RESPONSE - Insead

A Model of Social Consciousness and Socially Responsible Behavior Modelling Socially Responsible Behaviour
knowledge transfer and translates into behaviour through deliberate action.
Consciousness, on the other hand, is triggered primarily by external stimuli and
produces behavioural outcomes without necessarily the intercession of will and
deliberation. Therefore, one can expect awareness of the answers to questions like
“what is CSR?” and “why is it important?” to raise via a classic classroom experience,
but the development of social consciousness requires a lot more than the
understanding of the answers to what, why and how questions. It requires changes in
deeply rooted psychological mechanisms: emotional attitudes (care, trust, altruism,
courage, etc.), tacit decision­making heuristics (what criteria do I instinctively apply
when I have to make a difficult trade­off), personal values (e.g. what matters most to
me as a guiding principle in my life), etc.
2. These type of deep personal changes are, in principle, achievable through the
development of self­knowledge (understanding of one’s own traits, strengths and
limitations) and of a profound commitment to think and feel differently in given
situations or subject to specific stimuli. This is at the basis of clinical psychology and
psychotherapy. But introspection also has its limits, since it is essentially a cognitive
effort that is supposed to counter deeply rooted cognitive routines. It is cognition
against cognition.
3. These limitations might not apply, in theory, to meditative practices. In its traditional
form, meditation is designed to reach a state of mental silence where cognitive activity
is actually significantly reduced, with supposedly positive benefits for psycho­physical
health and personal growth (Neki, 1975). In that particular consciousness state, a
meta­cognitive shift is typically described by practitioners where thoughts, feelings and
actions, rather than occupying the person’s full attention, can be observed from a
detached witnessing awareness from which they can be dealt with in a more efficient
manner. When this state is routinized and integrated with normal mental and physical
activity, not only a deep understanding of one’s own emotional traits, cognitive biases
and subjective beliefs is apparently reachable, but significant and lasting changes to
those traits might be possible (Rael Cahn and Polich, 2006)
4. Evidence in high quality academic medical and neuro­science journals has been
produced to show that (selected) meditation techniques influence specific
psychological, physiological and pathological states (for a very recent review, see Rael
Cahn and Polich, 2006). Perhaps the most interesting evidence relates to recent
advances in our understanding of neuro­plasticity, the capacity of the brain to redesign
its own neural circuitry consequent to wilful attention and practice (Schwartz and
Bailey, 2003). Lazar et al. (2005), for example, show neuroplasticity effects in long­
term Buddhist meditators. The mechanisms through which these changes occur are
seem to relate to the activation of the limbic system, the same responsible for activities
connected to the notion of “emotional intelligence”, as well as specific systems
connected to higher consciousness functions (anterior cingulate cortex and dorsolateral
prefrontal areas).
5. In addition to the neuro­plasticity effect, certain types of meditative practice appear to
produce long­term effects on the practitioner’s psycho­emotional stability (lower
positive and negative mood swings), together with higher dispositions for positive
emotions such as compassion and care. Aftanas and Golosheikin (2003), for example,
show that experienced meditators (compared to novices) exhibit stronger “long­
distance” links between different areas of the brain connected with the production of
positive emotions, even before they started meditating. This might be due to the
development of specific capacities to produce positive emotional states and coherently
positive behaviour. 15
6. Finally, there are reasons to believe that meditation practice might influence the
likelihood of socially responsible behaviour through its positive effects on occupational
15 see Aftanas and Golocheikine (2000, 2001, 2003, 2005) for a series of studies on the neural
correlates of a specific type of yoga meditation, similar to the one utilized in our experiments
RESPONSE: understanding and responding to societal demands on corporate responsibility
62