compassion essay for class 11

20 Reasons Why Compassion Is So Important in Psychology

Imagine a world without Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King, Jr., St. Francis of Assisi, Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi, and so many others.

Imagine a world without the countless individuals who risked their own lives to save others during wartime (i.e., the thousands of Holocaust martyrs listed as the Righteous Among Nations). Imagine a world without those who’ve run into burning buildings or executed other heroic feats of rescue during times of trauma. It’s unthinkable.

And what about the concept of compassion in modern everyday life? After all, if this quality has the power to inspire courageous deeds, it must also encourage all sorts of positive behaviors that have both individual and societal benefits.

This article will address these ideas by looking closely at the concept of compassion; such as its meaning, value, psychological and other benefits, and relationship to qualities that promote coping (i.e., resilience).

Empirical research examining the impact and correlates of compassion will also be included. If compassion may be perceived as a requisite for a meaningful existence and civilized society, it is indeed a concept worthy of continued discovery. So, let’s begin our inquiry into this precious quality that is compassion.

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This Article Contains

The concept of compassion in psychology, compassion and positive psychology, research and studies, why is compassion important and necessary, the value and power of compassion, 20 proven benefits of compassion, is compassion linked to resilience, does compassion help to deal with stress, why is compassion important in society, other common questions, 12 psychology journals on compassion, a take-home message.

If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.

The Dalai Lama’s words are instructive because they refer to the emotional benefits of compassion to both the giver and recipient. In other words, the rewards of practicing compassion work both ways.

But what exactly is meant by ‘compassion?’ Various definitions of compassion have been proposed by researchers and philosophers. For example, in his detailed review, Cassell (2009) reported the following three requirements for compassion:

1) “That the troubles that evoke our feelings are serious;”

2) “that the sufferers’ troubles not be self-inflicted— that they be the result of an unjust fate;” and

3) “we must be able to picture ourselves in the same predicament” (p. 3).

As such, compassion is not an automatic response to another’s plight; it is a response that occurs only when the situation is perceived as serious, unjust and relatable. It requires a certain level of awareness, concern and empathy.

Consistent with the above definition, seeing a homeless man on the sidewalk will register differently depending upon how this situation is uniquely perceived by passersby. The amount of compassion elicited by others will be dependent upon how serious his situation is deemed, as well as the perceived degree of fault attributed to him for his predicament.

This example is pertinent to a quote that is prevalent in studies of compassion: “ Make no judgments where you have no compassion ” (Anne McCaffrey, goodreads.com). Judging a person’s predicament in the absence of compassion amounts to little more than judgment. Compassion can be painful to feel because it requires empathy for others, but it is also necessary because it evokes positive action.

A Look at Self-Compassion

Psychologists are also interested in the role of compassion towards oneself. When individuals view their own behaviors and shortcomings without compassion, they may ruminate about their faults and inadequacies in such a way that erodes self-esteem and happiness.

Because of the importance of self-kindness and -forgiveness to mental health, the concept of ‘ self-compassion ’ is occurring more often in the psychological literature.

Self-compassion has been defined as involving “self-kindness versus self-judgment; a sense of common humanity versus isolation, and mindfulness versus overidentification” (Neff, 2003, p. 212). It is a way of recognizing one’s inability to be perfect and to see oneself from a comforting rather than critical perspective (Neff, 2003).

Self-compassion is gaining popularity in psychology because of its reported relationships with reduced feelings of anxiety, depression, and rumination (Neff, Kirkpatrick, & Rude, 2007), as well as increased psychological wellbeing and connections with others (Neff et al., 2007; Zessin, Dickhäuser, & Garbade, 2015).

As research emerges suggesting that self-compassion represents an important protective mechanism, increased numbers of psychological interventions are including self-compassion as a key treatment component.

The field of positive psychology “ is founded on the belief that people want to lead meaningful and fulfilling lives, to cultivate what is best within themselves, and to enhance their experiences of love, work, and play ” (International Positive Psychology Association in Donaldson, Dollwet, & Rao, 2014, p. 2).

It is a field that encompasses an array of positive experiences such as contentment, optimism, and happiness which cover past, present and future timepoints; as well as individual (i.e., forgiveness) and group (i.e., civility) level traits (Kashdan, & Ciarrochi, 2013).

Considering positive psychology’s focus on the promotion of positive emotions, traits, and behaviors that ultimately foster positive wellbeing (Donaldson et al., 2014); the study of compassion fits in well with the interests of positive psychologists. The role of compassion in positive psychology is being increasingly supported by science.

In their comprehensive review of empirical studies within the positive psychology field between 1999 and 2013, Donaldson and colleagues (2014) identified 771 articles across 46 countries addressing the aims of positive psychology.

Wellbeing was the most prevalent topic studied. The researchers reported a number of studies indicating that compassion and gratitude were predictors of increased wellbeing (Donaldson et al., 2014).

Additionally, mindfulness was the most frequently researched intervention, and intensive mindfulness training was related to increases in several positive outcomes, including self-compassion. There is little doubt that compassion will continue to maintain its place in positive psychology as a quality meriting continued attention and research.

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There are a growing number of research studies examining the benefits and correlates of compassion.

The following table provides a list of 14 examples:

Increased compassion is related to increased happiness and decreased depressionShapira & Mongrain, 2010

Since Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi (2000) originally set the groundwork for the positive psychology movement 15 years ago, many exciting research studies have emerged within the field. Included within this research is the aim of increasing the understanding of important predictors of prosocial outcomes, such as compassion.

But why compassion? Seppala, Rossomando and James (2013) describe social connection as an underlying drive of human behavior, even at the physiological level. As we are a highly social species, fostering meaningful relationships is an essential aspect of healthy human adjustment.

Establishing such connections requires the ability to express care and concern for other people, as well as to identify with them. This latter concept has been termed ‘perspective taking’ (Kashdan, & Ciarrochi, 2013) and is an area of importance in relationship-building because being able to identify with another person’s feelings is strongly related to empathy.

Compassion and empathy are fundamental aspects of quality relationships as they enable kind and loving behavior. Compassionate behavior such as volunteer work also has been associated with positive outcomes such as increased academic aspirations and self-esteem among adolescents (Kirkpatrick, Johnson, & Beebe, et al., 1998), as well as improved mortality rates among older volunteers (Yum & Lightfoot, 2005).

Not only does showing compassion for others make us feel better about ourselves, but self-compassion also serves an important function for wellbeing. Unfortunately, people often disparage themselves over mistakes for which they would readily forgive others. Yet, when we look beyond our flaws and treat ourselves with forgiveness and understanding, we increase our psychological health and wellbeing.

In fact, self-compassion has been reported as more beneficial than self-esteem because it strongly enhances emotional resilience without also fostering some of the negative correlates that have been associated with self-esteem (i.e., ego-defensiveness; Neff, 2011).

The reported relationships between both compassion and self-compassion with various positive outcomes represent exciting findings for both researchers and psychologists alike.

According to the Dalai Lama:

Each of us in our own way can try to spread compassion into people’s hearts. Western civilizations these days place great importance on filling the human ‘brain’ with knowledge, but no one seems to care about filling the human ‘heart’ with compassion. This is what the real role of religion is.

(Quotegarden.com).

This quote is pertinent to the field of medicine, wherein medical school training places a strong emphasis on the attainment of knowledge— with minimal attention given to the teaching of compassion.

This lack of attention to compassion in the medical field has been reported by patients, with one survey indicating that only 53% of hospitalized patients reported experiencing compassionate care (Lown, Rosen, & Marttila, 2011).

However, for those experiencing serious or traumatic healthcare issues, bedside manner makes a huge difference in terms of the patient’s emotional and physical health. Moreover, it only takes one uncaring medical professional to discourage future trips to the doctor.

Clearly, the value and power of compassion are essential within the medical field. As patients face their pain, anxiety and fear; nurturing of the soul takes on a vital role in both healing and coping.

For example, in a 17-year longitudinal study of HIV patients, researchers found that greater giving of compassionate love and compassionate love towards oneself were predictive of longer survival (Ironson, Kremer, & Lucette, 2018). This finding is a true testament to the power of compassion.

While the value of compassion in healthcare has gained increased attention among researchers, especially in the field of nursing— it remains a neglected focus of training.

In a poignant story recently posted on Facebook (Treasureside.com), the value of compassion in the nursing field is beautifully articulated. This article chronicles a woman who lost her baby during delivery; it’s a raw and gut-wrenching description of her experience. Despite her despair, the mother used social media to convey her experience as a way of honoring the compassion of nurses.

In her ‘thank you’ letter, she expressed her gratitude to her nurses by noting the many loving and compassionate acts they displayed during her trauma. Here are a few of her expressions of appreciation toward the nurses:

• “ Thank you for being my advocate when I couldn’t speak up because I was too busy fighting for my life. ”
• “ Thank you for holding me as I wept at the burden [breast milk] I could not release. Your embrace did nothing to lighten the heaviness in my breasts, but you brought a glimmer of light into my very dark world. ”
• “ Thank you to the nurse in the ICU who came in to clean me up after my daughter died. Thank you for taking the time to help me wash my face and brush my hair. ”
• “ Thank you to the nurse who dressed my baby and took her picture. Thank you for making sure her hat didn’t cover her eyes and that her hands were positioned gracefully. ” (Treasureside.com).

This beautiful letter says everything about the necessity and power of compassion among nurses, who – especially in situations such as this one— often represent the healthcare professionals who nurture patients through their worst nightmares.

The article portrays, not just one or two compassionate nurses; but a full team of caring individuals who seemed to work together in fully embracing a devastated family’s emotional, psychological, and physical needs. These skills go well beyond medical training; they reflect a depth of understanding and sensitivity that is the epitome of kindness, generosity, and love.

Compassion has been described as the “essence of nursing” (Chambers & Ryder 2009), as it requires the ability to perceive the patient’s experience while promoting healing and alleviating suffering. Training healthcare workers in compassion becomes complex because everyone expresses and receives compassion differently.

In their qualitative study of hospital patients in the United Kingdom, Bramley and Matiti (2014) explored patients’ experiences of compassion during their nursing care.

Patients defined nursing compassion in the following ways:

1) Compassion was reported as strongly connected to care, involving encouragement, plenty of time dedicated to patients, and individualized, personal care;

2) Empathy was also considered important and included the desire for nurses to understand how the lack of compassion might feel to a patient; and

3) While the value of compassion did not waver among patients, they disagreed about whether it represents a teachable quality versus an innate trait.

The authors suggest that clinical practice emphasize the importance of nursing compassion by using compassionate care activities (i.e., hearing patient stories, role-playing compassionate behavior, etc.; Bramley and Matiti, 2014). Therapeutic materials based on Mutzel’s therapeutic relationship model have also been designed to teach student nurses how to be more compassionate and empathetic toward patients (Richardson, Percy, & Hughes, 2015).

Of course, there is no reason for compassion within healthcare to be a requirement only for nurses; doctors also have a responsibility to respond to patients in a way that reduces anxiety and promotes wellness and coping— especially for patients dealing with serious illness.

One study found that physicians significantly reduced anxiety among cancer patients by simply providing a 40-second compassion video to patients (Fogarty, Curbow, & Wingard, et al., 1999). Moreover, among patients who viewed this short video, doctors were rated as higher in caring, compassion, and warmth.

If 40-seconds of compassion can make a meaningful difference in reducing patient anxiety, why not ensure that it is consistently applied during patient-doctor conversations?

We are all familiar with the flight video instructing parents to provide oxygen for themselves before their children. This is because we can only help others if we take care of ourselves first; otherwise we have nothing to offer.

Along these lines, the notion of self-compassion is gaining increased attention in healthcare research. Doctors, nurses and other medical professionals may work long hours doing highly stressful work. Self-compassion is an important way for such healthcare professionals to practice self-care and -kindness in order to prevent burnout.

Compassion fatigue (to be subsequently described) and burnout are significant nursing stressors (Neville & Cole, 2013), with research reporting moderate to high levels of burnout among 82% of ER nurses (Hooper, Craig, Janvrin, Wetsel, & Reimels, 2010).

Visualize, for example, a nurse or physician who works a 12-hour shift in a busy emergency room. There are times when he/she may be exhausted with little time to eat; all the while experiencing the stress and sense of personal responsibility that comes with life or death situations.

By emotionally restructuring cognitions in a way that is consistent with self-compassion (i.e., by understanding that some events are beyond one’s control), the medical professional will be better able to cope with highly stressful situations.

Despite the logical justification for increased self-compassion among healthcare workers (including benefits to patients), there isn’t a great deal of research or medical training emphasis on self-compassion.

Consequently, physicians tend to instead value personal qualities such as perfectionism (Mills & Chapman, 2016), which is an important omission. After all, self-compassion predicts reduced anxiety and increased psychological wellbeing (Neff et al., 2007)— qualities that will only serve to enhance the ability of medical personnel to perform quality work.

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Even though self-compassion and compassion toward others are still burgeoning areas of research, many proven benefits have already been identified.

Here are 20:

• Compassion promotes social connection among adults and children. Social connection is important to adaptive human functioning, as it is related to increased self-esteem, empathy, wellbeing; and higher interpersonal orientation (Seppala et al., 2013).
• Compassion is related to increased happiness (Shapira & Mongrain, 2010).
• Compassion is related to higher levels of wellbeing (Zessin et al., 2015).
• Compassionate love is associated with higher patient survival rates, even after adjusting for social support and substance use effects (Ironson et al., 2017).
• Patient-reported clinician empathy and compassion is related to increased patient satisfaction and lower distress (Lelorain, Brédart, Dolbeault, & Sultan, 2012).
• Brief expressions of compassion expressed by doctors are related to decreased patient anxiety (Fogarty, et al., 1999).
• Compassion has a mediating effect on the link between religion and aggression among adolescents. Stated another way, a relationship between religion and aggression was diminished among youths rated higher in compassion and self-control (Shepperd, Miller, Tucker, & Smith, 2015).
• Compassion-focused therapy is reported as a promising therapeutic approach for individuals with affective disorders characterized by high self-criticism (Leaviss & Uttley, 2012).
• Compassion promotes positive parenting by improving parent-child relationships (i.e., more affection and less negative affect; Duncan, Coatsworth, & Greenberg, 2009). Consequently, there are various mindfulness-based parent training approaches and parenting books with a specific focus on compassionate parenting  (i.e., Parenting From Your Heart: Sharing the Gifts of Compassion, Connection, and Choice , Kashtan, 2004; and Raising Children Compassionately: Parenting the Nonviolent Communication Way , Rosenberg, 2004).
• Compassion within classrooms is related to increased cooperation and better learning (Hart & Kindle Hodson, 2004).
• Compassion for teachers as expressed by colleagues is linked to increased teacher job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and sense of emotional vigor (Eldor & Shoshani, 2016).
• Compassion expressed as a function of service work is related to improved health and wellbeing among volunteers (Black & Living, 2004; Yum & Lightfoot, 2005).
• Self-compassion has a number of proven psychological benefits, such as reduced PTSD symptom severity (Thompson & Waltz, 2008), and lower levels of psychopathology in general (MacBeth & Gumley, 2012).
• Self-compassion is linked to more positive aging (Phillips & Ferguson, 2013).
• The combination of self-compassion and optimism is beneficial for depression-vulnerable people (Shapira & Mongrain, 2010).
• Self-compassion during smoking cessation training is associated with reduced smoking among participants with low readiness to change, high self-criticism, and vivid imagery during the treatment program (Kelly, Zuroff, Foa, & Gilbert, 2010).
• Low habitual self-compassion and high self-criticism are related to a higher risk of depression (Ehret, Joorman, & Berking, 2014).
• Self-compassion can be linked to various aspects of general wellbeing, such as happiness, optimism, positive affect, wisdom, personal initiative, curiosity and exploration (Neff et al., 2007).
• Self-compassion reduces burnout and fosters important adaptive qualities among medical professionals (Mills & Chapman, 2016).
• Self-compassion buffers the negative impact of stress (Allen & Leary, 2010).

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Resilience is defined as “the process of, capacity for, or outcome of successful adaptation despite challenging or threatening circumstances” (Masten, Best, & Garmezy, 1990). It is a type of mental armor that protects individuals from the impact of adversity. Along with promoting wellbeing and social connectedness, there is reason to believe that compassion also fosters resilience.

In their review article, Peters and Calvo (2014) describe compassion as the act of being sensitive to the suffering of others. The authors further note that compassion represents a form of affiliation that motivates us to help those in need. It is in this way that “ compassion triggers positive affect in the face of suffering and therefore contributes to resilience and wellbeing ” (Peters and Calvo, 2014, p. 48).

Resilience has also been proposed as important for reducing the likelihood of ‘compassion fatigue’ – which occurs among workers who deal with high trauma patients (i.e., social workers, hospice nurses, oncologists, rape victim counselors, etc.).

Compassion fatigue has also been referred to as secondary stress that occurs when compassion decreases over time for individuals in roles demanding a high level of compassion. As compassion fatigue is a precursor to burnout, it essential to take steps toward avoiding it.

Interestingly, Mother Theresa was proactive when it came to compassion fatigue, as she required her nuns to restore themselves emotionally by taking leave for a full year every 4-5 years.

Others have suggested that occupational resilience that inhibits compassion fatigue is supported by a work environment with sufficient support for self-care, self-protection, professional development, safety measures, personal experiences, and education (Kapoulitsas & Corcoran, 2014).

These findings suggest that, while compassion plays a role in promoting resilience; there is a line at which a constant need for high levels of compassion can produce burnout. Fortunately, supervisors of those with high stress helping occupations have begun to take some necessary steps toward promoting emotional health and resilience among these invaluable workers.

