Enhancing compassion meditation through virtual reality and sensory priming: A focus on individual factors

• Virtual Reality increases high-arousal positive affect in all participants. • Virtual Reality potentially decreases criticism toward others in the short term, only in individuals with low mental imagery skills. • In sum, mental imagery skills moderate the effect of virtual reality and tools in enhancing the benefits of compassion practice. Although the effectiveness of compassion-based interventions (CBIs) has been widely demonstrated to improve mental health and prosocial behaviors, not all individuals benefit equally from these interventions. Therefore, enhancing specific capacities relevant to compassion practice (i.e., mental imagery and somatosensory perception) could optimize the benefits of CBIs. This randomized controlled trial study explores the efficacy of two tools: virtual reality (VR), to improve mental imagery skills; and a heating pad used as somatosensory priming (SP), to enhance the effectiveness of a compassion practice, as compared to a control group (compassion practice only). We assessed the impact of these tools in 92 participants, randomly assigned to one of the three groups, through self-reported, physiological, and behavioral measures on three time points (before meditation, immediately after, and two weeks after). Moreover, we investigated whether individual differences in mental imagery and interoceptive skills moderate these effects. The results show that all groups benefited from the practice, regardless of the condition. Although all groups benefited from the compassion practice, positive affect increased significantly more in the VR condition, while negative affect decreased significantly less in the SP condition, compared to the control condition. Moreover, one potential moderator was identified: mental imagery skills. Specifically, criticism towards others was significantly reduced in the VR condition but only among participants with low mental imagery skills. This study underscores the importance of enhancement tools for individuals with low mental imagery skills to maximize the benefits of compassion practice.