1. Researchers at Northwestern University explored whether meditation could help someone
become a more compassionate person (Lim, Condo, & DeSteno, PLoS One, 2015). The
researchers recruited 56 university students, all of whom reported little to no prior experience
with meditation. The subjects were then randomly assigned to one of two treatments: either
regularly completing a meditation session with the web-app Headspace for three weeks or
completing a web-based cognitive training program from Lumosity for three weeks (as a control
group). To test the subjects on their level of compassion, the researchers staged a scenario using
three actors. The subjects would enter a common waiting room where there were three chairs.
Two male actors sat in two of the chairs, leaving one for the subject. After the subject was sitting
for one minute, a female actor came in playing the role of a person suffering. She would walk in
using crutches with some mild expressions of pain and would then lean against the wall with a
sigh of discomfort. The sitting male actors were told to ignore her. What did the subjects do? It
turned out that 10 of the 27 from the meditation group got up and offered the suffering woman
their seat while only 4 of the 29 in the active control group did so.
i) Are you willing to draw a cause-and effect conclusion from this study? Explain why or why
not.
j) To what population are you willing to generalize these results? Justify your choice.
k) Explain why the above analysis does not help you answer this research question: Does the
meditation treatment lead individuals to be more likely to give up their eat than not give up their
seat?.
1- Researchers at Northwestern University explored whether meditation.pdf
1. 1. Researchers at Northwestern University explored whether meditation could help someone
become a more compassionate person (Lim, Condo, & DeSteno, PLoS One, 2015). The
researchers recruited 56 university students, all of whom reported little to no prior experience
with meditation. The subjects were then randomly assigned to one of two treatments: either
regularly completing a meditation session with the web-app Headspace for three weeks or
completing a web-based cognitive training program from Lumosity for three weeks (as a control
group). To test the subjects on their level of compassion, the researchers staged a scenario using
three actors. The subjects would enter a common waiting room where there were three chairs.
Two male actors sat in two of the chairs, leaving one for the subject. After the subject was sitting
for one minute, a female actor came in playing the role of a person suffering. She would walk in
using crutches with some mild expressions of pain and would then lean against the wall with a
sigh of discomfort. The sitting male actors were told to ignore her. What did the subjects do? It
turned out that 10 of the 27 from the meditation group got up and offered the suffering woman
their seat while only 4 of the 29 in the active control group did so.
i) Are you willing to draw a cause-and effect conclusion from this study? Explain why or why
not.
j) To what population are you willing to generalize these results? Justify your choice.
k) Explain why the above analysis does not help you answer this research question: Does the
meditation treatment lead individuals to be more likely to give up their eat than not give up their
seat?