Several research studies have suggested that there are stress-buffering benefits of compassion. For example, one study by Pace, Tenzin Negi and Adame (2009) investigated the impact of compassion meditation— which consists of meditation that goes beyond soothing the mind by also adding a compassion-enhancement component.

More specifically, following a Tibetan Buddhist mind-training approach, the goal of compassion meditation is to challenge unexamined cognitions toward others in order to promote altruistic feelings (Pace et al., 2009).

Study participants attended twice-weekly 50-minute compassion meditation sessions for a total of six weeks, as well as additional sessions that were completed at home. The researchers found that compassion meditation participation was associated with innate immune responses to psychosocial stress (Pace et al., 2009).

A similar study examined mindfulness-based stress reduction training that consisted of sensory awareness exercises, yoga, loving-kindness meditation; as well as education regarding stress symptoms and consequences (Birnie, Speca, & Carlson, 2010). Research findings indicated that self-compassion was related to reduced stress symptoms (Birnie et al., 2010).

Laboratory studies also have reported stress-related benefits of compassion. For example, in an ego-threat experiment, self-compassion was found to protect participants from anxiety (Neff et al., 2007).

And finally, compassion was assessed among participants who completed a high-stress task. Those who were higher in compassion reported a greater degree of liking for supportive evaluators.

Compassion also interacted with social support such that those participants who were higher in compassion and received social support as part of the experiment showed less physiological stress reactivity as measured by blood pressure, HF-HRV, and cortisol reactivity (Cosley, McCoy, Saslow, & Epel, 2010).

The above studies support the notion that individuals who are high in self-compassion or compassion for others respond to stress in a healthier way than those who are lower in such constructs.

With respect to self-compassion, psychologists argue that self-compassionate individuals buffer themselves from stress by using self-kindness and positive cognitive restructuring as a way of coping with stressful situations (Allen, & Leary, 2010). More research is needed examining the link between compassion and stress, but evidence thus far provides promising support for the stress inoculating power of compassion.

The 14th Dalai Lama, known as Gyalwa Rinpoche, once said,

“ We can never obtain peace in the outer world until we make peace with ourselves .”

The inner peace this quote illustrates regards the concept of self-compassion. Self-compassion consists of three distinct constructs (Hollis-Walker & Colosimo, 2011):

• showing ourselves warmth and kindness, rather than harsh self-criticism or judgment;
• accepting that imperfection, failure, and suffering are an unavoidable part of the human condition;
• mindfully paying attention to one’s suffering in the present moment with clarity and balance.

Self-compassionate behavior has been linked to increased optimism, emotional intelligence, coping, and several physical health benefits (Neff, 2003). The 12 self-compassion techniques can be implemented to start or develop your journey to self-compassion.

In his classic song “Imagine,” John Lennon envisioned a world in which people lived peacefully without greed or hunger. He was singing about his dream for a compassionate world.

Philosophers have also shared many thoughts on compassion, such as Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860), who believed that “ Compassion is the basis of all morality ” (thinkexist.com). In a compassion-based society, historical atrocities such as genocide, war, and acts of terrorism would not have happened.

Fortunately, as history is a window to the future, we can learn a great deal from it. History needs to be considered with a compassionate mindset, which includes an understanding of ongoing historical trauma. And with the hypervigilance to notice and act upon current wrongdoings such that they do not escalate, and negative historical events are not repeated.

More poignantly stated in Deuteronomy 4:9, “ Only guard yourself and guard your soul carefully, lest you forget the things your eyes saw, and lest these things depart your heart all the days of your life. And you shall make them known to your children and to your children’s children ” (Deuteronomy 4:9). This is living with compassion both for the past and the present.

Compassion is suggested as an integral component of evolution by serving to protect vulnerable offspring, promote cooperative behavior between non-family members, and encourage adaptive mate selection (Goetz, Keltner, & Simon-Thomas, 2010). Stated another way, compassion has served to enhance the survival of the human species.

Being moved by the suffering of another has always been necessary for the betterment of society and there is a multitude of modern examples where an ounce of compassion makes a world of difference. Unfortunately, research indicates modern society is showing an alarming decline in social connectedness (Seppala et al., 2013), which is a likely byproduct of the reliance on technology versus face-to-face contact.

Another area in society where increased compassion is sorely needed is driving. Road rage represents a worldwide epidemic that is responsible for millions of injuries per year (James, 2000). If compassionate driving was societally reinforced, as well as a key priority of driving schools, drivers would be less likely to berate other drivers.

Rather, they would be more inclined to understand that drivers are simply human beings who make mistakes. After all, a person who is driving too slowly or fails to signal might simply be having a really bad day. Lives would be saved, injuries avoided, and anger both expressed and modeled for children would be reduced if people would practice compassion behind the wheel.

There are numerous other areas where the suffering of others is too often viewed with an eye of judgment, rather than compassion. For example, homelessness and drug use have reached epidemic proportions in some cities, leaving politicians and citizens at a loss for what to do. There are, however, compassionate approaches that DO work.

In Seattle, WA, the Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion (LEAD) project took a novel approach toward chronic drug-users who habitually cycle through the criminal justice system.

The LEAD philosophy is based on research indicating that continued prosecution and jail time for drug addicts fail to deter recidivism. And most importantly, the revolving door in and out of jail leaves individuals dealing with a large sequelae of serious risk factors and problems (i.e., child and/or domestic abuse, poverty, homelessness, mental illness, lack of family support, racial and cultural disparities, medical problems, lack of educational opportunities, etc.) worse off than before.

By taking both a compassionate and research-based approach, the LEAD program offered repeat offending drug users (the majority of whom were also chronically homeless) the opportunity to avoid arrest and jail time by enrolling in a cooperative effort between Seattle police officers and case managers assigned to participants.

Participants received compassion, rather than judgment; as well as the dignity to make their own treatment-related choices. The program was highly individualized and comprehensive, with each participant receiving extensive case management and supportive services specific to their own needs, and for as long as necessary.

Relative to controls, LEAD participants experienced 60% lower odds of arrest and felony charges (Collins, Lonczak, & Clifasefi, 2017), as well as a significantly greater likelihood of obtaining housing, employment and legitimate income at follow-up (Clifasefi, Lonczak, & Collins, 2016). The LEAD program— which has since been replicated in other states and countries, represents a community of compassion that works.

One of the beautiful aspects of the LEAD program is that the police offers became compassionate adversaries for many individuals who had experienced law enforcement in a very different way for much of their lives.

In their essay on “ Mindfulness, Compassion, and the Police in America ,” DeValve and Adkinson (2008) provide an argument for a new paradigm of organizational mindfulness among police.

The authors propose that police officers “ deepen their practices sufficiently to exude compassion” and institute problem-orienting policing as a way to address “economic inequality, mental illness, individual suffering, and substandard education… [while moving away from] their traditional order-maintenance worldview, and re-empower themselves to act in different (e.g., policy) spheres as well as in areas of public safety ” (DeValve & Adkinson, 2008, pgs. 100 & 102).

In line with the notion of community justice, it is proposed that Buddhist philosophy is an instructive model for law enforcement by applying mindful action toward the reduction of suffering. Not only would a compassionate-based way of policing reduce racial tensions between police and the community, but it also would “ predicate a relationship of trust, a reservoir of goodwill, to help salve the wounds of the community ” (DeValve & Adkinson, 2008, pgs. 103).

Compassion clearly holds an invaluable place in many aspects of society, such as among police officers, medical professionals, teachers, and social workers. Role models of compassion among those in power (i.e., politicians), have the capacity to dampen motivation toward hateful acts; while instead bolstering kindness, love, and understanding. Moreover, by recognizing human fallibility while considering the suffering of others with an eye toward compassion, individuals can make a difference in creating a more peaceful society.

Here is a list of frequently asked questions and answers about compassion.

1. Can compassion be learned?

Absolutely. While some of us behave more consistently compassionate than others due to upbringing and various other factors, interventions promoting compassion indicate that compassion is teachable. Moreover, such interventions have found increases in various positive factors such as social connection.

Naturally, teaching compassion should begin with young children in order to foster a trajectory toward empathy, compassion, and kindness at a time when personalities and beliefs are still developing.

2. Do other animal species have compassion?

Yes, compassion is evident among other animal species, such as monkeys, whales, elephants, and so many more. And of course, dogs and cats have been known to show endless amounts of unconditional love and compassion for humans.

3. What can I do to be more compassionate?

• Be altruistic . We can be more compassionate by moving beyond our comfort zones and helping individuals or engaging in service work as a way of helping people, animals, and our communities. Altruistic behaviors also improve the self-esteem and wellbeing of those who offer them.
• Avoid judgment. It is impossible to know the factors that have led a person toward their current predicament; nor how we would fare in the same situation. Considering our own similarities to others in need will help to promote empathy and compassion.
• Practice gratitude . Reflecting on the things in your life that you appreciate will foster a sense of compassion for those less fortunate.
• Consider Buddhism. The objective of Buddhism is to enhance one’s own wisdom, kindness and compassion; and ultimately to achieve unconditional happiness and enlightenment.
• Be kind to yourself. Sometimes we are our own worst enemies. Remember that all human beings are flawed and will make mistakes; ongoing rumination and self-loathing serves no benefit to you or anyone around you. Instead, practice self-forgiveness and coping tools that will help you to move forward in a more positive way.

4. How can I be a more compassionate parent?

Compassionate parenting is an essential component of positive parenting. Positive parents show compassion by:

• Avoiding labeling children (i.e., “the smart one,” “the athlete,” “the naughty one,” etc.), as doing so is hurtful and promotes both sibling rivalry and self-fulfilling prophecies.
• Be sensitive to your child’s developmental stage.
• Practice regular, open communication.
• Provide affection and emotional warmth.
• Empathize with your child’s feelings.
• Empower autonomy in order to support creativity, empowerment, and self-determination.
• Teach respect for other living creatures by teaching him/her how to care for and show kindness to animals.
• Practice positive discipline, which is warm and democratic, and never violent.
• Guide and teach your child by role modeling kind and compassionate behavior.
• Show optimism and help your child to believe in him/herself and the future.
• Provide unconditional love.

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Readers interested in finding academic articles focused on compassion might check-out the following psychological journals:

• Current Directions in Psychological Science
• Human Architecture : Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowledge
• Human Development
• International Journal of Human Caring
• Cognition and Emotion
• Journal of Happiness Studies
• Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
• The Journal of Positive Psychology
• Journal of Research in Personality
• Journal of Traumatic Stress
• Mindfulness
• Motivation and Emotion

Along with psychology journals, medical (especially nursing) and social work journals are also excellent resources for learning about compassion.

Here are 10 examples:

• Ethics and Social Welfare
• The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine
• Journal of Clinical Nursing
• Journal of Emergency Nursing
• Nursing Inquiry
• Palliative Medicine
• Qualitative Social Work
• Self and Identity
• Social Work
• Stress and Health

The biggest take-home message of this article is that compassion matters. There are numerous proven benefits of both self-compassion and compassion toward others, such as increased happiness, improved medical outcomes, reduced stress, reduced psychopathology, and increased social connectedness.

Compassion plays a vital role in the medical field, as well as those where workers consistently aid the suffering. Among patients, compassion has the power to increase coping and healing; and self-compassion is highly beneficial to healthcare workers. In high compassion-demanding occupations, it is essential that workers be supported such that the likelihood of compassion fatigue (e.g., burn-out) is reduced.

While some people are more compassionate than others, it is a quality that can be learned as evidenced by research interventions that have shown significant increases in compassion and related qualities.

Compassion is an essential element in society and is vital to the survival of the human race. Individuals and groups with power (i.e., police, policymakers, politicians, etc.) have an opportunity to contribute to more healthy, peaceful communities by practicing and promoting compassion. Serious societal problems (i.e., homelessness and recidivism) have been significantly reduced following compassionate, research-based interventions.

There are many ways in which individuals can practice compassion such as by being altruistic, avoiding judgment, being grateful, and by applying positive parenting techniques.

By remembering history— including where compassion was both lacking and in abundance— human beings will be more empowered to make compassionate and meaningful life choices. This is the first step toward creating the loving and peaceful society imagined by so many of us.

We hope you enjoyed reading this article. Don’t forget to download our three Self Compassion Exercises for free .

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What our readers think.

You know articles like this are a dime a dozen and always state the obvious and can actually work with relatively normal people. Compassion can be a good thing and everyone knows it. But sometimes compassion is not a good thing and can even make things worse. For example, one may give a gift out of compassion to someone may misread the intent. And, sometimes when you show compassion by helping someone, and not especially expecting a thank you, it can hurt if the help goes unrecognized. If it happens once its not too bad and you can get over it. But, if the situation continues to happen, it can make you not want to share anymore with some people.

Steve, these are great challenging reflections. Such articles can feel trite, but it’s when we really sit and examine compassion in our inner life and in our relationships, and how it works, that they become meaningful. Your described situations in which compassion leads to ‘bad’ outcomes maybe are situations where people’s expectations are unrealistic that they know best what will be helpful to others or that they are able to control others’ response. Compassion is not the problem in these situations. The trouble is a lack of discernment about what will actually be of help to the other person. Truthfully, we can never know for sure how to help, but it doesn’t mean that compassion is any less valuable as a motivation. In fact, the not knowing may make compassion all the more important. If compassion is strong, we are more likely to keep trying to figure out how to be of help, even when we fail or have our efforts ignored. Maybe we even see that we have helped, and that feels good even though our efforts are ignored by others. That we we are rewarded intrinsically, even if no one notices from the outside. Maybe we realize that the part of us that wants to be thanked is actually self-centered, so we really were not acting entirely out of compassion after all? The intrinsic desire to help is what compassion is referring to, and it need not be impacted by whether or not we are acknowledged for helping or whether we are able to help. The desire is there, and it can be cultivated and sustained, and it can be extended to be more inclusive. over time. This great article explains why this is beneficial to ourselves, not just others! To learn more about compassion experientially, perhaps see The Compassion Shift at Emory University, a training program to make sense of these things on a practical, on-the-ground level.

An exceptionally good article addressing the most urgent need of society today. Compassion to others and self will enable practitioners (anyone including parents) to view their roles and life in a balance way. Compassion to others and self are equally important for the ministers of religions and their team/associates. I personally found this article very useful because I am a parent and I work with people who have autism and severe learning disabilities.

compassion is a valuable human quality for all ( most of all those in the helping professions) As an executive coach and church counselor I am often perplexed as to the dividing line between identifying with the client and /or keeping a professional distance; such that the client has the ownership of the issue and YOU the coach/counselor is the objective observer or solution provider.

Thank you so much for your article on compassion, highlighting it’s importance in today’s COVID-19 context and how sick the world would be without compassionate people around. It is due to lack of compassion that so much of stigma is created around COVID 19. Very true. Compassion promotes personal as well as Society’s well being. Thank you again.

Hi Sr. Mary, Thank you for your kind words. Indeed, the world would do well if we all worked hard to show one another that little bit more compassion in the wake of this crisis. I hope you are keeping safe and well. – Nicole | Community Manager

Your writing on compassion is spot on. Thank you for doing this article. I am sharing it with Compassionate Pomona and Compassionate California so that others can benefit from your research. You are right that what the world needs now is compassion in action everywhere.

Hi Diana, Couldn’t agree more. We’re glad to hear that this post resonated with you, and thank you for sharing it. – Nicole | Community Manager

Is this peer reviwed journal

Its informative article thanks.

Thanks, Heather, for this great overview. Some people fear that self-compassion leads to being too lazy. While being hard on oneself is certainly no good recipe for well-being, it has worked for many to be successful. Or so it seems. Do you know of any scientific research shedding light on this issue?

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Kindness and Compassion for Students

What are they.

Compassion is defined as the feeling that arises when you perceive another’s suffering and feel motivated to relieve that suffering.

Compassion can arise from empathy —the more general ability to understand and feel others’ emotions—but goes further by also including the desire to help. Of course, we can feel compassion without acting on it, and not all helpful acts are motivated by compassion.

When compassion does lead to action, we often call the result kindness. Kindness always includes the intention to benefit other people, especially (though not always) at a cost or risk to ourselves.

Research has shown that compassion and kindness are deeply rooted in human nature–our first impulse is to cooperate rather than compete. Even toddlers spontaneously help people in need out of genuine concern for their welfare. This innate kindness, however, often gets lost in a society built on competition. Schools have a golden opportunity to cultivate the compassionate side of students by creating a school culture in which kindness is valued and practiced.

• A science teacher sets up his classroom to cultivate students’ innate kindness and cooperation, rather than their selfish and competitive natures. He takes the time at the start of the school year to get to know students and for students to get to know each other by doing some fun icebreakers from Playworks, like Crooked Circle .
• To create an inclusive and connected classroom climate, students sit in a large circle for discussions and in small groups during regular instruction.
• Everyone is encouraged to practice self-care, taking short breaks when they need to in the “Chillax Corner”, and to take care of each other—noticing when a fellow student might be having a hard time and connecting with him or her.
• The curriculum is taught with a “prosocial” lens, taking into consideration how the scientific content might be used to benefit students’ communities and society in general.

Children’s understanding of kindness and compassion change as they mature. For example, their ability to be compassionate grows as they develop their perspective-taking ability and emotion regulation. Elementary age students and younger may view kindness mainly in concrete ways, such as in terms of the consequences of actions; whereas, older children and teens can appreciate the intentions behind the actions, allowing them to better navigate complex situations.

• A first grader might say kindness is asking someone to play, taking turns, or helping someone who is hurt.
• A high schooler gives his friend a hard time for choosing to go to the movies rather than study for an important test. At first, his friend is upset, but then realizes that the admonishment was made in his best interest.

Why Are They Important?

