Psychology Research Report: Mindfulness, Stress, and Altruism Studies

This report presents a literature review and analysis of psychology research focusing on the effects of mindfulness-based interventions on psychological well-being, stress reduction, and altruism. The report examines studies on Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) and its impact on mental health, quality of life, and the mechanisms involved. It also includes a meta-analysis on the effects of mindfulness meditation, summarizing findings from various studies and highlighting its influence on non-clinical meditators. Furthermore, the report explores the relationship between mindfulness meditation and altruism, analyzing how it stimulates pro-social behavior and increases charitable donations. The research uses various methodologies, including randomized controlled trials, meta-analyses, and simulations, to investigate the effects of mindfulness on different populations and contexts. The findings indicate that mindfulness meditation can significantly improve well-being, reduce stress, and enhance altruistic behavior, particularly among individuals with lower baseline levels of cooperation. The report includes references to relevant books and journal articles supporting the research findings.

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Table of Contents
Stuart halls’ encoding decoding model of media links....................................................................3
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................8

Literature review
Effects of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Intervention on Psychological Well-being
and Quality of Life: Is Increased Mindfulness Indeed the Mechanism?
In different types of settings in both mental health care and somatic health care, mindfulness-
based approaches aimed at minimising relational symptoms of depression and improving the
quality of life are rapidly implemented and common. These approaches seek to foster an open-
minded and non-judgmental understanding of whatever occurs at the moment of experience that
follows. The direct and pre-reflexive artefacts of experience provide the entire spectrum of
potential phenomena, from internal psychological states and mechanisms (thoughts, impulses,
images, etc.), proprioceptive input from the body, to the senses entering external stimuli. In a
transparent, nonjudgmental and accepting manner, phenomena are treated. It is the clear and
single-minded awareness of what actually happens to us and to us in the moments of perception
that follow"[6]. The approach is rooted in the central Buddhist idea that the judgmental outcome
of all psychological distress is maintained. A previous meta-analysis on the impact of MBSR on
psychological well-being factors was based on the power analysis, finding a mean medium-sized
effect size (d=0.5). With an alpha level of 0.05 and a power of 0.80, a capability of 0.80
We required a total of 50 participants. Sixty respondents with signs of depression volunteered
and met the requirements for trial participation. They were randomised into an intervention unit
that will undergo instruction for the MBSR And a monitoring group waiting-list that will receive
MBSR after their testing was completed by the intervention group. Random sorting without
stratification of the MBSR participants was conducted using the SPSS programme. The 'random
case collection' method extended to numbers representing the participants. The performer
(second author) of this technique did not know which number represented the individual. There
after randomization, Except for the review of the results, which was achieved by submitting
questionnaires, there was no blindness to group assignment.
The Effects of Mindfulness Meditation: A Meta-Analysis
There has been a growing interest in the area of meditation for mindfulness in recent years. This
has yielded a diverse array of research findings, and it seems like a detailed summary of the
impact of meditation on mindfulness is overdue. In the present article, our goal is to summarise
the results observed so far with an emphasis on the influence of non-clinical meditators'
meditation.

As used in this article, the term mindfulness meditation identifies a particular sub-family of
meditation methods that can be traced back to Buddhist practises. Typical examples of
mindfulness meditation are Vipassana and Zen/Chan. Meditation on Mindfulness is supposed to
cultivate a special kind of mental quality: mindfulness. Mindfulness refers to the self-regulation
of commitment to the intentional perception of one's current experiences while adopting a
curious, open and accepting mindset. All in all, we find 39 studies that met our six parameters for
selection. For each study examined, we reported the following data: information on the treatment
under investigation (e.g. the length of the treatment), population information (e.g. the meditation
experience of the treatment under investigation).
Individuals under investigation), survey specifics (e.g. dissemination outlet, year of publication,
and if the research was randomised), and details about the contingent variables utilised.
Unfortunately we did not assess the participants' motivation for any of the experiments.
(whether they were meditating for reasons of faith, piety, or health), and drop-out rates were also
not recorded. The basic care process, the topics addressed in group meetings (if applicable), as
well as the topics discussed in group meetings (if applicable).
There was no information available on the number of meetings in several surveys. Two
independent raters first grouped the dependent variables into particular codes. The list that is the
resulting in the research. We have used a selection bias to show probable selection biases.
Graphical process, the plot of the funnel (Egger et al. 1997). A funnel map is a scatter plot that
displays the distribution of experiments for the effect size (on the x-axis) of variables and the
sample size (on the y-axis). Since larger samples have better true" impact estimates than smaller
samples, the evolving trend will be assumed to be similar to a reversed funnel. For eg, deviations
from that trend suggest prejudices, a publishing bias, if studies with tiny studies
There is a lack of sample size and low-effect size. To examine the unique relationships between
variables, we built scatterplots with locally weighted scatterplot smoother (LOWESS) curves
where appropriate. LOWESS is a technique to fit a curve into a pair of variables connected
linearly or nonlinearly (see Cleveland 1985). An individual regression line that takes into
account a given percentage of neighbouring data points (we used 99 percent) is measured for
each data point and weights their effect by their distance to that point. In order to change the
value of each particular data point, the regression lines are then used, resulting in a "smoothed"
regression line over all data points that need not be linear. As a special case of a LOWESS curve

