In an online anonymous study we compared 2409 contemplative practitioners to 450 non-meditators on measures of psychological functioning. The meditators followed five traditions: Tibetan and Theravada Buddhism, Centering Prayer, Yoga and Mindfulness. Meditators were lower in depression, neuroticism, empathic distress, and types of empathy-based guilt, and higher in empathy (cognitive and emotional), agreeableness, conscientiousness, openness, resilience, and compassionate altruism towards strangers. Comparing traditions found Tibetans and Centering Prayer higher in altruism towards strangers and Centering Prayer lower in neuroticism. In all traditions, intensity and duration of practice predicted positive outcomes. Meditators whose goal was benefit to others, compared to those whose goal was benefit to the self, were lower in depression, empathic distress, and neuroticism, and higher in cognitive empathy, resilience, and altruism towards strangers. Religion-based practitioners were lower in guilt, empathic distress, depression and neuroticism, and higher in conscientiousness, resilience, and altruism towards others compared secular meditators.

Depression appears to be somewhat epidemic in the modern world. In prior empirical studies we found depression significantly associated with empathy-based guilt, empathic distress, and an overly active or misattributing moral system. In this study, we compared 98 Buddhists, who were primarily Tibetan meditation practitioners to 438 non-Buddhist, non-practicing community adults on a measure of depression along with measures of maladaptive guilt, empathic distress, anxiety and altruism. Our findings demonstrated that practitioners were significantly lower in depression, pathogenic guilt, anxiety, and empathic distress, and significantly higher on agreeableness, conscientiousness, openness to experience and compassionate altruism directed towards strangers. Intensity of practice significantly correlated with positive outcomes. In addition, we found that within the population of Tibetan Buddhist practitioners, those who endorsed the statement that the goal of meditation was other-focused (for the benefit of all sentient beings) were significantly lower in depression, empathic distress, and anxiety, and significantly higher in cognitive empathy (perspective-taking) compared to practitioners whose goal of meditation was self-focused.

In this study, 901 participants completed an anonymous Internet-based survey, including a new instrument, the Neurotransmitter Attributes Questionnaire (NAQ), indicating possible dysfunction of the serotonergic or dopaminergic circuits. NAQ items were derived from questions prescribing professionals commonly ask new patients whose symptoms call for psychopharmacological treatments, sometimes in combination with psychosocial interventions. Rasch modeling was used to establish item quality, subscale reliability, and unidimensionality. In addition, the items in each subscale were found reliable when judged by three blind raters who were experienced psychopharmacologists. Standard measures of mental disorders and self-reported diagnoses were used to validate the NAQ subscales. These questions that form the subscales on the NAQ may be helpful when determining the class of medication likely to be most effective. Variations in mood and anxiety-disordered patients call for a case-specific approach to pharmacological treatment. Some patients are best helped by serotonergic agonists, others have a better outcome from treatment with dopaminergic agonists, and some patients seem to be best served by a combination of both. The NAQ was designed to aid decision-making early in treatment, potentially leading to greater compliance and better outcome. The NAQ may be used to standardize protocols in outcome research, and in addition, it may provide a new perspective on personality studies.

No abstract