Research has found that practicing compassion and kindness can improve health, well-being, and relationships, as well as academic achievement. Of course, beyond our own lives, these qualities strengthen our communities and may even be vital to the survival of our species as a whole.

Kindness and compassion make us happier.

• Compassion training programs, even very brief ones, strengthen reward circuits in the brain and lead to lasting increases in self-reported happiness.
• Compassion training also enables us be more altruistic , and kindness does seem to be its own reward —giving to others activates those pleasure circuits and actually makes people, including kids , happier than spending money on themselves.

Compassion makes us more resilient.

• Feeling compassion helps us to overcome empathic distress —or the feeling for others that makes us so upset that we want to run away rather than help. We are better able to handle the strong emotions that occur when faced with others’ suffering.

Kindness and compassion are good for our health.

• Feeling compassionate can reduce the risk of heart disease by helping slow the heart rate , and compassion training has been shown to reduce stress hormones and boost the immune system.
• Acts of kindness such as donating money help lower blood pressure .
• People who volunteer are healthier overall, and teens who volunteer to help younger kids show reduced risk factors for cardiovascular disease.

Kindness and compassion improve our relationships.

• Compassion is associated with more satisfaction and growth in friendships and makes us less vindictive towards others.
• Compassionate behavior is highly valued in romantic relationships: In surveys of over 10,000 people across 37 cultures, kindness was rated the most important quality in a mate, and the only one universally required.
• Altruism promotes social connections in general and creates ripple effects of generosity in communities.

Kindness and compassion benefit education.

• Preschoolers and elementary schoolers prompted to perform acts of kindness show increased well-being and social competence; in turn, prosocial (kind and helpful) peer interactions increase middle schoolers’ positive emotions and life satisfaction.
• Prosocial behavior in elementary school predicts higher academic achievement in middle school, and it predicts academic achievement in high school.
• High-quality service learning programs, which put compassion into action by combining classroom learning with real-world community service, have been shown to improve academic performance, student attitudes and behavior, and school climate.
• When high schoolers see their school as a kind place, they are more interested and motivated to learn .

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The impact of helping others – a deep dive into the benefits of providing support to those in need.

Compassion is a virtue that ignites the flames of kindness and empathy in our hearts. It is an innate human quality that has the power to bring light into the lives of those in need. When we extend a helping hand to others, we not only uplift their spirits but also nourish our own souls. The act of kindness and compassion resonates in the depths of our being, reminding us of the interconnectedness and shared humanity we all possess.

In a world that can sometimes be filled with hardships and struggles, the power of compassion shines like a beacon of hope. It is through offering a listening ear, a comforting embrace, or a simple gesture of kindness that we can make a profound impact on someone else’s life. The ripple effect of compassion is endless, as the seeds of love and understanding we sow in others’ hearts continue to grow and flourish, spreading positivity and light wherever they go.

The Significance of Compassionate Acts

Compassionate acts have a profound impact on both the giver and the receiver. When we extend a helping hand to others in need, we not only alleviate their suffering but also experience a sense of fulfillment and purpose. Compassion fosters a sense of connection and empathy, strengthening our bonds with others and creating a more caring and supportive community.

Moreover, compassionate acts have a ripple effect, inspiring others to pay it forward and perpetuate kindness. One small act of compassion can set off a chain reaction of positive deeds, influencing the world in ways we may never fully realize. By showing compassion to others, we contribute to a more compassionate and understanding society, one that values empathy and kindness above all else.

Understanding the Impact

Helping others can have a profound impact not only on those receiving assistance but also on the individuals providing help. When we lend a hand to someone in need, we are not just offering material support; we are also showing compassion and empathy . This act of kindness can strengthen bonds between individuals and foster a sense of community .

Furthermore, helping others can boost our own well-being . Studies have shown that acts of kindness and generosity can reduce stress , improve mood , and enhance overall happiness . By giving back , we not only make a positive impact on the lives of others but also nourish our own souls .

Benefits of Helping Others

There are numerous benefits to helping others, both for the recipient and for the giver. Here are some of the key advantages:

• Increased feelings of happiness and fulfilment
• Improved mental health and well-being
• Building stronger connections and relationships with others
• Reduced stress levels and improved self-esteem
• Promoting a sense of purpose and meaning in life
• Contributing to a more compassionate and caring society

By helping others, we not only make a positive impact on the world around us but also experience personal growth and benefits that can enhance our overall happiness and well-being.

Empathy and Connection

Empathy plays a crucial role in our ability to connect with others and understand their experiences. When we practice empathy, we put ourselves in someone else’s shoes and try to see the world from their perspective. This act of compassion allows us to build a connection based on understanding and mutual respect.

By cultivating empathy, we can bridge the gap between different individuals and communities, fostering a sense of unity and solidarity. Empathy helps us recognize the humanity in others, regardless of their background or circumstances, and promotes a culture of kindness and inclusivity.

Through empathy, we not only show compassion towards those in need but also create a supportive environment where everyone feels valued and understood. It is through empathy that we can truly make a difference in the lives of others and build a more compassionate society.

Spreading Positivity Through Kindness

One of the most powerful ways to help others is by spreading positivity through acts of kindness. Kindness has the remarkable ability to brighten someone’s day, lift their spirits, and create a ripple effect of happiness in the world.

Simple gestures like giving a compliment, lending a helping hand, or sharing a smile can make a significant impact on someone’s life. These acts of kindness not only benefit the recipient but also bring a sense of fulfillment and joy to the giver.

When we choose to spread positivity through kindness, we contribute to building a more compassionate and caring society. By showing empathy and understanding towards others, we create a supportive environment where people feel valued and respected.

Kindness is contagious and has the power to inspire others to pay it forward, creating a chain reaction of goodwill and compassion. By incorporating acts of kindness into our daily lives, we can make a positive difference and help create a better world for all.

Creating a Ripple Effect

When we extend a helping hand to others, we set off a chain reaction that can have a profound impact on the world around us. Just like a stone thrown into a calm pond creates ripples that spread outward, our acts of compassion can touch the lives of many, inspiring them to do the same.

By showing kindness and empathy, we not only make a difference in the lives of those we help but also create a ripple effect that can lead to positive change in our communities and beyond. A small gesture of kindness can ignite a spark of hope in someone’s heart, motivating them to pay it forward and spread compassion to others.

Each act of generosity and care has the power to create a ripple effect that can ripple outwards, reaching far beyond our immediate circles. As more and more people join in this chain of kindness, the impact multiplies, creating a wave of positivity that can transform the world one small act of kindness at a time.

Building a Stronger Community

One of the key benefits of helping others is the positive impact it can have on building a stronger community. When individuals come together to support one another, whether it’s through acts of kindness, volunteering, or simply being there for someone in need, it fosters a sense of unity and connection. This sense of community helps to create a supportive and caring environment where people feel valued and respected.

By helping others, we also set an example for those around us, inspiring others to also lend a hand and contribute to the well-being of the community. This ripple effect can lead to a chain reaction of kindness and generosity that can ultimately make the community a better place for everyone.

Furthermore, when people feel supported and cared for by their community, they are more likely to be happier and healthier, both mentally and physically. This sense of belonging and connection can help to reduce feelings of isolation and loneliness, and can improve overall well-being.

In conclusion, building a stronger community through helping others is essential for creating a more positive and caring society. By coming together and supporting one another, we can create a community that is resilient, compassionate, and unified.

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Greater Good Science Center • Magazine • In Action • In Education

Compassionate Mind, Healthy Body

Decades of clinical research has explored the psychology of human suffering. Yet that suffering, as unpleasant as it is, often has a bright side: compassion.

Human suffering often inspires beautiful acts of compassion by people wishing to help relieve that suffering. What led 26.5 percent of Americans to volunteer in 2012 (according to statistics from the US Department of Labor)? What propels someone to serve food at a homeless shelter, pull over on the highway in the rain to help someone with a broken down vehicle, or feed a stray cat?

Traditionally, research has paid less attention to these questions than to the roots of pain, evil, and pathology. But over the past decade, this has started to change dramatically.

Nearly 10 years ago, in his Greater Good article “The Compassionate Instinct,” Greater Good Science Center co-founder Dacher Keltner summarized the emerging findings from this new science of human goodness, proposing that compassion is “an evolved part of human nature, rooted in our brain and biology.” Research since then—from neuroscience, evolutionary psychology, behavioral health, developmental science, and other disciplines—has backed him up convincingly. Again and again, studies have suggested that compassion is indeed an evolved part of human nature, vital to good health and even to the survival of our species. What was a relative handful of intriguing studies has become a scientific movement that is transforming our views of humanity.

What is compassion?

What is compassion and how is it different from empathy or altruism ?

The definition of compassion is often confused with that of empathy. Empathy, as defined by researchers, is the visceral or emotional experience of another person’s feelings. It is, in a sense, an automatic mirroring of another’s emotion, like tearing up at a friend’s sadness. Altruism is an action that benefits someone else. It may or may not be accompanied by empathy or compassion, for example in the case of making a donation for tax purposes. Although these terms are related to compassion, they are not identical. Compassion often does, of course, involve an empathic response and an altruistic behavior. However, compassion is defined as the emotional response when perceiving suffering and involves an authentic desire to help alleviate that suffering.

Is compassion natural or learned?

Though economists have long argued the contrary, a growing body of evidence suggests that, at our core, both animals and human beings have that “compassionate instinct.” In other words, compassion is a natural and automatic response that has ensured our survival.

Research by Jean Decety, a neuroscientist at the University of Chicago, suggests that even rats are driven to empathize with another suffering rat and to go out of their way to help it out of its quandary. Studies with chimpanzees and human infants too young to have learned the rules of politeness also back up these claims: Michael Tomasello and other scientists at the Max Planck Institute, in Germany, have found that infants and chimpanzees spontaneously engage in helpful behavior and will even overcome obstacles to do so. They apparently do so from intrinsic motivation without expectation of reward.

Similarly, a recent study they ran found that infants’ pupils would increase in size when they saw someone in need—a sign of concern—but their pupils would shrink when they could help that person— or when they saw someone else help, suggesting that they felt better not simply because they got the feelings of reward or credit that come from helping. Instead, they seemed to care primarily that the person’s suffering was alleviated, whether or not they were the ones alleviating that suffering themselves.

What’s more, recent research by David Rand at Harvard University shows that adults’ and children’s first impulse is to help others , not compete with them. And research by Dale Miller at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business backs this up; however, Miller has also found that people will curb their impulse to help when they worry that others will think they are acting out of self-interest.

It is not surprising that compassion is a natural tendency, since it is essential for human survival. As has been brought to light by Keltner , the term “survival of the fittest,” often attributed to Charles Darwin, was actually coined by Herbert Spencer and Social Darwinists who wished to justify class and race superiority. Indeed, in The Descent of Man and Selection In Relation to Sex , Darwin makes a case for “the greater strength of the social or maternal instincts than that of any other instinct or motive.” In another passage, he argues that “communities which included the greatest number of the most sympathetic members would flourish best, and rear the greatest number of offspring.” Compassion may indeed be a naturally evolved and adaptive trait. Without it, the survival and flourishing of our species would have been unlikely.

One more sign that suggests that compassion is an adaptively evolved trait is that it makes us more attractive to potential mates. A study examining the trait most highly valued in potential romantic partners suggests that both men and women agree that “kindness” is one of the most highly desirable traits .

Compassion’s health benefits

Why is compassion so important to our survival? Part of the answer may lie in its tremendous benefits for both physical and mental health and our overall well-being.

Research by Ed Diener and Martin Seligman, leading researchers in positive psychology, suggests that connecting with others in a meaningful way helps us enjoy better mental and physical health and speeds up recovery from disease; furthermore, research by Stephanie Brown, at Stony Brook University, and Sara Konrath, at the University of Michigan, has shown that it may even lengthen our lifespan .

The reason a compassionate lifestyle leads to greater psychological well-being may be that the act of giving appears to be as pleasurable as the act of receiving , if not more so. A brain-imaging study led by neuroscientists at the National Institutes of Health showed that the “pleasure centers” in the brain—i.e., the parts of the brain that are active when we experience pleasure (like dessert, money, and sex)—are equally active when we observe someone giving money to charity as when we receive money ourselves!

Giving to others even increases well-being above and beyond what we experience when we spend money on ourselves. In a revealing experiment by Elizabeth Dunn , a professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia, participants received a sum of money; half of them were instructed to spend the money on themselves, the other half to spend the money on others. At the end of the study, which was published in the academic journal Science , participants who had spent money on others felt significantly happier than those who had spent money on themselves.

This is true even for infants. A study by Lara Aknin and colleagues at the University of British Columbia shows that even in children as young as two, giving treats to others increases the givers’ happiness more than receiving treats themselves (see video below for a demonstration of their experiment).

Perhaps even more surprisingly, the fact that giving makes us happier than receiving is true across the world, regardless of whether countries are rich or poor. A new study led by Aknin , now at Simon Fraser University, shows that, across 136 countries, the amount of money people spend on others (rather than for personal benefit) is highly correlated with personal well-being , regardless of their levels of income, social support, perceived freedom, and perceived national corruption.

Why is compassion good for us?

Why might compassion bring these health benefits? A clue to the answer can be found in fascinating new research by UCLA medical researcher Steve Cole and Barbara Fredrickson at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

Cole and Fredrickson evaluated the levels of cellular inflammation in people who describe themselves as “very happy.” Inflammation is at the root of cancer and other diseases and is generally high in people who live under a lot of stress. We might expect that inflammation would be lower for people with higher levels of happiness. Cole and Fredrickson found that this was only the case for certain “very happy” people. They found that people who were happy because they lived a life of pleasure (sometimes also know as “hedonic happiness”) had high inflammation levels; on the other hand, people who were happy because they lived a life of purpose or meaning (sometimes also known as “eudaimonic happiness”) had low inflammation levels. A life of meaning and purpose is one focused less on satisfying oneself and more on others. It is a life rich in compassion and altruism.

Research also suggests that a compassionate lifestyle may improve longevity, which may be because it provides a buffer against stress . A recent study conducted on a large population (more than 800 people) and led by the University at Buffalo’s Michael Poulin found that stress was linked to a higher chance of dying—but not among those who helped others .

More on Compassion

Read our overview of compassion: what it is , why it's worth practicing , and how to cultivate it .

Watch Dacher Keltner's talk on the evolutionary roots of compassion (GGSC members-only video).

One of the reasons that compassion may protect against stress is that it is so pleasurable. Motivation, however, seems to play an important role in predicting whether a compassionate lifestyle actually benefits our health. As mentioned earlier, Sara Konrath of the University of Michigan discovered that people who engaged in volunteerism lived longer than their non-volunteering peers—but only if their reasons for volunteering were altruistic rather than self-serving.

Another reason compassion may boost our well-being is that it can help broaden our perspective beyond ourselves. Research shows that depression and anxiety are linked to a state of self-focus , a preoccupation with “me, myself, and I.” When you do something for someone else, however, that state of self-focus shifts to a state of other-focus. If you’re feeling down and suddenly a close friend or relative calls you for urgent help with a problem, your mood is likely to lift as your attention shifts to helping them. Rather than feeling blue, you may feel energized to help; before you know it, you may even have gained some perspective on your own situation as well.

Finally, one additional way in which compassion may boost our well-being is by increasing our sense of connection to others. One telling study showed that lack of social connection is a greater detriment to health than obesity, smoking, and high blood pressure. On the flip side, strong social connection leads to a 50 percent increased chance of longevity. Social connection strengthens our immune system (research by Cole shows that genes impacted by social connection are also involved in immune function and inflammation), helps us recover from disease faster, and may even lengthen our life.

People who feel more connected to others have lower rates of anxiety and depression ; studies show that they also have higher self-esteem, are more empathic to others, are more trusting and cooperative and, as a consequence, others are more open to trusting and cooperating with them.

Social connectedness therefore generates a positive feedback loop of social, emotional, and physical well-being. Unfortunately, the opposite is true for those who lack social connectedness: They not only experience declines in physical and psychological health but a higher propensity for antisocial behavior—which leads to further isolation.

Why compassion really can change the world

Why are the lives of people like Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Desmond Tutu so inspiring? Have you ever been moved to tears by seeing someone’s loving and compassionate behavior?

Research by Jonathan Haidt, a professor of psychology at NYU, suggests that seeing someone help another person creates a state of “ elevation ,” that warm, uplifting feeling we get in the presence of awe-inspiring goodness. Haidt’s data suggest that elevation then inspires us to help others—and it may just be the force behind a chain reaction of giving. Haidt and colleagues have shown that corporate leaders who engage in self-sacrificing behavior and induce “elevation” in their employees also yield greater influence among their employees—who, in turn, become more committed and may act with more compassion in the workplace.

Indeed, compassion is contagious. Social scientists James Fowler of the University of California, San Diego, and Nicholas Christakis of Harvard have demonstrated that acts of generosity and kindness beget more generosity in a chain reaction of goodness . You may have seen a news report about one of the chain reactions that has occurred when someone pays for the diners who come after them at a restaurant or the drivers behind them at a highway tollbooth. People keep the generous behavior going for hours. Our acts of compassion uplift others and make them happy. We may not know it, but by uplifting others we are also helping ourselves: Research by Fowler and Christakis has shown that happiness spreads —if the people around us are happy, we become happier in turn.

Cultivating compassion

Although compassion appears to be a naturally evolved instinct, it sometimes helps to receive some training. A number of studies have now shown that a variety of compassion and “loving-kindness” meditation practices, mostly derived out of traditional Buddhist practices, may help cultivate compassion.

