Compassionate Intention as a Therapeutic Intervention by Partners of Cancer Patients: Effects of Distant Intention on the Patients’ Autonomic Nervous System
📄 Original study ↗📌 Appears in:
Plain English Summary
Can sending loving thoughts to someone actually change what's happening in their body — even from a distance? This study put that question to the test with cancer patients and their partners. Thirty-six couples participated, with the receiving partner sitting alone inside an electromagnetically shielded room about 20 meters away. During randomly timed 10-second windows, the sending partner directed compassionate, caring intention toward them. Researchers measured the receiver's skin conductance (basically how much your skin sweats, a sign of nervous system arousal). Three groups were compared: couples where the partner had completed three months of compassionate meditation training, a wait-list group of cancer couples who hadn't trained yet, and healthy control couples with no training. The headline result is striking — across all sessions, receivers showed a significant spike in skin conductance right when their partner was sending intention, with odds against chance of about 10,000 to 1. Even more impressive, the trained couples produced effect sizes nearly seven times larger than what previous studies in this field had found. There's a catch worth noting: the experimenter wasn't completely blind to which group was which, and groups weren't randomly assigned, so the between-group comparisons should be taken with a grain of salt. Still, the overall effect is remarkably robust and suggests that compassionate intention directed at loved ones might genuinely reach them in some measurable way.
Actual Paper Abstract
Objective: This double-blind study investigated the effects of intention on the autonomic nervous system of a human "sender" and distant "receiver" of those intentions, and it explored the roles that motivation and training might have in modulating these effects. Design: Skin conductance level was measured in each member of a couple, both of whom were asked to feel the presence of the other. While the receiving person relaxed in a distant shielded room for 30 minutes, the sending person directed intention toward the receiver during repeated 10-second epochs separated by random interepoch periods. Thirty-six couples participated in 38 test sessions. In 22 couples, one of the pair was a cancer patient. In 12 of those couples, the healthy person was trained to direct intention toward the patient and asked to practice that intention daily for three months prior to the experiment (trained group). In the other 10 couples, the pair was tested before the partner was trained (wait group). Fourteen healthy couples received no training (control group). Outcome measures: Using nonparametric bootstrap procedures, normalized skin conductance means recorded during the intention epochs were compared with the same measures recorded during randomly selected interepoch periods, used as controls. The preplanned difference examined the intention versus control means at the end of the intention epoch. Results: Overall, receivers' skin conductance increased during the intention epochs (z 3.9; P .00009, two-tailed). Planned differences in skin conductance among the three groups were not significant, but a post hoc analysis showed that peak deviations were largest and most sustained in the trained group, followed by more moderate effects in the wait group, and still smaller effects in the control group. Conclusions: Directing intention toward a distant person is correlated with activation of that person's autonomic nervous system. Strong motivation to heal and to be healed, and training on how to cultivate and direct compassionate intention, may further enhance this effect. Key words: Distant healing, autonomic nervous system, intention
Research Notes
Key DMILS study combining laboratory rigor with ecological validity through a clinical population (cancer patients and their partners). Effect sizes substantially exceeded meta-analytic DMILS estimates. Post hoc dose-response pattern (trained > wait > control) is suggestive but experimenter was not fully blind and groups were not randomly assigned. Speaks to controversy #5 (distant healing/prayer).
Seventy-two participants in 36 couples (38 usable sessions) took part in a DMILS experiment where a sender directed compassionate intention toward a receiver in an electromagnetically shielded chamber 20 meters away. Skin conductance was measured during randomly timed 10-second intention epochs. Three groups were compared: trained (12 cancer couples, partner given 3 months compassionate intention meditation training), wait-list (10 cancer couples before training), and control (14 healthy couples, no training). Overall receiver SCL at stimulus offset was significantly elevated (z = 3.9, p = .00009, two-tailed). Per-session effect sizes for the motivated groups (e = 0.74) were 6.7x larger than prior DMILS meta-analytic estimates, though the between-group difference was not significant.
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Related Papers
Cites
- Distant intentionality and the feeling of being stared at: Two meta-analyses — Schmidt, Stefan (2004)
- Evidence for Correlations Between Distant Intentionality and Brain Function in Recipients: A Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Analysis — Achterberg, J (2005)
- The Efficacy of "Distant Healing": A Systematic Review of Randomized Trials — Astin, John A (2000)
- Study of the Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer (STEP) in Cardiac Bypass Patients: A Multicenter Randomized Trial of Uncertainty and Certainty of Receiving Intercessory Prayer — Benson, Herbert (2006)
- Experimenter Effects and the Remote Detection of Staring — Wiseman, Richard (1997)
- Electroencephalographic Evidence of Correlated Event-Related Signals Between the Brains of Spatially and Sensory Isolated Human Subjects — Standish, Leanna J (2004)
- Replicable Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Evidence of Correlated Brain Signals Between Physically and Sensory Isolated Subjects — Richards, Todd L (2005)
- Effects of remote, retroactive intercessory prayer on outcomes in patients with bloodstream infection: randomised controlled trial — Leibovici, Leonard (2001)
- Correlations between brain electrical activities of two spatially separated human subjects — Wackermann, Jiří (2003)
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📋 Cite this paper
Radin, Dean, Stone, Jerome, Levine, Ellen, Eskandarnejad, Shahram, Schlitz, Marilyn, Kozak, Leila, Mandel, Dorothy, Hayssen, Gail (2008). Compassionate Intention as a Therapeutic Intervention by Partners of Cancer Patients: Effects of Distant Intention on the Patients’ Autonomic Nervous System. Explore. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.explore.2008.04.002
@article{radin_2008_compassionate,
title = {Compassionate Intention as a Therapeutic Intervention by Partners of Cancer Patients: Effects of Distant Intention on the Patients’ Autonomic Nervous System},
author = {Radin, Dean and Stone, Jerome and Levine, Ellen and Eskandarnejad, Shahram and Schlitz, Marilyn and Kozak, Leila and Mandel, Dorothy and Hayssen, Gail},
year = {2008},
journal = {Explore},
doi = {10.1016/j.explore.2008.04.002},
}