Cognition and Emotion in Meditation: A Comparison Between Mindfulness and Compassion Standardized Programs

"The MBSR is an 8-week standardized program (Kabat-Zinn, 1990) consisted of 2.5-hour of face-to-face weekly sessions, and 45 minutes of daily home formal and informal practices. Training will be conducted in groups of 20-30 participants. During the program, different mindfulness practices are performed, including focused attention on the breath, open monitoring of awareness in body-scanning, prosocial meditation (i.e. loving kindness and compassion) and gentle yoga.~Training is delivered by certificated instructors by the University of Massachusetts Centre for Mindfulness (https://www.umassmed.edu/cfm/)."

"The CCT is an 8-week standardized program (Jinpa, 2010; Jazaieri et al. 2013, 2014) consisting of 2.5-hour of face-to-face weekly sessions and 30 minutes of daily home formal and informal practices. Training will be conducted in groups of 20-30 participants. The CCT consists of six sequential steps: 1) Settling the mind and learn how to focus it; 2) Loving kindness and compassion for a loved one practice; 3) Loving kindness and compassion for oneself practice; 4) compassion toward others, embracing shared common humanity and developing appreciation of others; 5) compassion toward others including all beings; and 6) active compassion practices (Tonglen) which involve explicit evocation of the altruistic wish to do something about others' suffering.~CCT program is delivered by certificated instructors by the University of Stanford Centre for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education (http://ccare.stanford.edu/)."

A group of participants, matched by age, gender, and meditation experience is selected to compare their performance on experimental lab tasks in relation to the MBSR and CCT participants.