Cultivating compassion does not require years of study and can be elicited quite rapidly. In a study I conducted in 2008 with Cendri Hutcherson of the California Institute of Technology and James Gross of Stanford, we found that a seven-minute meditation was enough to increase participants’ feelings of closeness and connection to the target of their meditation, even on measures of compassion that the participants could not voluntarily control. This suggests that their sense of connection had changed on a deep level.

Similarly, when Barbara Fredrickson tested a nine-week loving-kindness meditation intervention, she found that the participants who went through the intervention experienced increased daily positive emotions , reduced depressive symptoms, and greater life satisfaction. A study led by Sheethal Reddy at Emory University showed that a compassion training for foster children increased hopefulness in the children. Overall, research on compassion trainings show that these trainigs don’t only boost compassion; they also improve overall psychological well-being and social connection.

Researchers are also finding that compassion trainings impact behavior. Using the “ Zurich Prosocial Game ” that they developed to measure kind, helpful behavior, Tania Singer and her team at the Max Planck Institute have found that a day-long compassion training does, in fact, boost prosocial behavior.

Interestingly, the type of meditation seems to matter less than just the act of meditation itself. A study led by Paul Condon of Northeastern University found that an eight-week meditation training made participants act more compassionately toward a person who was suffering, regardless of whether they were trained in mindfulness meditation or a compassion meditation.

More research is needed to understand exactly how compassion training improves well-being and promotes altruistic behavior. Research by Antoine Lutz and Richard Davidson at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, has found that, during meditation, participants’ brains show enhanced activity in regions linked to empathy when they hear emotion-evoking cries. A study led by Gaëlle Desbordes at Massachusetts General Hospital found that, in response to emotional images, both a compassion training and a mindfulness meditation training decreased activity in the brain’s amygdala , which reacts when we detect a threat, suggesting that meditation in general can help us better regulate our emotions. However, the compassion meditation did not reduce amygdala activity when confronted with images of human suffering, suggesting that the compassion meditation increased a person’s responsiveness to suffering.

In collaboration with Thupten Jinpa, the Dalai Lama’s personal translator, as well as several Stanford psychologists, the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education (CCARE), of which I am associate director, has developed a secular compassion training program known as the Compassion Cultivation Training (CCT). Preliminary research spearheaded by Stanford’s Philippe Goldin suggests that CCT is helpful in reducing ailments such as social anxiety, and that it elevates different measures of compassion. In addition to having taught hundreds of community members and Stanford students who have expressed interest, we have also developed a teacher-training program currently underway.

Given the importance of compassion in our world today, and a growing body of evidence about the benefits of compassion for health and well-being, this field is bound to generate more interest and hopefully impact our community at large. Thanks to rigorous research on the benefits of compassion, we are moving toward a world in which the practice of compassion is understood to be as important for health as physical exercise and a healthful diet, empirically validated techniques for cultivating compassion are widely accessible, and the practice of compassion is taught and applied in schools, hospitals, prisons, the military, and beyond.

About the Author

Emma Seppala

Emma Seppälä, Ph.D. , is science director of Stanford University’s Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education and the author of The Happiness Track (HarperOne, 2016).

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The Science of Compassion What we know—and don’t know—about compassion has bold implications for how we respond to the needs of our time. By Jennifer Mascaro

Many factors make compassion difficult to assess. A scientist studies a range of data, and multiple perspectives, to better understand and measure compassion. We invite readers to explore your own interpretation. Artist: Sirin Thada

Who am I to study compassion? I am a compassion scientist, which feels a little like choosing to ingest a tiny bit of poison and its antidote every workday. When I stare at a blank page to write about the science of compassion, I feel paralyzed by the presumptuousness of the endeavor and the reminder that I am a compassion researcher who struggles with compassion.

After four decades of a life full of failures of compassion—from near misses rooted in good intentions but lacking in wisdom and skillfulness to behavior that was outright antithetical to compassion—how dare I write with any expertise? This daily reminder of my compassion failures is a tiny taste of venom that feels embarrassing and humbling. But therein also lies a partial antidote, for compassion science also provides the evidence-based wisdom for improvement. These failures of compassion motivate my career as a compassion scientist; they also make me an apt scholar.

Although the scientific study of compassion was relatively new when I entered graduate school in 2005, it has received increasing attention and rigor from many corners of the research world. And with good reason: there is growing evidence that compassion is the bedrock to addressing many of the critical problems of our time. For example, both receiving and giving compassion are core ingredients for emotional well-being among children and adolescents, 1 and appear to lay the foundation for health and psychological well-being beyond. 2 Compassionate approaches to medicine and public health influence vaccine hesitancy, 3 reduce health disparities, 4 improve patient-provider trust and patient adherence, 5 reduce provider burnout, 6 and are a key component to addressing chronic pain and addiction. 7 Compassionate structures, organizations, and communities will be required to bolster resilience in the face of ongoing crises such as climate change 8 and the aftermath of pandemics. 9 As carbon is the essential framework for life on earth, compassion is the emotional framework for addressing life’s suffering.

What is compassion?

In any research endeavor, one must always begin with a careful definition of the object of empirical interest. However, in the scientific record, we see that definitions of compassion have been inconsistent across time and research fields. More challenging, compassion has often been conflated with very similar terms such as empathy, empathic care, sympathy, and altruism. Stephen Trzeciak and Anthony Mazzarelli, the authors of Compassionomics, describe their attempt to aggregate and synthesize research on compassion as a “Sherlock Holmes” approach that often involved ignoring terms altogether since one researcher’s empathy is another’s compassion. Here is the definition I use 10 as a compassion scientist. Compassion involves: 1) an awareness of another’s suffering, 2) a benevolent emotional response to this suffering, and 3) a desire or motivation to help relieve that suffering.

Compassion involves: 1) an awareness of another’s suffering, 2) a benevolent emotional response to this suffering, and 3) a desire or motivation to help relieve that suffering.

Defined this way, compassion appears to be baked into us by selective pressures that have arisen throughout evolutionary history. The first evolutionary pressures arrived with the mammalian order when the survival of vulnerable offspring depended on whether their mother was motivated and capable of care, something biologists refer to with a delightful phrase: “the appetitive drive to nurture”. 11 And so, brain and body systems were shaped by evolution to support and promote caring for distressed offspring, for example, retrieving, sheltering, and feeding a crying infant. This evolutionary seed of maternal compassion was then honed by other evolutionary pressures that arose during human evolution, such as our cooperative child-rearing strategy 12 that relies on allomaternal (“other” than mother) caregiving, and our complex and long-lasting social groups in which group members survive and thrive on reciprocal altruism (costly behavior that benefits non-related others).

However, evolution also baked in another feature: subjectivity. Our propensity to experience compassion is influenced by a multitude of factors, such as our context, our experiences (both recent and life history), our physiological and psychological state, and interpersonal factors that shape whether we think someone is worthy of our compassion. With this more complex, multifaceted, and subjective nature of compassion, scholars have begun to identify other relevant dimensions beyond our simple definition above. For example, Roshi Joan Halifax 13 has described important non-compassion qualities and skills that must be present for compassion to arise, such as executive or attentional control, equanimity, interoceptive awareness, ethical intent, insight, emotion regulation, and distress tolerance. Others point to factors such as a sense of common humanity that makes another’s suffering relevant and overcomes the numbing (or outright contempt) that occurs if we think of others as not me or mine. Scholars such as Paul Gilbert 14 point to the importance of factors that help us overcome compassion’s many and potent inhibitors. His work emphasizes both the strength of our self-interest and the costliness of compassion, especially when it is effortful, risky, or socially fraught. This theoretical approach highlights crucial psychological resources for overcoming fears and inhibitors of compassion, such as self-efficacy, confidence, and optimism that one can reduce the suffering they encounter.

It is the multidimensional and context-bound nature of compassion that I find so scientifically enticing. It also has what scientists call face validity—it just feels right to me. The times when my compassion has not failed, when instead I was jolted from my hard-wired me-centered orientation into an orientation that prioritized another’s emotional and cognitive point of view, and was able to improve their stead, those times feel like an emergent and gestalt event. They feel “under the skin” and below the level of consciousness and almost as though from a muse. They also feel emotionally complex—deeply sad, scary, and at the same time intensely rewarding and joyful. Research on the experience of compassion 15 aligns with my personal experience, and several studies highlight that compassion is often tinged with both positive and negative emotions, 16 making it distinct from near cousins such as empathy or kindness.

Understanding and Measuring Compassion

The curious scientist wonders what happens in the brain and body during such an emergent and complex interpersonal event, how the social ecosystem shaped it, and how history and experience potentiated or primed it to arise. There is also a real-world reason that studying the multidimensional, dynamic, and context-dependent nature of compassion is scientifically important. Understanding such a complex interpersonal event can help us understand how compassion may be cultivated. Given the importance of compassion in so many domains, we need to be able to measure it. However, many factors make compassion tricky to assess.

Given the importance of compassion in so many domains, we need to be able to measure it. However, many factors make compassion tricky to assess.

Ideally, research designs measure the insides and outsides of compassion, linking the affective, cognitive, and motivational components of compassion (the insides) with compassionate behavior (the outsides). Additionally, methods would ideally assess compassion from multiple perspectives to mitigate the thorny problem of biases (e.g., social desirability bias) and errors (e.g., misremembering past emotions and behaviors, or errors in predicting how we will feel about future events). Assessing compassion from multiple perspectives also has the potential to reveal essential mismatches between perspectives. However, measuring all facets of compassion from multiple perspectives can be close to impossible.

Understandably, research methods in compassion science are often shaped most by expedience and pragmatism, and the most common method for assessing compassion is using self-report measures. Shane Sinclair has conducted ground-breaking research 17 using both quantitative and qualitative self-report to describe and assess physician compassion from the patient’s perspective. 18 In our work studying compassion in healthcare, we have used self-report measures to identify the blocks and inhibitors to compassion, such as having a hectic and chaotic atmosphere or experiencing incivility from patients, which lead to burnout and compassion fatigue. 19

Other methods have been used to characterize and quantify physiological states associated with compassion. Neuroimaging and psychophysiological measurements have been vital methodological tools, as they can reveal subtleties of which many of us are not conscious. For example, neuroimaging studies have been used to investigate differences 20 between compassion and its close cousin, empathy. Other research paradigms have used heart rate variability measures to characterize how the vagus nerve affects cardiac rhythms. This body of research has led to the notion that the experience and behavioral manifestation of compassion appear to rely on the parasympathetic nervous system to modulate the emotional response to suffering. 21

Another set of methods for investigating compassion prioritizes ecological validity, or the similarity between what is being measured and what occurs in real life. For example, helping behavior can be assessed while participants are not aware that they are being observed. In our current research, we use ambulatory audio recording and linguistic assessments to identify the quantity and quality of language by which compassion can be conveyed. For example, in a study of hospital chaplains, we found that chaplains’ self-reported compassion was associated with an inclusive and other-oriented linguistic style (e.g., more social words, more we language, and less I language). What’s more, when chaplains used more of this type of language, patients reported lower levels of depression after the chaplain visited with them, even when we controlled for the patient’s level of distress before the chaplain’s visit. The natural follow-up question that we are now pursuing is, what factors cultivate this skillful compassion?

Jenny further explores what compassion is, and shares her research providing compassion training to hospital chaplains at Mind & Life’s 2020 Summer Research Institute .

Growing Compassion

First, I want to distinguish between state- versus trait-based compassion. Some factors, and some interventions like compassion training programs, grow compassionate states, a relatively short-lived momentary experience of compassion. At the same time, other factors/interventions grow compassion as a psychological trait, a relatively stable readiness or tendency to experience and act compassionately across time and in a broad range of circumstances. This is not to say that compassionate states and traits are unrelated. In fact, many approaches to cultivating compassion presume that repeatedly engendering compassionate states will gradually strengthen the corresponding trait.

Compassion can be induced or potentiated with primes that essentially nudge us into a state that is conducive to compassion, making compassion more likely to arise in the moment. Such state compassion is more likely when we are primed with a feeling of secure attachment, usually by reflecting on a relationship or a time when we felt safe and held in care. Similarly, inducing feelings of gratitude and appreciation, interdependence, and a sense of common humanity will make compassionate states more likely to arise in response to suffering. In contrast, priming self-interest (e.g., economic self-interest or efficiency) makes compassion less likely. 22 To paint with a broad brush, augmenting any of the constituent conditions detailed above—mindful attention, executive control, emotion regulation, ethical intent, and self-efficacy—will make it more likely that state compassion will arise.

On the other hand, one of the most potent ways to grow trait compassion is to become a primary caregiver of a young child. Primary caregivers experience hormonal and neurobiological changes that promote attentional, emotional, and behavioral responsivity to offspring. These brain and body changes occur across the broad spectrum of possible caregivers, from biologically related mothers and fathers, 23 to adoptive parents, 24 to doting grandparents. 25 Research studies have directly tied these brain and body changes with a wide array of compassionate responses, including compassionate language, affectionate touch, and a type of interpersonally oriented vocalization often called ‘motherese.’ Together, these findings support the evolutionary origins of compassion I mentioned earlier—becoming a caregiver changes our brain and body to facilitate trait compassion.

But do these brain and body changes that support parental compassion make us more compassionate overall? Research by Carsten De Dreu suggests that the answer is no. Oxytocin does not promote indiscriminate compassion and appears to have the opposite effect, 26 increasing disparagement of and conflict with individuals we perceive as being in an out-group. 27 Behavioral research is consistent, showing that parents exhibit enhanced bias and aggression 28 when their parental caregiving motivations are primed. This set of findings makes sense from an evolutionary perspective—what better way for a mammalian mother to help her offspring thrive than to care for them at the expense of unrelated others? However, it has profoundly important implications for today’s society, and raises the question: How can we grow compassion in both breadth and depth, rather than only in depth for our in-group, even at the expense of others?

How can we grow compassion in both breadth and depth, rather than only in depth for our own in-group, even at the expense of others?

That is the question that many research teams are attempting to address using interventions designed to cultivate sustainable compassion. For more than 15 years, we have been studying a program called CBCT® (Cognitively-Based Compassion Training), a system of contemplative exercises and reflective practices designed to develop and expand compassion. CBCT begins with a foundational moment of nurturance practice to engender feelings of interpersonal safety and secure attachment. Next, the content builds iteratively, starting with basic attention-building and stabilizing practices (often referred to as mindfulness) and progressing to more analytical approaches in which CBCT participants contemplate the ways they interact with self and others. CBCT acts in part on the dual premises 29 mentioned earlier—that humans are hard-wired with an ability to experience compassion, and that our compassion is highly context-dependent and contingent.

Ultimately, CBCT is designed to increase sustainable compassion to all, not just to those for whom or instances when compassion comes easily. For example, we have found that medical students who completed CBCT reported increases in compassion and reduced depression and loneliness. 30 Importantly, the greatest increases in compassion were among those students who came into the study with high levels of depression, suggesting that compassion training may be of most benefit to people who are struggling.

Using the Science of Compassion to Respond to Real-world Challenges

Jennifer Goetz, Dacher Keltner, and Emiliana Simon-Thomas published their widely-influential scientific review of compassion over ten years ago, which began with the statement: “Compassion is controversial.” 31 Their paper has now been referenced more than 2,000 times, the most recent citing papers on topics as diverse as climate change responses, 32 corporate irresponsibility, 33 and grappling with the conceptualization of self-compassion. 34 If compassion is still controversial, the importance of it to scientific and scholarly inquiry has only increased. Here are some important areas of curiosity that continue to inspire and motivate our research.

While compassion training appears to be beneficial, many of our studies also identified barriers to engaging with CBCT. For example, we recruited healthy adults to go through a 12-week CBCT course. Notably, before training, we scanned their brains using functional MRI while completing a “Pain for Self and Others” task that alternated between administering somewhat painful electric shocks to their wrist and showing them video clips of other people receiving shocks. This approach gave us an understanding of participants’ baseline brain function before embarking on CBCT. Next, we looked at whether baseline brain responses to watching others in pain would predict the amount of time that participants later spent engaging with the compassion meditation practices. We found that activation of the anterior insula, 35 an area of the brain thought to be important for empathy, in response to the Other pain task (but not to receiving pain themselves) was predictive of compassion meditation practice time. The tentative interpretation is that people who entered the study with a less compassionate orientation were less likely to practice compassion meditation. We found something very similar in our study with medical students—self-reported compassion at the outset of the study was associated with ensuing CBCT practice time.

The above findings remind us that no intervention or training, however efficacious, will be successful if people are not able or willing to engage with it. It isn’t surprising that there are barriers to engaging with CBCT, nor is such a challenge unique to compassion training. One widely cited study found that it takes, on average, 17 years 36 for an evidence-based intervention or practice to be successfully incorporated into the general practices of a health care setting. Our most recent research is aimed at identifying and examining new points of “entry” for compassion and compassion training that overcome barriers to access. With this line of research, we ask, how can we get compassion to people when they are most in need, and can we do it in feasible and acceptable ways? Paul Condon and John Makransky 37 recently wrote a compelling argument that there is a rich historical precedent to skillfully adapt compassion training to “effectively [meet] the hearts and minds of people of new times and places.”

We are attempting this work via a partnership between contemplative science and spiritual health called Compassion-Centered Spiritual Health (CCSH™). CCSH interventions are delivered by healthcare chaplains, embedded and highly skilled members of the interprofessional healthcare team. To evaluate CCSH, we use implementation science, 38 a trans-disciplinary form of scientific study that applies rigorous and consistent methods for assessing the implementation of a practice or intervention in a new setting. As we strive to integrate compassion into our societal structures, the careful work of implementation science will be critical. Using these methods, we can identify the barriers that may obstruct or hinder compassion training. We can also identify individual, interpersonal, systemic, and cultural factors that facilitate compassion.

