et al. 2020). Furthermore, our analyses revealed that the Perspective Dyads had a substantial part in this improvement: The more inner parts our participants identified and practiced on during the contemplative dialogues, the more pronounced was their Theory of Mind improvement (Böckler et al. 2017).

Prosocial behavior. Mercy and charity, helping and supporting others is a core religious duty and the basis of functioning societies. Because typical psychological assessments of prosociality are diverse and often limited, we developed a comprehensive battery of measures that allowed for the exploration of participants’ spontaneous behaviors in different situations, including their willingness to help, donate to, share with, and trust strangers. This conglomerate of altruistically motivated behaviors was significantly increased in participants after the Affect Module and more so compared to the control groups (Böckler et al. 2018). Hence, people’s altruistic motivation and behavior from trust to generosity can be altered through spiritual exercises that target qualities of the heart, such as care, connectedness, and compassion.

Social brain. The training-induced changes in social skills and behaviors reported above were further supported by our results of training-induced changes in brain morphology: Increased cortical thickness in fronto-insular brain regions after the Affect Module correlated with increases in compassion, while augmented cortical thickness in inferior frontal and lateral temporal cortices after the Perspective Module was related to Theory of Mind improvements (Valk et al. 2017). These findings suggest structural plasticity of the social brain in adults and indicate what may not surprise scholars who assume a physical basis of mental capacities: Our brain networks and our socio-affective/socio-cognitive skills, like muscles, can become stronger with training.

Taken together, contemplative trainings that include the social domain, be it in terms of social affect (e.g., compassion and social connectedness) or social cognition (e.g., the willingness and ability to put oneself in the shoes of others), can successfully improve a range of these abilities and lead to higher levels of generosity and helpfulness, even towards strangers. Clearly, the exercises and measures in the ReSource Project are only a first step. The next and last section will outline some ideas on how future research can expand our understanding of social spiritual practices and their interpersonal effects.

4. Outlook

Cognition, spirituality, and contemplation may not be confined to the workings of individual minds and brains. They can be, and often are, social endeavors, arising in the in-between, the dynamic interplay between interacting individuals. In the course of my career, I experienced scientific endeavors to share this property, especially the joyful and successful ones. The conferences that still resonate in my work today and the collaborations that continued are those where the ones involved needed and wanted to find a common language, listened in order to understand rather than to reply, and were willing to consider each other’s perspectives and reconsider their own. Especially in inter-disciplinary work or in collaborations with practitioners outside academia, the initial effort required for mutual understanding, communication, and cooperation can be rewarded with fruitful synergies, where outcomes indeed surpass the sum of individual contributions.

What can scientific endeavors focus on in light of the recent advances outlined in this piece? I will sketch some avenues concerning (i) the nature of the practices, (ii) the measured effects of spirituality/contemplation-based interventions, and (iii) the spiritual experience itself.

Social contemplation. I think intervention studies would benefit from focusing on social contemplative practices beyond dyads and dialogues. The conversation practices of the ReSource Project outlined in Section 3.1 exemplify interactive exercises but are still relatively limited, for instance, in terms of the parties involved, the duration, and extend of the interaction. Dimensions that may be considered or even included as experimental factors in future studies can range from the amount of people involved in the practices (e.g., dyads, groups of different sizes) to the degree of their interdependence (e.g., silent praying sessions versus interactive discussion or teaching sessions), the nature of the aspired outcome (e.g., polyphonic singing, insights on religious teachings), the hierarchical relationship between group members, the duration of the social interactions, or the stability of the groups. Of course, with increasing complexity of the research question, the methodological requirements also grow, from larger sample sizes to finding a balance between experimental control and real-world applicability. Comparing different group sizes, for instance, would exponentially increase the number of participants and require researchers to consider potentially confounding factors like group members’ net interaction time, their mutual sympathies, group structure, or type of interaction.

A central topic in social psychology is how humans perceive, judge, and treat outgroup members. People tend to attribute more positive characteristics and act more generously and cooperatively towards others who they perceive as belonging to the same social category as them (ingroup favoritism, e.g., Balliet et al. 2014). How can social contemplative practices be performed in diverse groups? How would the experience change, and what would be the observed effects of the training? Taking the question a step further, what does it require for an artificial agent to be accepted and effective as a partner during a joint contemplative practice?

Social effects. Similarly, outcome measures of intervention studies should be expanded beyond classic psychological constructs measured solely within the individuals (e.g., cognitive control, stress, generosity towards strangers). For instance, hitherto unresolved questions are whether people who regularly pray, sing, or meditate together experience a deeper connection with each other, communicate more effortlessly with each other, solve joint problems more creatively, trust each other more deeply, or forgive each other more easily. Contemplation in diverse groups may be an effective means to reduce stereotypes and ingroup favoritism; however, would this effect be constrained to the members of the contemplation circle or generalize towards outgroup strangers? Complementing investigations on the influence of spiritual practices on social abilities and interpersonal connection, the question arises as to the reverse effect: To what extent do socio-affective and socio-cognitive skills contribute to spiritual (group) experiences?

Besides indicating positive consequences of spiritual practices on cognition and affect, some studies suggest adverse meditation effects, such as distress, hyperarousal, or dissociation (e.g., Britton et al. 2021). It would certainly be of interest to examine how negative states induced by spiritual exercises are hampered, altered, or enhanced in different group settings. This would require both the implementation of distinct group practices and the inclusion of outcome measures that can detect adverse states. Finally, when addressing causal consequences of interventions, the choice of adequate control groups for comparison is key (see section on socializing spirituality). While the ReSource Project implemented different modules as active controls and passive control groups without any meditation-based practice, a promising avenue for decidedly social contemplative practices could be joint activities that lack the meditative aspect (e.g., active team sports, book clubs).

Social experience. Critically, and outside the “more or less” conceptualization of intervention outcomes, we might investigate the quality and the characteristics of the connection, communication, and cooperation that arise between those who contemplate together and/or between them and the deity they refer to. In addition, there is not only the disposition or skill that may or may not be altered by regular practice but also the quality and qualia of the practice itself: How does it feel to pray in a group? What practices induce sensations of interconnectedness, joint agency, or group flow? And to what degree do the subjective experiences of the participating individuals align or differ? These questions will require a combination of classic, “objective” measures of experimental psychology with introspective methods that give a voice to the practitioners.

The same holds for questions concerning differences and similarities of contemplation, between and beyond religious denominations. To share a personal anecdote: Almost ten years ago, I participated in a meeting of the Mind & Life Institute that took place on the Fraueninsel (Women’s Island) in Bavaria, an island inhabited by catholic nuns and occasionally open to tourists. At the meeting, Buddhist practitioners, entrepreneurs, and scientists came together to share insights and ideas on contemplation. During the days of the workshop, I repeatedly witnessed Buddhist Rōshis walking the island with catholic nuns, deeply immersed in conversations. Was this mutual interest and access to each other, at least partly, favored by the common ground of contemplative experience? What similarities or differences may they have carved out and how? Finally, what people describe as spiritual or mystical experiences may not be exclusive to religious practices. Fine arts and music have a reputation for triggering sensations of transcendence and so do moments of deep social connection, extraordinary perceptions of nature, and the intake of psychoactive substances (Huxley 1968). The wish to compare the essence of these experiences, of course, brings us back to the well-known and unresolved challenges of understanding the mind states of others—be it by verbal exchange (introspection) or via the assessment of physical (brain) processes. It may not come as a surprise that I consider joint endeavors, spanning scientists of different disciplines with varying methodological and theoretical backgrounds as well as practitioners of different denominations, as the most promising avenue to tackle this challenge.