Contemplative/Emotion Training Reduces Negative Emotional Behavior and Promotes Prosocial Responses Margaret E. Kemeny and Carol Foltz University of California, San Francisco James F. Cavanagh Brown University Margaret Cullen University of California, San Francisco Janine Giese-Davis University of Calgary Patricia Jennings Pennsylvania State University Erika L. Rosenberg University of California, Davis Omri Gillath University of Kansas Phillip R. Shaver University of California, Davis B. Alan Wallace Santa Barbara Institute for Consciousness Studies, Santa Barbara, California Paul Ekman University of California, San Francisco Contemplative practices are believed to alleviate psychological problems, cultivate prosocial be- havior and promote self-awareness. In addition, psychological science has developed tools and models for understanding the mind and promoting well-being. Additional effort is needed to combine frameworks and techniques from these traditions to improve emotional experience and socioemotional behavior. An 8-week intensive (42 hr) meditation/emotion regulation training intervention was designed by experts in contemplative traditions and emotion science to reduce “destructive enactment of emotions” and enhance prosocial responses. Participants were 82 healthy female schoolteachers who were randomly assigned to a training group or a wait-list control group, and assessed preassessment, postassessment, and 5 months after training completion. Assessments included self-reports and experimental tasks to capture changes in emotional behavior. The training group reported reduced trait negative affect, rumination, depression, and anxiety, and increased trait positive affect and mindfulness compared to the control group. On a series of behavioral tasks, the training increased recognition of emotions in others (Micro-Expression Training Tool), protected trainees from some of the psychophysiological effects of an experimental threat to self (Trier Social Stress Test; TSST), appeared to activate cognitive networks associated with compassion (lexical decision procedure), and affected hostile behavior in the Marital Interaction Task. Most effects at postassessment that were examined at follow-up were maintained (excluding positive affect, TSST This article was published Online First December 12, 2011. Margaret E. Kemeny, Carol Foltz, Margaret Cullen, and Paul Ekman, Department of Psychiatry, University of California, San Francisco; James F. Cavanagh, Cognitive, Linguistic and Psychological Sciences, Brown University; Janine Giese-Davis, Department of Oncology, Di- vision of Psychosocial Oncology, University of Calgary, Alberta, Can- ada; Patricia Jennings, Prevention Research Center, Pennsylvania State University; Erika L. Rosenberg and Phillip R. Shaver, Center for Mind and Brain, University of California, Davis; Omri Gillath, Department of Psychology, University of Kansas; B. Alan Wallace, Santa Barbara Institute for Consciousness Studies, Santa Barbara, California. All training sessions were conducted by B. Alan Wallace and Margaret Cullen in both the pilot study and clinical trial. The training program was developed by Paul Ekman and B. Alan Wallace. Margaret Cullen also played an important role in training development. We thank the members of our advisory group for playing an early role in the development of this project and for consultation as needed: Richard Davidson, Joseph Gold- stein, Mark Greenberg, Daniel Goleman, Jon Kabat-Zinn, and John Teas- dale. We would also like to acknowledge Jeanne Tsai, Jocelyn Sze, Erin Gillung, Kari Snowberg, and Anthony Maes for their important contri- butions to the study. We would also like to thank the Mind and Life Institute for convening the original meeting that stimulated the idea for this project and for their ongoing support through the development of the training program and the intervention studies. This work was supported by the Fetzer Institute as well as the John W. Kluge Foun- dation, the Charles Engelhard Foundation, The Tibet Fund, the Hershey Family Foundation, the Mind and Life Institute, the Institute for Re- search on Unlimited Love, the Impact Foundation, the Boas family, and the Orrok family. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Margaret E. Kemeny, Department of Psychiatry, University of California, San Fran- cisco, 3333 California Street, Suite 465, San Francisco, CA 94143. E-mail: kemenym@healthpsych.ucsf.edu Emotion © 2011 American Psychological Association 2012, Vol. 12, No. 2, 338 –350 1528-3542/12/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/a0026118 338