The scientific methods for studying compassion—from self-report questionnaires, to fMRI, to heart rate variability, to behavioral observation—have advanced the field and generated new knowledge about the nature of compassion. However, these methods do not always lend themselves to characterizing wise and skillful compassion. As we integrate complexity into our understanding of compassion, we see more gaps in our existing scientific knowledge. In fact, we understand relatively little about the dynamic and relational emotional, cognitive, and embodied phenomena that unfold when we encounter suffering in our daily lives, outside the contrived parameters of a laboratory. To put it another way, observing brain responses to an emotional picture using fMRI may bear little resemblance to observing how an emergency nurse responds to an angry and fearful patient. And neither of these characterizations of compassion may bear a resemblance to observing how a compassionate community supports well-being or engages in restorative justice.

Alternatively, perhaps scientists are describing and quantifying a similar construct of compassion—from the fMRI to the community—but at differing units of analysis and filtered through different organizing principles. If so, then the knowledge we have gained “in the laboratory” about the neural, psychological, and behavioral inhibitors and facilitators of compassion can help us move toward solving the problems that exacerbate life’s deepest suffering. Ultimately, we will need to continue to refine and innovate our scientific methods to characterize this complexity and to leverage the science of compassion to respond to the needs of our time.

…when compassion becomes a social norm, the result is an upward spiral of interpersonal trust and cooperation.

In closing, I find that the scientific study of compassion is a spectacular excuse to contemplate compassionate exemplars—real-life bodhisattvas of compassion whose stories replenish the compassion well. And the recently released World Happiness Report tells us that this well is more, not less, full. In 2021, compared to the several years prior, the worldwide prevalence of charitable donations, volunteering, and rates of helping strangers increased. Instances of prosociality increased in every global region and were an astonishing 25% higher than pre-pandemic levels. This report is heartening beyond just its immediate implication because longitudinal research tells us that when compassion becomes a social norm, the result is an upward spiral of interpersonal trust and cooperation. Compassion begets trust, which begets more compassion. Bringing the science of compassion into conversation with wise leadership and healing-centered efforts can help facilitate such an upward spiral.

Have something to share? Email us at [email protected] . Support our work with a gift to Mind & Life. 

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Essay Samples on Compassion

What is the difference between sympathy and empathy.

From time to time, we all experience various hardships throughout our lives. Whether these are minor incidents, or prolonged and profound difficulties that take a little longer to overcome, it’s important that we all support one another in the appropriate way. Understanding that everyone is...

Expression of Sympathy in Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

Mary Shelley’s gothic novel Frankenstein (1818) is set in Switzerland, Germany, France, England, and Scotland. It tells the story of a wicked creation of a monster. The two main characters, Victor and the creature, both endure many struggles which cause them to do irrational things....

• Frankenstein

"Marigolds" by Eugenia Collier: The Impact of Compassion on People

As a famous actress and activist, Susan Sarandon, once said, “ When you start to develop your powers of empathy and imagination, the whole world opens up to you”. This meaning that through experience, humans can gain empathy to learn many important and beneficial lessons...

How the Compassion Can Improve the Relationships with Others

A lack of compassion can either make the world a little bit better, or it could make the world worse than it already is. There are times it is easy to be compassionate to others, but there are times it is difficult to show compassion...

• Individual Identity

The Importance of Self-Comprassion to Mental Health

With the mental health crisis that is currently sweeping the nation and rising to epic proportions, people need to begin making different choices. As defined by Kristin Neff, self-compassion is choosing Self-Kindness rather than Self-Judgement, Common Humanity over Isolation and Mindfulness rather than Over-Identification. Choosing...

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How Self-Compassion Influences the Ability to be Comprassionate to Others

Self-compassion is the ability to be compassionate and understanding to oneself. Similarly, self-compassion may influence an individual’s compassion towards others as well. Compassion is an important characteristic of the mental health profession. Bowen & Moore (2014) stated that counselor functioning may be impaired due to...

Compassion and Mindfulness in Social Representation Theory

About in 1998-1999, there was a company, named Central Model Agency in Bratislava; they were approaching young “good-looking” people to become models. It was by pure choice of agent to choose someone who would look good on screen. If an approached individual has been accompanied...

• Mindfulness

Balance of Compassion and Effective Healthcare Leadership

This assignment will evaluate the current literature to identify the impact of compassion and compassion fatigue on efficiency. Consideration will be given to the direction and impact of the dark side of leadership, as Schantz (2007) highlighted that for nurses (leaders) to powerfully impact the...

Recovery from Eating Disorder Fueled by Compassion

Compassion is the ability to show empathy, love, and concern for other people with a desire to help reduce their suffering. It is often confused with empathy, and although the two share similar qualities, empathy refers to our ability to feel the emotions another person...

• Eating Disorders

The Significance of Compassion in Nursing: Connecting with Patients

The nursing profession is unique in that it requires practitioners to connect with patients on a deep and meaningful level. Compassion is a vital aspect of nursing practice, requiring nurses to demonstrate empathy and kindness to patients. In this essay, we will explore the meaning...

How To Go Through Life Without Fighting

With all the joyful information there is always a lot of compassion. The festive moments have their share of instant despair. That's life. The encouraging exchange of a pregnancy and the hope of a new life that must be born have an effect that causes...

• Ethics in Everyday Life
• Personal Philosophy

Best topics on Compassion

1. What is the Difference Between Sympathy and Empathy

2. Expression of Sympathy in Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

3. “Marigolds” by Eugenia Collier: The Impact of Compassion on People

4. How the Compassion Can Improve the Relationships with Others

5. The Importance of Self-Comprassion to Mental Health

6. How Self-Compassion Influences the Ability to be Comprassionate to Others

7. Compassion and Mindfulness in Social Representation Theory

8. Balance of Compassion and Effective Healthcare Leadership

9. Recovery from Eating Disorder Fueled by Compassion

10. The Significance of Compassion in Nursing: Connecting with Patients

11. How To Go Through Life Without Fighting

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Ways of knowing compassion: how do we come to know, understand, and measure compassion when we see it.

• 1 Department of Family and Preventive Medicine, Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta, GA, United States
• 2 Graduate Division of Religion, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, United States
• 3 Department of Behavioral, Social, and Health Education Sciences, Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, United States
• 4 Department of Spiritual Health, Woodruff Health Sciences Center, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, United States
• 5 Center for Contemplative Science and Compassion-Based Ethics, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, United States
• 6 Department of Psychology, Southern Oregon University, Ashland, OR, United States
• 7 School of Human Ecology, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Madison, WI, United States

Over the last decade, empirical research on compassion has burgeoned in the biomedical, clinical, translational, and foundational sciences. Increasingly sophisticated understandings and measures of compassion continue to emerge from the abundance of multidisciplinary and cross-disciplinary studies. Naturally, the diversity of research methods and theoretical frameworks employed presents a significant challenge to consensus and synthesis of this knowledge. To bring the empirical findings of separate and sometimes siloed disciplines into conversation with one another requires an examination of their disparate assumptions about what compassion is and how it can be known. Here, we present an integrated theoretical review of methodologies used in the empirical study of compassion. Our goal is to highlight the distinguishing features of each of these ways of knowing compassion, as well as the strengths and limitations of applying them to specific research questions. We hope this will provide useful tools for selecting methods that are tailored to explicit objectives (methods matching), taking advantage of methodological complementarity across disciplines (methods mixing), and incorporating the empirical study of compassion into fields in which it may be missing.

Introduction

The last decade has seen a substantial increase in the empirical study of compassion. Programs of research investigate the phylogenetic continuity and evolutionary history of compassion ( Goetz et al., 2010 ; Preston and Hofelich, 2012 ; Gilbert and Mascaro, 2017 ; Marsh, 2019 ), the physiological systems supporting compassion ( Gilbert, 2014a ; Kemper et al., 2015 ; Wang et al., 2019 ), and the impact of compassion on psychological and physical health ( Galante et al., 2014 ; Neff et al., 2016 ). Along with this more foundational research, applied and translational studies examine the role and optimal manifestation of compassion in healthcare and educational settings, and test the efficacy of interventions and training programs aimed at expanding compassion toward self and others in a variety of contexts ( McCaffrey and McConnell, 2015 ; Bibeau et al., 2016 ; Sinclair et al., 2016b ; van Berkhout and Malouff, 2016 ; Luberto et al., 2018 ). Each of these domains of research has advanced in large part due to the development of measurement tools for identifying, describing, and quantifying compassion, as well as for empirically evaluating theoretical models of compassion. While this abundance of multidisciplinary and cross-disciplinary research has advanced what is known about compassion, the diversity of methods, assumptions, and theoretical frameworks makes it challenging to draw conclusions across studies and/or to incorporate compassion research into new fields, especially fields in which compassion may already be partially or implicitly operationalized.

While not without contention, large bodies of literature have generally cohered around a definition of compassion as a benevolent emotional response toward another who is suffering, coupled with the motivation to alleviate their suffering and promote their well-being ( Dalai Lama, 2002 ; Goetz et al., 2010 ; Halifax, 2012 ; Klimecki et al., 2013 ; Post et al., 2014 ; Singer and Klimecki, 2014 ; Strauss et al., 2016 ; Sinclair et al., 2017c ; Gilbert, 2019 ). From this starting point, we will survey research conducted on compassion and related constructs that share or resemble some or all of the basic criteria that characterize compassion. These are (1) an awareness of another’s suffering, (2) a benevolent emotional or affective response, and (3) the motivation to help or act ( Strauss et al., 2016 ).

This theoretical review of empirical methods used to study compassion has the broad aim of promoting communication, collaboration, and convergence across disciplines. Our goal as a team of interdisciplinary scholars trained in foundational and applied areas of public health (K.P., M.A., and T.F.), social psychology (P.C.), biological anthropology (J.M. and T.F.), psychiatry (C.R.), and religious studies (M.F.) is twofold. First, we provide an integrated and interdisciplinary theoretical review of methods currently used in the empirical study of compassion. Second, we examine the strengths and limitations of applying them to specific research questions. We hope this will provide useful tools for selecting methods that are tailored to explicit objectives ( methods matching ), taking advantage of methodological complementarity across disciplines ( methods mixing ), and incorporating the empirical study of compassion into fields in which it may be absent or non-operationalized ( methods missing ) (for an overview of key terminology used in this article, see glossary in Table 1 ).

Table 1. A glossary of terms and their associated definitions used in this paper.

Within the scope of this review, we have deliberately set aside a number of worthwhile goals. First, we do not intend to critique alternate definitions or ways of operationalizing compassion. Constructive critiques are ongoing to refine and validate the construct of compassion, but this is not our project ( Singer and Klimecki, 2014 ; Gu et al., 2017 ). Neither do we intend to privilege any empirical method or set of methods over others. For our purposes here, the suitability of a method is principally driven by research objectives. In addition, while many studies helpfully review and evaluate the impact of compassion ( Eisenberg et al., 2010 ; Perrone-McGovern et al., 2014 ), these are too numerous and wide-ranging to adequately evaluate here. Moreover, this will not be a systematic or meta-analytic review of any one method. Our goal, instead, is to forge connections between disparate areas of compassion research in order to generate an overview of the current state of available methods for studying compassion. Lastly, we do not seek to prescribe directions for future research. Rather, we will conclude with recommendations for selecting and combining methods to advance understandings of compassion and maximize knowledge transfer across domains.

Research indicates that compassion has immediate health benefits for both the giver and receiver ( Fogarty et al., 1999 ; Steffen and Masters, 2005 ; Galante et al., 2014 ), positively impacts relationship outcomes ( Neff and Beretvas, 2013 ; Perrone-McGovern et al., 2014 ), and improves resilience in the context of adversity threat ( Cosley et al., 2010 ; Neff and McGehee, 2010 ; Lim and DeSteno, 2016 ; Presnell, 2018 ). In medical care, compassion is linked with improved patient satisfaction, compliance, and clinical outcomes ( Patel et al., 2019 ). In the workplace, compassion is associated with improved employee resilience and retention, as well as overall organizational health ( Kanov et al., 2004 ; Spreitzer et al., 2013 ). In educational settings, compassion is associated with emotional well-being among children and adolescents ( Neff and Pittman, 2010 ; Roeser and Eccles, 2015 ), and cultivating compassion during adolescence may lay the foundation for well-being during this sensitive period of social development and beyond ( Játiva and Cerezo, 2014 ; Roeser and Pinela, 2014 ; Bach and Guse, 2015 ). Compassion also stands at the center of some third-wave psychotherapeutic interventions, which emphasize the relationship between thoughts and emotions ( Gilbert, 2010 , 2014b ; Hayes and Hofmann, 2017 ). For example, compassion-focused therapy is an evolutionarily and neurophysiologically informed approach to psychotherapy that aims to improve mental health by understanding and promoting a compassionate motivational system ( Gilbert, 2014b ).

In many contexts, compassion is thought to be trainable either as a skill in itself or as an emergent gestalt of underlying skills that can be cultivated ( Kanov et al., 2004 ; Klimecki et al., 2014 ). Motivated by this assumption, evidence-based training programs have proliferated for cultivating compassion for social and emotional health ( Pace et al., 2009 ; Germer and Neff, 2013 ; Jazaieri et al., 2013 ; Roeser et al., 2018 ; Schuling et al., 2018 ; Borden, 2019 ; Condon and Makransky, 2020 ). Compassion has also emerged as a core value and “active ingredient” of diverse helping professions and professional environments, especially in medical care. At least 25 interventions have been developed to cultivate compassionate nursing care ( McCaffrey and McConnell, 2015 ; Blomberg et al., 2016 ), and compassion training has become a more explicit goal of medical training and practice and is a key component of the American Medical Association’s first principle of medical ethics ( Shih et al., 2013 ; American Medical Association, 2016 ; Rao and Kemper, 2017 ). In addition, in 2013, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services implemented a value-based purchasing system that tied hospital reimbursement to patient satisfaction surveys, making patient-rated compassion critical to healthcare systems’ bottom line ( Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), HHS, 2011 ).

While this breadth and depth of research on compassion and compassion training has arguably advanced scientific understanding and improved clinical, educational, and professional outcomes, there are several inherent issues complicating the study of compassion. First, because compassion includes both an affective and motivational component, there is a lack of consensus about how to compare and draw inferences from studies employing disparate units of measurement or levels of analysis. For example, recurring questions arise about relationships between behavioral and physiological observations on the one hand, and indicators of compassionate affect and motivation on the other: Can researchers intuit a compassionate state in the absence of physiological or behavioral data? Can researchers intuit a compassionate state from physiology or behavior alone ?

Second, prominent models of compassion implicitly or explicitly assume that compassion emerges from discrete competencies, which can, in turn, be differentially facilitated or inhibited ( Halifax, 2012 ; Lown, 2016 ; Gu et al., 2017 ). One influential evolutionary account theorizes that compassion is a suite of universal physiological and experiential responses that emerges because of situation-dependent cognitive appraisals. Besides the basic perception that someone is indeed suffering, compassionate responding is facilitated by the following appraisals: (1) the suffering individual is both relevant and of value to oneself; (2) the sufferer does not deserve their suffering; and (3) one is capable of helping ( Goetz et al., 2010 ). The influence of this and similar models has propelled research focused on emotions and skills that may be necessary but incomplete constituents of compassion. Understanding complex interactions among these components requires empirical strategies that can differentiate between them and explore their dynamics.

Third, compassionate responses themselves are context-, experience-, and state-dependent, requiring empirical methods sensitive to factors ranging from bodily states to social and environmental conditions. A large body of theoretical and experimental research indicates that compassion is influenced by the observer’s perceptions of the in-group/out-group status of the suffering individual(s) ( Cikara et al., 2011 ; Preston and Ritter, 2013 ). Such perceptions can depend on psychological resources ( Dyrbye et al., 2019 ), environment ( Kim and Lopez de Leon, 2019 ), psychological priming ( Mikulincer and Shaver, 2001 ), and training or intervention ( Kang et al., 2014 ). Understanding this broader picture of compassion, including psychological states and traits, relationships, environment, and personal history, is crucial for designing appropriate compassion research and for interpreting and contextualizing any findings.

Fourth, multiple related constructs, including but not limited to altruism, empathy, empathic concern, sympathy, prosociality, and care, overlap with broad understandings of compassion and should be considered part of the body of empirical knowledge about it. Significant obstacles to comparing data on compassion-related constructs arise because of well-documented shifts in how they are operationalized and defined ( Batson, 2009 ; Marsh, 2019 ). Yet, their conceptual relatedness suggests that mapping—that is, formalizing and conventionalizing how terms in one research domain correspond with one or more terms in another field—could reveal that transdisciplinary findings converge in significant ways. Related, disparate fields of inquiry have distinct sets of methodologies, assumptions, and theoretical frameworks, which we will explore below. All of these inherent challenges invite consideration from those designing, interpreting, and evaluating research on compassion in any discipline.

We understand ways of knowing compassion to be any empirical phenomena that signal to an investigator that compassionate affect, motivation, and action are present in an individual or group. This includes signs that a necessary component of or condition for compassion may be present. Such an empirical approach to understanding compassion requires a consilient effort to alternate between vantages that focus on measurable physical, biological, and behavioral changes, and on more holistic vantages that focus on human-level, emergent properties of experience and interaction ( Slingerland and Collard (eds), 2012a ). Each way of knowing compassion that we describe evinces strengths and limitations. Some are more deeply shaped by the propensities of humans as social beings, including tendencies toward explanatory confabulation, concern for socially desirable self-representation, expectancy bias, memory bias, errors in affective forecasting, and plain old not knowing . Through understanding these, we can identify complementarity among different frameworks and methodologies and combine approaches and findings strategically to strengthen evidence and claims.

