As an individual moves into the later years of life, he or she is prone to loss of interpersonal skills and support from others. Affective empathy is considered to be a skill which assists individuals in building interpersonal relationships and thereby increasing support from others. Zazen (Zen) meditation is proposed to increase affective empathic responses. The current study involved 19 senior citizens, ages 60-77 (six males and 13 females) randomly assigned to either a control group or an experimental group. The experimental group received zazen (Zen) meditation training and the control group received an irrelevant activity (mathematical exercises). Each group received the activity for five days, three hours per day. Affective empathy was measured pretest and posttest. The pretest was the Emotional Empathic Tendency Scale (Mehrabian & Epstein, 1972) and posttest was the Empathic Concern subscale of the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (Davis, 1980, 1983c). Analysis of the data produced statistically nonsignificant findings. Larger numbers and/or longer training times may provide significant findings in future studies. The levels of affective empathy (i.e. low, intermediate, high scorers) were not considered in the current study but attention to these variables in future research and in training for affective empathy using zazen (Zen) meditation is recommended.
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