Trait Mindfulness Predicts Helping Behavior toward Racial Ingroup and Outgroup Members

A study examined whether trait mindfulness would increase spontaneous helping behavior toward racial outgroup members (vs ingroup members). Self-identifying White participants scoring higher in basic trait mindfulness more frequently helped both racial outgroup and ingroup members in two randomly assigned lab-based helping simulations: (1) giving one’s seat to a person on crutches or (2) aiding an experimenter in picking up dropped consent forms. Men were 3.70 times as likely to help than women. Discussion focuses on the role of individual differences in mindful attention deployment in helping.