Among the ways of identifying and quantifying compassion, four clusters of features serve as guideposts or heuristics: (1) empirical perspective, (2) state versus trait, (3) quantitative versus qualitative, and (4) ecological validity. Figure 1 organizes the major methodologies reviewed according to these guiding heuristics.

Figure 1. Mapping the ways of knowing compassion. This figure maps the major methodologies reviewed here into theoretical spaces. The shape of the methodology denotes frame of reference. Color represents the extent to which that method has ecological validity. Positioning on the x -axis corresponds to the extent to which a method measures internal versus external aspects of compassion. Positioning on the y -axis corresponds to whether the methodology is generally used to measure state or trait compassion or is used to measure both. Methods on the line between state and trait can be used to measure both, depending on the specifics of the methodology.

Empirical Perspective

To examine diverse methods for studying compassion, we will employ a heuristic feature related to the empirical perspective or point of view reflected in their evidence. That is, if there is a compassionate experience in question, it may be examined from a first-, second-, or third-person perspective. First-person data typically focus on the subjective experience and self-reported assessment of one’s own compassion, collected in scale questionnaires, interviews, and focus groups. Studies that rely at least partially on first-person perspectives collect participants’ reports on subjective experiences of compassionate feelings and motivations in response to others’ suffering. Methodologies rely on data emerging from first-person perspectives, when researchers collect, analyze, and interpret participants’ observations as primary evidence of compassion, or when study participants interpret their own experience of compassion as in phenomenological accounts. Second-person data often represent the perspective of the receiver or in vivo witness of compassion. Studies that depend on second-person evidence assess when and how participants recognize and experience compassion in others, be they companions, peers, caregivers, supervisors, or entire organizations. A third-person perspective, or observational perspective, applies when the experimenter or observer determines the presence, absence, and measurement of compassion, and interprets evidence such as physiological and behavioral observations. In this case, the observer neither experiences nor receives the compassion in question. These three perspectives can be mapped onto the emic and etic distinctions ( Pike, 1967 ). Here, third-person perspectives emerge from an etic point of view: observations made by persons outside and relatively objective to the compassionate feeling, action, or interaction under study. First- and second-person perspectives arise from the emic point of view, provided by those who have an insider’s perspective on the compassion (or lack thereof). Of note, we use this heuristic differently than qualitative researchers, who often refer to the interviewee and interviewer using a first- and second-person distinction ( Stelter, 2010 ).

Each empirical method or way of knowing compassion yields evidence from one or more of these perspectives and can be strategically selected to address the researchers’ questions, frameworks, or models of compassion. In other words, those interested in the internal thoughts or emotions surrounding compassion may be correct in prioritizing a first-person perspective. On the other hand, researchers interested in the behavioral aspect of compassion may be better served by informant-reporting and/or third-person measures (discussed below). Complementary first- and second-person measures may together create a more nuanced, accurate understanding of the relationship between internal states and external behavior. Moreover, combining self-report with second- or third-person reporting promises to generate new questions and hypotheses to explain conflicting evidence. In the main sections of this review to follow, we found empirical perspective to be a helpful superordinate criterion for organizing and presenting the various ways of knowing compassion.

State Versus Trait

Another heuristic is the familiar psychological distinction between dispositional or trait-level versus momentary or state-level measurement. Many studies employ measures that frame compassion as a fluctuating internal state , and self-report is used to query the extent to which a respondent endorses feeling compassion at that point in time. In addition to self-report measures of compassionate states, researchers also detect compassion by observing behavior—including speech—that is best explained by the occurrence of a compassionate state, such as responding to another person’s suffering with demonstrable care or help (or expressing the desire to respond). These approaches investigate the relationship between internal processes and/or external circumstances and varying intensities of compassionate affect, motivation, and observable behavior.

Other research methods seek to understand compassion as an enduring individual or psychological trait . Traits, unlike states, are relatively stable aspects of a person’s way of thinking, feeling, and acting across time and in a broad range of circumstances. Because fluctuating conditions or contexts tend not to dislodge an individual’s traits, their origins or causes are, in theory, traceable to more stable and general underlying processes. This is not to say that traits are immutable or hardwired. Indeed, contemplative practices and other ways of priming and cultivating compassion usually presume that repeatedly engendering compassionate states will gradually strengthen the corresponding trait ( McCrae and Costa, 1995 ; Baumert et al., 2017 ; Goleman and Davidson, 2017 ). Similarly, in the context of social and emotional education, traits are considered factors that have some level of mutability over child development ( Knafo et al., 2008 ; Bengtsson et al., 2016 ). This view of traits is informed by Bandura’s (1976 , 1999 ) impact on the field of behavioral learning, which posits that traits can be capabilities that are learned. From this perspective, compassion, like other social and emotional capabilities, can be cultivated over the course of child development and with training, an assumption that guides many social and emotional development programs. Some methods reviewed below aim to illuminate dispositional or trait compassion or the extent to which individuals tend to have compassion throughout their life.

Quantitative Versus Qualitative

A third heuristic category that distinguishes ways of knowing compassion is the distinction between quantitative and qualitative methods. Quantitative data are numeric values that correspond directly or indirectly to measurements and/or observations of compassionate phenomena. Qualitative data, by contrast, describe compassionate phenomena in language or images to be interpreted using non-mathematical methods. While specific features of qualitative data, such as directions of change, intensities, frequencies, etc., can be systematically quantified, doing so rounds out potentially explanatory features and context that do not translate into numeric values ( Gavin, 2008 ; Ruane, 2016 ). Merging two of the heuristics that we will use here, all three empirical (first-, second-, and third-person) perspectives can be queried using quantitative and qualitative methods.

Ecological Validity

Lastly, ways of knowing compassion generate data that vary in ecological validity , meaning that they cannot be uniformly transferred or generalized from controlled settings to real-life contexts outside the research setting. Theoretically, the more closely a study’s methods mirror everyday life, the more ecologically valid their evidence will be. Usually, studies with stricter control of variables sacrifice this advantage in favor of precision, replicability, or other strengths. Ecological validity is an especially weighty consideration in light of the social and environmental situatedness of emotions and the centrality of emotion, in the form of affect and motivation, to our understanding of compassion and how it manifests ( Griffiths and Scarantino, 2009 ).

Ways of Knowing Compassion

First-person perspective.

In this section, we begin our review of ways of knowing compassion with research methods for collecting and analyzing first-person empirical evidence, including quantitative and qualitative approaches to understanding compassionate states and traits.

Quantitative

Self-report measures that use first-person data to quantify compassion are the most common methodological tools researchers use, particularly in the health and psychological sciences ( Sinclair et al., 2017c ), and are by far the most common outcome measures used in randomized controlled trials to assess the impacts of interventions for increasing compassion and prosociality ( Luberto et al., 2018 ). The majority of self-report measures assess compassion as a dispositional or trait-like quality. One example, the Compassionate Love Scale ( Sprecher and Fehr, 2005 ), rates 21 items reflecting two subscales: compassion toward significant others (example item: “If a person close to me needs help, I would do almost anything I could to help him or her”) and compassion toward strangers or humanity more widely (example item: “When I see people I do not know feeling sad, I feel a need to reach out to them”).

Self-report measures of the absence or inhibition of compassion are arguably more developed within the literature than measures of compassion itself. These compassion-negative constructs include empathic distress, 1 burnout, compassion fatigue, and secondary traumatic stress. They indicate conditions in which a potential caregiver fails to experience or exhibit compassion. The implicit and sometimes explicit explanation is that the caregiver’s reserves of compassion are depleted and/or displaced by feelings of frustration, emotional isolation, exhaustion, and a decreased sense of accomplishment and meaning ( Boyle, 2015 ). Compassion fatigue has been studied among caregivers and providers who work in stressful environments and who are frequently exposed to suffering and death, including physicians, nurses, first responders, teachers in at-risk school districts, and spiritual caregivers ( Roberts et al., 2003 ; Yoder, 2010 ; Hotchkiss and Lesher, 2018 ; Buelher, 2019 ). In healthcare, the Professional Quality of Life Scale is frequently used to examine the relationship between compassion fatigue, burnout, and secondary traumatic stress among providers ( Alkema et al., 2008 ; Smart et al., 2014 ; Beaumont et al., 2016 ). While the construct of compassion fatigue receives frequent attention, critical reviews of this area highlight the need for further research that explicitly addresses the relationship between failures of compassion and compassion itself ( Fernando, and Consedine, 2014 ; Ledoux, 2015 ; Sinclair et al., 2017b ). Measurement will be integral toward this end.

Whether quantifying compassion or its absence, self-report measures have various limitations ( Strauss et al., 2016 ). Many commonly used scale questionnaires are retrospective in nature, meaning they require participants to summarize their experience over an entire day, week, month, or a lifetime (e.g., “How much stress have you felt over the past 2 weeks?”; Conner and Barrett, 2012 ). These retrospective measures tend to reflect participants’ beliefs about themselves rather than their actual behavior, lived experience, or physiological correlates ( Mauss and Robinson, 2009 ). Relatedly, in simulation or hypothetical scenario-based questionnaires, participants may be asked to recall or imagine a helping scenario, rate their sense of compassion, and speculate about whether they would help. Responses in this paradigm are most likely driven by generalizations about the self (e.g., “I am a compassionate person”) and about the value of specific emotions and helping behavior (e.g., “Compassion leads to helping, which feels good.”). People often underestimate or overestimate how they might feel in a hypothetical circumstance, which is known as a limitation in affective forecasting ( Wilson and Gilbert, 2003 ). For instance, physicians’ reports of their probable experience of compassion in response to hypothetical vignettes might not resemble their actual interactions with patients. Further complicating matters, the self-reported experience of an emotion does not always match prototypical conceptions of emotional experiences, for example, when fear feels pleasant during a scary movie. This mismatch has been shown to be true of compassion in particular, with study participants reporting that compassion prototypically feels uniformly pleasant yet describing both pleasant and unpleasant experiences of compassion ( Condon and Barrett, 2013 ).

Because of limitations of retrospective self-reports, many researchers rely on momentary measures, often classified as ecological momentary assessment or experience sampling techniques. These techniques require participants to carry a device, such as a smartphone, and respond to alerts or prompts in the moment throughout their day (e.g., “How much compassion do you feel toward your patients?”). Studies have shown that such measures are more closely associated with real-time physiology and behavior patterns than retrospective self-report measures ( Conner and Barrett, 2012 ). This technique has not been widely applied to the study of compassion; however, one experience sampling study demonstrated that compassion meditation training resulted in reduced momentary reports of mind-wandering and corresponding increases in self-reported caring behaviors ( Jazaieri et al., 2016 ). While findings from momentary assessment have high ecological, convergent, and predictive validity, they are time- and resource-intensive. Moreover, although momentary reports overcome some of the limitations of retrospective reports, they remain subject to social desirability and participant expectations, although likely to a lesser degree.

Qualitative

Qualitative, first-person methods based on narratives, interviews, interactions, or focus groups examine the richer contours of compassion. These approaches allow participants to contextualize their responses, appraise significance, and inform researchers about unexpected factors that arise in situ . They capture first-person experiences and interpretations, although not exclusively. To analyze the complexity of narratives, dialog, and descriptions requires rigorous planning, often relying on computer-assisted qualitative data analysis software ( Lewins and Silver, 2007 ; Saldaña, 2011 , 2016 ).

Qualitative descriptive (QD) research uses a variety of forms of data, including first-person accounts, to craft a detailed description of a situation or process and suggest further avenues of inquiry ( Sandelowski, 2000 ; Leeman et al., 2007 ; Kim et al., 2017 ). This method has been used to investigate experiences and causes of compassion fatigue among nurses ( Berg et al., 2016 ; Fukumori et al., 2018 ). Often, QD research is an initial step before more controlled and fine-grained experimentation and analysis ( Neergaard et al., 2009 ).

Grounded theory is a more methodologically formal procedure for analyzing qualitative data, which is used in the human, social, and health sciences. It involves time-consuming recursive sifting, categorizing (i.e., coding), and interpretation to discover recurring themes and patterns in participants’ responses and interactions ( Bryant and Charmaz, 2007 ). To understand compassion, grounded theorists examine firsthand accounts of participants’ perceptions and/or experiences by reviewing and sorting transcribed interviews and interactions to identify themes or patterns that recur throughout a data set and code passages of text exemplifying those themes. They then interpret the prevalence and significance of recurring themes and features (for examples, see Crowther et al., 2013 ; McPherson et al., 2016 ; Sinclair et al., 2017a ; Tierney et al., 2017 ; Jain et al., 2019 ). Many grounded theory accounts focus exclusively on respondents’ conceptual understandings of compassion and may not assess any specific occurrence of compassion. Such projects help constitute a way of knowing how compassion is understood by a person or group. In general, grounded theory is best suited to exploratory projects that supplement or pave the way for explanatory studies ( Bryant and Charmaz, 2010 ).

Other qualitative research in the human and social sciences relies on a phenomenological framework for collecting and analyzing first-person data ( Dowling, 2007 ). This approach takes inspiration from the philosophical phenomenological tradition initiated by Edmund Husserl and developed by subsequent phenomenologists interested in developing a rigorous “descriptive psychology” of conscious phenomena such as existence, perception, care, and empathy ( Husserl, 1989 ; Stein, 1989 ; Fisette, 2018 ; Zahavi, 2018 ). From its inception, phenomenology arguably launched the first-person empirical study of compassion-related experiences. Phenomenological method involves systematically altering one’s attitude toward one’s own perceptions and cognitions, which permits a more rigorous and systematic study of subjective states. By investigating how different phenomena appear to conscious awareness, phenomenologists seek to discover an underlying structure governing consciousness itself.

However, philosophically trained phenomenological researchers are quick to note that the majority of phenomenology-inspired scientific studies depart significantly from foundational methods and questions and are conspicuously unconcerned with investigating the structure of consciousness ( Giorgi, 2010 ; Smith, 2016 ). Phenomenology-inspired empirical studies of compassion address questions ranging from how participants identify subjective experiences of feeling, receiving, and training in compassion ( Pauley and McPherson, 2010 ), to what compassion “is like for them” to experience, receive, and cultivate ( Lawrence and Lee, 2014 ; Jarvis, 2017 ). Other studies address similar questions regarding compassion inhibition, fatigue, etc. ( Waite et al., 2015 ; Jack, 2017 ).

All qualitative first-person evidence has the potential to reveal insights into how compassion is conceived of and experienced firsthand and how conscious, subjective understandings, and attitudes lead to compassionate behavior. For example, qualitative approaches have documented the uniquely rewarding and replenishing feelings that can be associated with compassion, even in the face of suffering, a documented experience of highly trained contemplative practitioners ( Dreyfus, 2001 ). First-person perspectives also reflect human sensitivities to social desirability, usually framed as an evaluative bias, which is the tendency to present oneself in a positive light and potentially underreport socially undesirable thoughts or behaviors. The presence of an interviewer often increases social desirability biases, an effect that can be moderated by the gender and characteristics of the respondent ( Krumpal, 2013 ). Qualitative researchers have given rigorous thought to minimizing social desirability biased responding, especially in interviews about highly evaluative topics ( Fisher, 1993 ; Johnson and Van de Vijver, 2003 ; Bergen and Labonté, 2020 ). While subjective, qualitative accounts of compassion draw connections between experiences, interpretations, and acts of compassion, findings are often not intended to be generalizable or transferable to different groups and settings. Still, it is clear that first-person data can reveal otherwise unknowable information about the mental contents of the compassionate (or non-compassionate) individual being studied. In this way, first-person data can also be used to complement second- and third-person empirical perspectives.

Second-Person Perspective

The limitations inherent to first-person reports of such a highly evaluative construct as compassion highlight the importance of verification with other empirical perspectives. Methods examining second-person evidence of compassion, also referred to as informant reporting , is one approach for doing so. Examples of informant reports of compassion include teacher reporting on children’s compassion, often using a psychometric instrument such as the Prosocial Behavior subscale of the Teacher Social Competence Scale ( Harter, 1982 ). Other informant reports measure compassionate acts within an intimate relationship, for example, Reis et al. (2014) ’ 10-item dyadic inventory of compassionate acts.

Informant reporting by medical patients is a common method for assessing healthcare provider compassion ( Sinclair et al., 2017c ). Scale questionnaires measure general state-level compassion conveyed in a particular clinical encounter. Examples of such tools include the Physician Compassion Questionnaire ( Fogarty et al., 1999 ), the Compassionate Care Assessment Tool ( Burnell and Agan, 2013 ), the Schwartz Center Compassionate Care Scale ( Lown et al., 2015 ), and a new 5-item clinician compassion measure ( Roberts et al., 2019 ). Healthcare provider compassion is also measured by informant reports from colleagues in both allopathic and osteopathic medicine ( Evans et al., 2004 ), as well as clinical psychology ( Kaslow et al., 2009 ).

Some widely used measures of patient satisfaction in healthcare assess general aspects of care that are understood to tangentially reflect patient experiences of compassionate care. The Press Ganey patient satisfaction survey includes items assessing the degree to which hospital staff “addressed your spiritual needs” and “addressed your emotional needs.” One study of more than 1.7 million patient responses observed that ratings of how well staff addressed patients’ spiritual and emotional needs correlated with three Press Ganey performance areas: (1) staff response to concerns or complaints, (2) staff effort to include patients in treatment decisions, and (3) staff sensitivity to the inconvenience that health problems and hospitalization can cause ( Clark et al., 2003 ). The Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems, a patient satisfaction measure widely used in Medicare and Medicaid value-based purchasing, has versions for hospital (H-CAHPS) and outpatient (CG-CAHPS) contexts ( Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), HHS, 2011 ; Dyer et al., 2012 ). One cross-sectional study of 269 acute care hospitals in the United States found that hospitals that reward provider compassion and provide compassionate support for their employees have higher H-CAHPS ratings and are more likely to be recommended by patients ( McClelland and Vogus, 2014 ). The H-CAHPS survey has also been used to examine compassion in the context of a hospital chaplain consultation by measuring elements of the interaction commonly understood to comprise compassionate care ( Marin et al., 2015 ).

