Transcendent Moral Motivation and Virtue Development: A Meditation-Based Experiment Exploring Self-Transcending and Self-Enhancing Motives

Abstract

Current virtue theories emphasize the role of self-transcendent morality in virtue development, but there is limited empirical work exploring this. A three-week meditation-based intervention (N = 877) experimentally manipulated self-transcending (vs. instrumental) motives in the development of patience, generosity, social responsibility, gratitude, and honesty. We hypothesized that participants in the transcendent condition would report higher post-intervention virtue, self-transcendent emotions, and values of universalism and benevolence, and these patterns would persist for virtue after controlling for baseline levels. We further predicted self-transcendent emotions and self-enhancement would mediate this relation. Results indicated post-intervention differences between the two meditation conditions and the control, but not each other. The meditative conditions reported higher self-transcendence and self-enhancement, which mediated the pathway between baseline and post-intervention virtue. These findings hold important implications for research on meditation, the role of self-transcendence in virtue development, and implementing virtue-building interventions.