where all data points are used and where the difference between adjacent points is not taken into
consideration, the normal regression line can be seen.
Mindfulness Meditation Activates Altruism
Medical research shows that meditation on mindfulness decreases anxiety, depression and
stress, and increases control of emotions due to stimulation of behaviour in neuronal substrates
related to the regulation of emotions and social attitudes. Less was however, understood on
whether meditation on mindfulness could change pro-social actions. Here we have been
exploring whether Meditation on mindfulness stimulates human altruism, a part of social
partnership. We randomly allocated 326 participants to a mindfulness meditation online session
or monitor, using a basic donation simulation, which is a real-world version of the Dictator's
Game, and assessed their ability to contribute a portion of their payment for participation as a
charitable donation. Since correcting for socio-demographics, participants who received the
meditation therapy donated at a pace 2.61 times higher than the control (p=0.005). Among those
who did not go to college (p<0.001) and those who were under 25 years of age (p<0.001), we
have observed a greater treatment impact of meditation, with all subject classes adding
practically nothing to the control situation. Our findings indicate that human altruism is highly
modular in context and that intervention methods are created, including mindfulness meditation
to increase social cooperation, particularly among subjects with low baseline willingness to
participate. Cooperation is an important trait in the development and management of human
communities, and our understanding of the neurophysiological bases of such behaviour has been
strengthened over the past two decades by cognitive neuroscience and behavioural economics
studies. Neuroimaging shows that teamwork is related to brain regions of reward production,
including the rostral anterior cingulate cortex (rACC), which is believed to modulate amygdala
fear processing, as well as the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC), nucleus accumbens
(NACC), and caudate. Current analysis provides us a much more granular view of the directions
concerned, illustrating that indirect reciprocity (altruism without hope of returning returns) is
pay-it-forward.
The stimulation of the anterior insula (AI), which in turn controls the caudate, is
synonymous with favour, which is based on large-scale cooperation, primarily based on empathy
and other social interests rather than prestige. Cooperation may generally be defined as
individual actions whereby one person pays a cost to receive a benefit for others." Cooperation

can be further modelled as a game balance where subjects also behave in their self-interest, but
their function of utility (a function that determines the individual interests in particular scenarios)
involves social preferences that have been
Modelled in different forms, such as aversion to inequity, a second function of utility over
the well-being of others, etc.. In the present analysis, we concentrate on the act of making a
private decision as to what percentage of payment to maintain for oneself and what percentage to
make as a charitable contribution, which is a form of indirect reciprocity or generalised altruism.
Evidence also shows that some types of social conditions, social indicators and stimuli can shift
the perspective of people regarding the social problem (i.e. individual cost vs. mutual benefit)
and can increase human cooperation. For instance, when they communicate with cooperative
people people are more cooperative than when they interact with non-cooperative people.
Individuals . Providing others' credibility knowledge (how cooperative they are in the past)
will lead to creating a common standard of cooperatives in social networks. It is also established
that the degree of cooperation can be increased by time constraint (study participants are asked to
decide to cooperate or defect in economic games within those seconds). Another research
showed that altruism is triggered by the implementation of integrative institutions and improves
Cooperation between fundamentally fragmented ethno-religious communities . A series of
studies have shown that oxytocin exposure by nasal intake has increased the level of cooperation.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Goyal, M. et al. Meditation programs for psychological stress and well-being: A systematic
review and meta-analysis. Jama Intern Med 174,
357–368,https://doi.org/10.1001/jamainternmed.2013.13018 (2014). Article PubMed
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Khoury, B. et al. Mindfulness-based therapy: A comprehensive meta-analysis. Clinical
psychology review 33, 763–771, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpr.2013.05.005 (2013).Article
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Khoury, B., Sharma, M., Rush, S. E. & Fournier, C. Mindfulness-based stress reduction for
healthy individuals: A meta-analysis. Journal of Psychosomatic Research 78, 519–528,
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complementary health approaches among adults: United States, 2002–2012. National
health statistics reports, 1–16 (2015).
Black, D. S., O’Reilly, G. A., Olmstead, R., Breen, E. C. & Irwin, M. R. Mindfulness
Meditation and Improvement in Sleep Quality and Daytime Impairment Among Older
Adults With Sleep Disturbances: A Randomized Clinical Trial. JAMA internal medicine
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Scholar
Kang, Y., Gray, J. R. & Dovidio, J. F. The nondiscriminating heart: lovingkindness meditation
training decreases implicit intergroup bias. Journal of experimental psychology. General
143, 1306–1313, https://doi.org/10.1037/a0034150 (2014). Article PubMed Google
Scholar
Leiberg, S., Klimecki, O. & Singer, T. Short-Term Compassion Training Increases Prosocial
Behavior in a Newly Developed Prosocial Game. Plos one 6,
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