Qualitative research methods are also used to examine compassion from second-person perspectives. Indeed, this method may be a particularly apt alternative or complement to the measurement of overt or external behavior and its impact ( Vazire and Mehl, 2008 ). In-depth interviews allow participants to report on the importance and meaning of receiving compassion, specifics that could not be anticipated in a survey question and that may not translate into quantitative measurement. In their exemplary study, Sinclair et al. (2016a) interviewed 53 palliative care patients and used grounded theory to analyze their experiences of providers’ compassion. They also compared these experiences of compassion with patients’ experiences of related constructs, such as empathy and sympathy ( Sinclair et al., 2017a ). They found that patients viewed overt behaviors such as demonstrative and grandiose expressions of emotion as emblematic of sympathy and reported it as off-putting. In contrast, patients saw subtle behaviors, often falling outside of routine care and tailored to individual needs, as authentically compassionate ( Sinclair et al., 2017a ). The resultant empirical model of compassion is arguably the most comprehensive in clinical medicine. It identifies provider virtues such as authenticity, tolerance, and honesty as essential ingredients of compassion, and it details how these requisites of compassion are carried out in a clinical relational context.

While these strengths may tempt us to conclude that informant reports are inherently more reliable and powerful than self-reports of compassion, it is important to consider the potential sources of explicit and implicit bias when using second-person compassion data, just as with first-person data. Again, our point is not to discourage the use of any research method, but rather to assist in strategic use of multiple research methods to gain a clearer understanding of compassionate phenomena. First, it is likely that informant reports of compassion are skewed by cultural and class differences, as well as racial and gender biases, similar to those shown to impact informant reporting of other non-compassion behaviors and competencies (for example, in student evaluations, Fan et al., 2019 ). There is, moreover, some evidence to indicate that such biases may influence perceptions of care received from out-group members. For example, one study found that patient–provider social concordance levels (a measure of the patient and provider’s match on race, gender, age, and educational status) were related to patient ratings of satisfaction with their provider’s care ( Thornton et al., 2011 ). Therefore, rather than ranking the value of any one perspective on compassion, we believe that matching methods and perspectives to the research questions they are best suited to answer is vital, as we will discuss below.

Third-Person Perspective

A broad array of methods and evidence are used when observing compassion from a third-person point of view. In fact, any quantitative and qualitative data can be studied from a third-person standpoint, even when the evidence itself reflects participants’ subjective experiences of extending and receiving compassion. The crucial difference lies in whether data are examined for their insights into the subjective perception, experience, or understanding of compassion, or whether data are being marshaled as intersubjective evidence of compassion itself. In this review, we do not intend to overlook the ways that third-person observers’ subjective tendencies influence their findings and conclusions. This undoubtedly influences all research on compassion. However, we distinguish empirical perspectives as third-personal by emphasizing how the object of inquiry is specified, while remaining cognizant that there will be overlap and ambiguity in specific cases. Third-person evidence may include researcher’s observations of human-, animal-, and group-level behavior and functioning, as well as measurements of physiological changes from which compassion might be inferred, such as brain states, facial expressions, writings, etc. Human-made products—discourse, design principles, art, laws, archeological, and other artifacts—can also serve as intersubjective evidence of compassion. In the following section, we discuss several forms of third-person evidence from which a state or disposition of compassion may be inferred.

Compassionate Behavior

A great deal of behavioral research on compassion is conducted using social psychology experimental methodologies. Social psychologists generally view compassion as a prosocial state that is responsive to others’ suffering and that motivates costly helping behaviors intended to alleviate suffering, potentially at the expense of oneself. An action or state is prosocial to the extent that it is conducive to social bonding and acceptance. While prosocial helping is distinct from compassion, it is understood as an outcome of some compassionate motivational state. As such, costly helping behavior is often used to infer that compassion is present. For this reason, observations of helping behaviors have been instrumental in garnering ecological validity for compassion as a psychological construct that can influence human (and perhaps animal) behavior. Batson et al. (1983) pioneered several paradigms for studying costly helping in which participants observe a confederate —an actor posing as a study participant—typically facing a difficult situation, such as receiving electric shocks or experiencing distress over a car crash or academic demands. Importantly, these paradigms are constructed such that self-interested factors such as seeking social recognition and avoiding punishment could not explain the participant’s decision to engage in the costly helping behavior. Participants who opt to help are therefore thought to be demonstrating a compassionate state ( Batson et al., 1991 ; Batson, 2009 ; Goetz et al., 2010 ).

Confederate paradigms that assess prosocial behavior in real-time settings are perhaps the criterion standard for ecologically valid prosociality research—they overcome limitations of self-reports because of memory and affective forecasting biases and provide direct assessment of actions that alleviate others’ suffering in situations that reflect daily life. In this way, researchers can measure prosocial behavior when participants themselves are not aware that they are being observed. At the same time, confederate paradigms can be difficult or inefficient to implement, given that they require careful training of confederates and careful debriefing to assess participant suspicion. Additionally, some research scenarios may skew behaviors in a prosocial direction. For example, a participant might demonstrate compassion for someone receiving shocks or struggling with academic work within a confederate paradigm but may not be able to access or extend compassion as readily in a familiar context. Intriguingly, experiments using confederate scenarios have demonstrated the efficacy of mindfulness and compassion training for enhancing prosocial behaviors, even when situational pressures dampen the impulse to help, such as offering one’s seat to a stranger who is using crutches, even when others seated nearby are unresponsive and ostensibly less considerate ( Condon et al., 2013 ).

Other research in social psychology has used both naturalistic and simulated settings to demonstrate positive changes in real-world prosocial behavior after various types of meditation training across different contexts. In one study, mindfulness training was associated with participants’ increased willingness to interact with an ostracized individual via Cyberball, a computer-based ball-tossing game, an effect that was mediated by self-reported warmth and compassion ( Berry et al., 2018 ). Compassion training was also associated with reduced amygdala reactivity and more sustained visual attention to scenes of suffering in an experiment using an eye-tracking protocol ( Weng et al., 2018 ). In another experiment, compassion training was associated with greater increase in participants’ optimism and willingness to write a letter to a convicted murderer ( Koopmann-Holm et al., 2019 ). Behavioral markers of compassion in naturalistic settings, much like confederate-paradigm studies, can require extra time and resources to capture and evaluate, yet they reveal diverse genres of compassion-evincing behaviors across contexts and populations.

As an alternative to confederate and other behavioral paradigms, researchers often use controlled economic exchanges to examine generosity and cooperation in monetary transactions. Various studies have demonstrated that kindness-oriented meditation programs enhance prosocial behavior in the form of economic donations. Loving–kindness meditation has been shown to enhance prosocial helping in computer-based video games ( Leiberg et al., 2011 ) and in online economic transactions ( Weng et al., 2013 , 2015 ). Among preschoolers, a mindfulness-based kindness curriculum resulted in increased peer donations of stickers ( Flook et al., 2015 ). Economic paradigms have also been fruitful in neuroimaging studies that link compassion-related neural processes with prosocial behavior ( Leiberg et al., 2011 ; Weng et al., 2015 ; Ashar et al., 2016 ). While behavioral economic measures offer a well-controlled environment for research on prosocial behavior and are widely used for studying influences on human cooperation and moral decision-making, they are often conducted via computer-based interfaces and impose artificial constraints on social exchange. This approach lacks ecological validity with respect to real-time face-to-face social interactions. Results likely reflect distinctive psychological dynamics of exchange relationships that may not apply to the social bonds that occur in close communal relationships ( Clark and Mils, 1993 ). It is unclear to what extent economic generosity extends to common real-world situations involving the suffering of another individual that would purportedly elicit compassion (e.g., an interaction with a student who is struggling or a patient who is sick).

An alternative to experimental behavioral paradigms such as the confederate or behavioral economic approaches described above are naturalistic observational methods that increase ecological validity and reduce evaluative biases. One example is the Electronically Activated Recorder (EAR), an audio recorder that intermittently captures ambient sound throughout a person’s daily routine without the person being aware of when it is recording, yielding an acoustic log of the person’s day ( Mehl, 2017 ). Previous studies have used the EAR to examine fathers’ empathic language and compassionate responses to their child’s cries ( Mascaro et al., 2017 ). Another study used the EAR to examine correlations between (1) participants’ self-reported mindfulness and (2) language and behavioral indicators associated with mindfulness ( Kaplan et al., 2018 ). The authors found that self-reported mindfulness was not related to prosocial behavior as assessed by the EAR, highlighting the kind of mismatch that can occur between different empirical perspectives (first- vs. third-person). To our knowledge, few studies have explicitly used the EAR to study compassion in the wild , and it remains a methodological tool of relatively high and untapped potential. While naturalistic observations offer high levels of external and ecological validity, they often generate a wealth of data and are time consuming to code and evaluate. In addition, they may be prohibitive in contexts where privacy and confidentiality are at a premium, for example, in clinical contexts.

Compassion in Dyads

Some third-person methods assess compassionate responding by evaluating a dynamic encounter between two or more people, such that the measurement takes into account the interchange between individuals. In the field of family psychology, researchers investigate dyadic behavior between parents and children or between intimate partners. A standard experiment involves having a parent and child collaborate on a difficult task. Researchers code and quantify communication and behavioral indicators that convey warmth (e.g., affection, encouragement, etc.) or that lack warmth (e.g., criticism, eye rolling, etc.) ( Miller et al., 2015 ). Paradigms such as these can be used to couple personal, interpersonal, and physiological correlates with parental compassion ( Miller, 2018 ). For example, Leerkes et al. (2016) examined mothers’ physiological arousal and behavior in response to a distressed infant, with a focus on sensitivity (e.g., appropriate calming behavior) and lack thereof (withdrawing). Methods such as this have been used to examine the impact of life history or trauma exposure on maternal caregiving behavior that occurs in the context of a mother–infant dyad ( Strathearn et al., 2009 ). While the behaviors and constructs examined in these studies are often referred to as something other than compassion (e.g., parental warmth), from our perspective there is a great deal of overlap between these concepts and the model of compassion as an affective and motivational response to perceiving another’s suffering. We believe these findings will converge with those of related disciplines explicitly studying compassion.

Because compassion contributes to success in clinical encounters, third-person behavioral observations are also used to evaluate and understand compassion in these dyadic encounters. Interactions between patients and providers are either observed or recorded, and those data were analyzed using a variety of approaches (e.g., grounded theory). For example, Suchman et al. (1997) examined transcripts of clinical interactions for patients’ emotional expression (direct or implied) and corresponding physician responsiveness. Others have used an ethnographic observational approach and qualitative analysis to examine compassionate communication in hospice, in which the researchers provided a rich description of hospice workers engaging in emotion recognition, relating, and reacting to alleviate patient suffering ( Way and Tracy, 2012 ).

A dyadic approach avoids many of the limitations and biases inherent in the use of self-report questionnaires. It also yields more ecologically valid findings than many behavioral paradigms, and dyadic analysis is a particularly useful tool to understand how compassion unfolds verbally or non-verbally among individuals. However, dyadic approaches are not without limitations. Of primary concern is a lack of agreement regarding the optimal markers or exemplars of compassionate behavior. For example, what constitutes compassion in a provider–patient interaction? Across studies examining patient–provider communication, a diversity of linguistic and performative markers have been coded as compassion ( Beck et al., 2002 ). Common themes included reassurance, active listening, and responsiveness to emotional cues, yet consensus is lacking. Finally, if compassion requires an affective response and motivation to help, as is suggested by most definitions, then all observable behavior, whether occurring in dyads or not, must assess compassionate intentions primarily by inference.

Organizational Compassion

Emergent features of communities and organizations constitute yet another way of knowing compassion. In an influential article, Kanov et al. (2004) define organizational compassion as a collective noticing, feeling, and responding to suffering that promotes healing. They argue that organizational compassion differs from individual-level compassion in that it is collective, sanctioned, promoted, or codified by organizational norms and policies and then coordinated and propagated across individuals. Cameron and others likewise differentiate research investigating the culture and functions of an organization itself (“virtuousness through organizations”) from studies focused on individuals acting compassionately within an organizational context (i.e., “virtuousness in organizations”) ( Kanov et al., 2004 ; Dutton et al., 2006 ; Cameron, 2017 ). Of the former, empirically tractable factors such as shared values, shared beliefs, norms, practices, leaders’ behavior, and the structure and quality of relationships relate to and indicate the emergence of organizational compassion ( Lilius et al., 2008 ; Dutton et al., 2014 ; Cameron, 2017 ).

Physiology and Compassion

Detectable changes in the functioning and structures of the body are alternative ways of knowing compassion. In general, this physiological frame of reference rests on the tenet that brain and body systems are shaped by natural selection to engender compassion and related prosocial emotions and skills. A second tenet is that these states are associated with outward compassionate behavior. It follows from these assumptions that physiological assessment helps us understand the body’s necessary conditions and likely outcomes of compassion, as well as individual variation. In addition, there is often an implicit or explicit claim that physiological measures, not being subject to self-report biases described above, are inherently more accurate than other measures ( Kirby et al., 2017 ).

The neurophysiological domain advances our ability to describe and quantify the activity of neural systems involved in compassion using neuroimaging assessment tools such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) ( Kim et al., 2020a ), high-density electroencephalography and event-related potentials, and transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) ( Petrocchi et al., 2017b ). A common method involves inducing the affective components of compassion in participants using emotionally evocative picture or video stimuli of suffering others and comparing this putatively compassionate neural response to that which occurs while viewing neutral stimuli or stimuli thought to elicit other emotions, such as pride ( Simon-Thomas et al., 2011 ; Klimecki et al., 2012 ). Other studies have examined the relationship between prosocial behavior during an economic game and neural activity elicited by compassion-inducing stimuli ( Weng et al., 2013 ). Still other neurophysiological studies also look for correlations between participants’ self-reported state-level compassionate affect and neural activity elicited by a compassion-inducing task (see for example, Marsh et al., 2014 ; Brethel-Haurwitz et al., 2017 ). Other studies have examined brain function during the self-directed cultivation of compassion, for example, during compassion meditation ( Engström and Söderfeldt, 2010 ; Schoenberg et al., 2018 ) or after compassion meditation training ( Mascaro et al., 2013a , b ). Findings from these assessments are inherently constrained by the relative paucity of ecological validity that can be achieved in a scanner environment, the inferences necessary to link behavior with internal compassionate states, and biases inherent in self-reports. Notably, a recent meta-analysis found some inconsistency in the existing findings on the neural correlates of compassion, especially with respect to the amygdala and midbrain regions important for pain modulation and autonomic function, which may relate to whether the compassion in question was generated as a “top-down” or “bottom-up” process. While there was a high degree of consistency in other brain regions thought to be important for compassion (anterior cingulate cortex, bilateral anterior insula, basal ganglia, and bilateral inferior frontal gyri), this meta-analysis pointed to a relative sameness in the methods used thus far to study compassion in the fMRI scanner. The researchers ultimately advocated increased specification of research targets and additional innovative methods to advance neurophysiological understandings of compassion ( Kim et al., 2020a ). Future research that combines multimodal physiological assessments will be informative for potentially providing convergent evidence about the bidirectional associations between multiple physiological systems important for compassion (e.g., see Nguyen et al., 2016 ; Petrocchi et al., 2017b ; Kim et al., 2020b ). Moreover, future studies combining neuroimaging assessments with behavioral and experience sampling methods will extend the ecological validity, precision, and discriminant validity of existing measures of compassion.

A related physiological methodology focuses on the role of neuropeptides thought to be important modulators of compassion. Oxytocin is a neuropeptide synthesized in the paraventricular and supraoptic nuclei of the hypothalamus and stored and released back into the brain and into peripheral circulation by the pituitary gland. Thus, oxytocin acts as both a hormone and a neuropeptide and has effects on both the brain and the body. Two decades of research have focused attention on the role of oxytocin in parental attachment and bonding, as well as in prosocial emotions, motivations, and behavior more broadly ( Bethlehem et al., 2013 ; Johnson and Young, 2017 ). For example, Palgi et al. (2014) conducted a double-blind, crossover experiment in which participants self-administered either intranasal oxytocin or a placebo before listening to stories of suffering and writing compassionate responses to the victims in each story. The presence of self-administered oxytocin was associated with more compassionate responses toward women but not toward men. Other groups have examined the relationship between endogenous oxytocin and the amount of compassion participants report receiving or experiencing toward others. For example, endogenous oxytocin levels are positively correlated with the amount of maternal compassion that patients with bipolar disorder report receiving as a child ( Ebert et al., 2018 ).

Other researchers have examined the possibility that autonomic responses to suffering, and their downstream impact on heart rate and breathing, can serve as a bodily signal of compassion. Porges’ polyvagal theory posits that, in the face of another’s suffering, an initial fight–flight response has to be down-regulated via myelinated vagal efferent pathways of the parasympathetic nervous system. Vagal tone, as the activation of these pathways is sometimes called, impacts cardiac function and the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis to support “spontaneous social engagement” in the face of distress by dampening other, less prosocial responses ( Porges, 2007 ). Early research in this area highlighted the measurement of heart rate variability (HRV) as an indicator of parasympathetic activity. HRV is a measurement of the beat-to-beat changes in cardiac output, and early thought was that the ratio of high-frequency (HF) to low-frequency (LF) HRV reflects the intrinsic balance between parasympathetic and sympathetic activity. However, more recently, researchers have called into question whether the ratio of HF HRV to LF HRV is an accurate metric for the ratio between sympathetic and parasympathetic activity and identified alternate calculations of vagal tone as a more accurate reflection of the underlying physiology ( Heathers, 2014 ). HF HRV and the root mean-square of successive differences have both been used in recent research as a measure of autonomic control of the heart, mediated by the vagus nerve ( Matos et al., 2017 ; Petrocchi et al., 2017a ; Kim et al., 2020b ).

As recent critiques have improved the rigor of research using HRV as an index of vagal tone ( Heathers et al., 2015 ), accumulating evidence supports the measurement of HRV for understanding and evaluating compassion. Researchers have found that HRV relates to the experience of compassion and predicted compassionate behavior ( Stellar et al., 2015 ). Others have found that compassionate responses appear to rely on the parasympathetic nervous system to modulate the emotional response to suffering, as indexed by HRV ( Rockliff et al., 2008 ). Still others have found that training in compassion meditation or engaging with compassion-focused therapy improves HRV, either during a resting state ( Matos et al., 2017 ; Kim et al., 2020c ), in response to stressful stimuli or a task ( Petrocchi et al., 2017a ; Ceccarelli et al., 2019 ), or during compassion training itself ( Kim et al., 2020b ). While not explicitly investigating compassion, another recent study used tDCS applied near the left anterior insula and found that stimulation increased both self-reported soothing positive affect and HF HRV. This innovative methodological approach links a brain region hypothesized to be important for compassion and empathy to both compassion-related affect and changes in HRV ( Petrocchi et al., 2017b ). Based on these findings, some have argued that HRV should be included as a primary outcome measure when assessing and training compassion ( Kirby et al., 2017 ), and recent meta-analytic evidence supports this approach ( Di Bello et al., 2020 ).

Other researchers have used the Facial Action Coding System (FACS) to quantify the spontaneous expression of compassionate affect elicited by video stimuli ( Baránková et al., 2019 ). One of the first uses of this methodology emerged in a study of adults and children whose facial movements were documented as they watched a compassion-inducing video ( Eisenberg et al., 1989 ). Researchers found that movements indicating “concerned attention” or “sympathy-directed toward another” correlated with later helping behavior. Compassionate facial movements included lowered and/or furrowed eyebrows, lowered upper eyelids, and sometimes raised lower eyelids, facing forward, and relaxation of the lower face and jaw. Another group used FACS to evaluate physiognomic responses to video stimuli of human suffering to determine whether responses were impacted by a 3-month meditation retreat ( Rosenberg et al., 2015 ). They found that the intensive meditation training increased facial displays of sadness and decreased displays of rejection (operationalized as anger, contempt, or disgust). Of note, a recent theoretical article by Barrett et al. (2019) is skeptical of facial indicators of emotion, arguing that people do not express emotions with enough consistency or specificity to allow for the kinds of inferences made from FACS assessment. Moreover, even among prominent emotion scientists who endorse the theory that a core set of emotions has discrete biological bases—often referred to as “basic emotions”—a large majority (80%) do not believe compassion to be a discrete emotion ( Ekman, 2016 ).

Compassion in Text

Other methodologies are used to qualitatively mine textual content for elements of compassion. Some researchers have used qualitative analysis of content from online platforms such as Facebook or Twitter to look at compassionate language and activity within a Facebook support group ( Pounds et al., 2018 ) or by soliciting Twitter users to describe instances of organizational compassion toward healthcare staff ( Clyne et al., 2018 ). As with non-virtual interactions, online communities can be analyzed at the individual or dyadic (and beyond) level, which has the potential to reveal the dynamic nature of the digitally mediated expression and reception of compassion ( Sun, 2019 ). Others have conducted archival text analysis, for example, analyzing first- and second-century medical writing for evidence of physician compassion ( Porter, 2016 ), or used exegetical and hermeneutic approaches to sacred texts to derive doctrinal or personal positions on compassion (See for example Sears, 1998 ; McCaffrey et al., 2012 ; Gibson, 2015 ; T̈āhir ul-Qādrī, 2015 ). While textual analysis has many of the strengths of the third-person perspective, one must consider the source of the text, which in some cases may be self-reported or informant-reported and therefore subject to the limitations of those methodologies.

Summary and Conclusion

In this review, we have surveyed a variety of indicators and measures that have been used to define and study compassion. Examining these methodologies in the context of one another is vital to making compassion research more accurate, reliable, and transferable. It is also key for increasing knowledge transfer across the range of academic disciplines and other fields of compassion inquiry. Compassion is a multifaceted, intersubjective object of inquiry, glimpsed from a variety of separate viewpoints, each of which contributes to the unity of knowledge about compassion. We end with three summary points:

Method Matching

First, we find it evident from this review that the method(s) chosen to evaluate compassion should be theory-grounded and guided by specific research hypotheses. There may be times when first-person self-report measures are the best choice; however, those should be privileged only when the person’s internal states are most crucial to the hypothesis being tested and with recognition of the limitations of this methodology. Similarly, it stands to reason that other hypotheses will require methods that tap other perspectives and frames of reference. For example, identifying facilitators and inhibitors of helping behaviors directed toward strangers would be most directly inferred from third-person (i.e., behavior-based) evidence rather than self-report.

We also suggest that more thought is warranted on the use of state measures of compassion when testing hypotheses about trait compassion. Behavioral and confederate paradigms are frequently used to measure changes in trait compassion, for example, after a compassion-training intervention. The underlying rationale is that one’s augmented compassionate trait makes it more likely that they will enter into a compassionate state, such that measuring the likelihood of a compassionate response tells us something about trait compassion. The relationship between trait and state compassion is of great interest to many, and more methodological sensitivity toward this issue will be important toward advancing the field of compassion science.

Method Missing

In addition, our review process showed that certain research areas that target compassion would benefit from measurement techniques that are more fine-grained and that explicitly assess compassion. Some K–12 education programs explicitly target compassion cultivation as a broader focus, yet the majority of the effectiveness studies that provide the evidence base for such programs do not assess changes in compassion as a primary outcome being measured ( Jones et al., 2017 ). This lack of explicit measurement makes it difficult to meaningfully evaluate whether compassion-based interventions targeting K–12 students actually promote the development of compassion. Given the demonstrated impact of compassion cultivation on resilience in adulthood ( Bach and Guse, 2015 ; Bluth et al., 2016 ), education research explicitly assessing compassion in childhood and adolescence is well-warranted. Relatedly, the field of social and emotional education development could greatly benefit from interdisciplinary collaborations to create such measures.

It is also clear that there is a lack of clarity about how to measure compassion at the level of organizations and communities. Do the three core components of compassion—awareness of suffering, an affective response, and a motivation to help—also hold for organizations and communities? If so, what do “awareness” and “affective response” look like at the community or organizational level, and how can it be measured?

We have made the claim here that discipline-specific constructs such as parental warmth share a conceptual relatedness with compassion, such that cross-disciplinary sharing may reveal convergences. While this idea has in part motivated the current review, we view this claim as an empirical question for future research. Thus arise questions such as “What does the construct of parental warmth share with compassion for those who are unrelated?” We acknowledge that questions like these are not new (e.g., see Swain et al., 2012 ), but we contend that they will be informed by increased sharing of methods across disciplines. Of note, given the problematic history of the conflation of terms and constructs across disciplines, such work will require care and precision so as not to cause further confusion.

Method Mixing

A key point that emerges from this review is the importance of strategic method mixing for studies of compassion. The multiple frames of reference we have discussed can be combined to create a more accurate understanding of the relationship between internal emotions, goals, and perceptions on the one hand, and external behavior on the other. There are valuable exemplars of method mixing already in the literature. For example, Sinclair et al. (2017a , 2018) used second-person qualitative evidence to understand the perspective of patients receiving compassion and then conducted a follow-up study to understand healthcare providers’ first-person experiences offering compassion. We are optimistic that future research across disciplines will continue to utilize method-mixing approaches; however, it is important to note that at times the results of such method mixing may contradict one another. In fact, this may be important in its own right. The resulting ambivalence can be addressed by enhanced research methods that combine and cross-reference multiple ways of knowing, such as correlating individuals’ self-report scale measures with their behavior, with informant reports, or by using neurophenomenological experimental designs. For example, within intimate couples, first- and second-person reporting could be combined to reveal discrepancies between the way compassion was intended and the way it was received. It is exactly this type of method mixing that has been called for in compassion neuroimaging studies, where researchers have argued that including measurements of both motivation and action in research on the physiology of compassion will be crucial toward establishing links between neurobiology, emotion, and behavior outside the laboratory ( Kim et al., 2020b ).

Moreover, method mixing could advance consensus within controversial areas such as self-compassion and compassion fatigue research. We believe combinations of first-, second-, and third-person compassion measures would help solidify our understanding of how compassion for self relates to compassion for others ( López et al., 2018 ). In clinical research, method mixing can inform how obstacles to provider compassion relate to compassion failures and in so doing will provide a more nuanced landscape for identifying organizational solutions and interventions. Progress here will move the field beyond vague and abstract notions of compassion fatigue resulting from a depleted compassion reservoir and toward a richer understanding of the contexts and resources that foster sustainable compassion. Increasing the versatility and eclecticism of compassion research is of critical importance to comprehensive and interdisciplinary examinations of diverse ways of knowing compassion.

Limitations

Our intent in this review was to summarize the current state of methodologies that are used to understand and quantify compassion across widely varying fields of inquiry. No doubt we bring our own disciplinary biases to this work, but throughout we have used this space to bridge disparate fields. These biases may have led us to overlook important methods that could have further enhanced this review. Moreover, while we defined compassion in accordance with our own disciplines, there are nuanced differences in how compassion is operationalized that will influence the methods chosen to study it. Because of issues of feasibility, while we attempt to incorporate disparate fields of compassion research, we were unable to review all areas to the same degree as the literature from psychology, religion, and contemplative science, with which we are most familiar.

We contend that a better understanding of ways of knowing compassion is a type of consilience that at its best can improve research design, unify knowledge, and bridge disciplines for the benefit of all investigators interested in compassion ( Wilson, 1999 ; Slingerland and Collard, 2012b ). Future research will advance our knowledge by innovating novel ways of combining the measurement of multiple indicators of compassion. Ultimately, research designs that link the affective, cognitive, and motivational components of compassion with compassionate behavior will be of benefit to the many clinical, education, organizational, and interpersonal domains in which compassion is so critical to positive outcomes.

Author Contributions

JM, MF, MA, PP, TF, and PC conceived of the manuscript and wrote significant sections. All authors provided critical and substantive feedback and critical revisions for important intellectual content.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

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Keywords : compassion, empathy, altruism, methods, phenomenology, compassion meditation

Citation: Mascaro JS, Florian MP, Ash MJ, Palmer PK, Frazier T, Condon P and Raison C (2020) Ways of Knowing Compassion: How Do We Come to Know, Understand, and Measure Compassion When We See It? Front. Psychol. 11:547241. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.547241

Received: 30 March 2020; Accepted: 28 August 2020; Published: 02 October 2020.

Reviewed by:

Copyright © 2020 Mascaro, Florian, Ash, Palmer, Frazier, Condon and Raison. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Jennifer S. Mascaro, [email protected]

Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

Essay on Compassion

Students are often asked to write an essay on Compassion in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Compassion

What is compassion.

Compassion is the feeling of caring for others. When you see someone in trouble and feel the urge to help, that’s compassion. It’s like putting yourself in their shoes and feeling what they might be feeling. It’s more than just feeling sorry for them; it’s about wanting to make things better.

Why Compassion Matters

Showing compassion.

You can show compassion in simple ways. If someone falls, you can help them up. If a friend is sad, you can listen and be there for them. It’s not about big things; small acts of kindness show compassion too. By doing these things, we help make the world better for everyone.

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250 Words Essay on Compassion

Compassion is when you notice someone is sad or in trouble and you want to help them feel better. It’s like when you see a friend fall and scrape their knee, and you feel sorry for them and offer a bandage or a hug. It’s not just feeling sorry, but also doing something to help.

Being compassionate is important because it makes the world a nicer place. When people help each other, it creates a chain of kindness. Imagine if you help someone today, they might help someone else tomorrow. This way, everyone starts feeling better and happier.

Compassion at School

At school, you can show compassion by being a good friend. If someone is alone during recess, you can ask them to play with you. Or if someone is struggling with their homework, you can offer to explain it to them. It’s about being there for others when they need it.

Compassion at Home

You can also be compassionate at home. This could mean helping your parents with chores without them asking or being kind to your siblings even if they annoy you sometimes. It’s doing little things to make your family’s day better.

Compassion is a superpower everyone has. It doesn’t cost money or take much time. It’s about caring for others and acting to make their lives a little bit easier. When we all use this superpower, we make the world a friendlier and more loving place.

500 Words Essay on Compassion

Understanding compassion, why compassion is important.

Being compassionate is very important because it makes the world a nicer place. When people care for each other, they can make each other happy and less sad. It’s like when someone smiles at you and you feel good inside, so you smile at someone else. Compassion is like a chain of smiles that keeps going from one person to another.

Compassion At Home

You can start showing compassion at home with your family. If your brother or sister is upset because they lost their favorite toy, you can hug them or help them look for it. By doing this, you show that you understand their feelings and want to help. This makes your home a warm and loving place where everyone feels safe and cared for.

Compassion At School

School is another place where you can show compassion. If a new student comes to your class and they don’t have friends yet, you can talk to them and invite them to play with you. This can make them feel welcome and less alone. Being kind to others at school can also stop bullying and make everyone feel like they belong.

Compassion In The Community

Compassion doesn’t stop with people you know. You can also show it to others in your community. For example, you can help an elderly neighbor carry their groceries or make a get-well card for someone who is sick. Small acts of kindness can have a big impact on others and make your community a better place.

Learning Compassion

Challenges of being compassionate, the joy of compassion.

One of the best things about being compassionate is that it makes you feel good too. When you help others, you get a warm feeling inside. It’s like when you give someone a gift and you see their face light up. That happiness you see in them can make you feel happy too.

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Essay on “Compassion” Complete Essay for Class 10, Class 12 and Graduation and other classes.

Compassion 

POINTS TO DEVELOP

• Close relationship between compassion and morality.
• Instances of moral principles/actions drawing from the roots of compassion.
• Social morality also based on compassion.
• Today, lack of morality can be linked to disappearance of compassion; the link should be revived.

There is no need to define morality; let man be simply compassionate.’ This sentence expresses the basic essence of morality: the extent to which it relies on compassion for its definition. For when we think about it, is not that truly human feeling of compassion the basis of all morality?

Morality rests for its very meaning on the concepts of ‘good’ and, ‘bad’ where ‘good’ refers to all thoughts and deeds that do not aim at, or accomplish, any harm or injury or do not involve an attempt to inflict suffering on others. Thus morality (or what is not morality) is based on man’s ability to understand, being able to sympathize, feel kindness and sorrow for and identify himself with the sufferings of his fellow men. 30 only compassion can give rise to moral thoughts and feelings.

If we consider all those thoughts and deeds that are truly moral in character, we will see how compassion drives morality. Depriving people of what is theirs or what must belong to them-what is called stealing-for selfish ends. taunting or insulting others through words or actions for the purpose of self-gratification, violence-expressed verbally or as acts of torture, killing, etc.-for the sake of violence contradict morality as well as an inner feeling of kindness and compassion.

Truth is indeed a controversial aspect of morality. But almost always it can be justified as a moral principle on the basis of compassion. When we talk about speaking the truth in order not to hide what, if hidden, will only prove damaging to others, we are emphasizing the ability to ‘feel’ for others. Again, often we purposely keep ourselves from communicating the truth as, once revealed, it may hurt someone‘s feelings and sentiments. But keeping a person in the dark or denying him or her knowledge which he or she ought to have amounts to cheating another soul of its right to know that with which it has a concern. An anxious feeling to see that a person is not cheated of what is due to him or her may make us reveal the truth ultimately. It is the same feeling of being truthful in order not to betray another person that constitutes sexual morality in any relationship. A deep-felt concern for the companion’s feelings of hurt and rejection is necessary for the moral aspect to prevail.

When we talk about social morality of any kind, what comes into play is our ability to feel for the well-being of our society. A certain moral code of conduct is ultimately necessary to ensure that the society does not fall prey to degeneration of values, which would lead to rampant sufferings and ultimately chaos. It is a concern to help the society by safeguarding it from unwanted ills and malaise and ensuring its well-being that is at the root of social morality. Society’s concerns are our concerns: anything capable of causing a detrimental impact on it in the short term or in course of time is ultimately bound to affect us and our children.

There is the need to realise that human beings must continue to feel compassion for the sake of themselves as individuals as well as the society. But like any other human lrait, compassion ought to be continually exercised if it is to remain a dominant force. Unfortunately, in modern Society what we witness is a complete lack of kindness and Sympathy between fellow beings. One can only shake one’s head and say that just like other cherished values even compassion is getting eroded in the hustle and bustle of the mechanical existence of these times. What remains is material values that look only towards immediate personal gains and in the process rid humans of whatever ‘human. ness’ is left in them. Morality is fast disappearing, it seems. But it need not be so if only we would tell ourselves that genuine feelings of the human heart, mainly compassion, need to survive for the betterment of the human society and mankind as a whole. After all, can humans rid themselves totally of all feelings of compassion try as hard as they may?

It is only by feeling for others’ sorrows and sufferings that one can sympathies with them and help those in need. This is the underlying principle of all morality which has to survive and that too abundantly if human society is to prosper in the real sense.

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Practicing Compassion: Its Role in Everyday Life - Personal Reflection

• Category: Life
• Topic: Compassion , Feeling , Personal Experience

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