a compassion essay

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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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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What Is Compassion?

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Signs of Compassion

Types of compassion, how to practice compassion, impact of compassion, how to be more compassionate, potential pitfalls of compassion.

Compassion involves feeling another person's pain and wanting to take steps to help relieve their suffering. The word compassion itself derives from Latin and means "to suffer together."

It is related to other emotions such as sympathy, empathy , and altruism , although the concepts have some key differences. Empathy refers more to the general ability to take another person's perspective and feel the emotions of others. Compassion, on the other hand, is what happens when those feelings of empathy are accompanied by the desire to help.

This article discusses the definition of compassion and how to recognize this emotion. It also covers some of the benefits of compassion and what you can do to become a more compassionate person.

Some signs that you have compassion for others include:

• Feeling like you have a great deal in common with other people, even if you are very different in many ways.
• Being able to understand what other people are going through and feeling their pain.
• Being mindful of other people's emotions, thoughts, and experiences.
• Taking action when you see that someone else is suffering.
• Having a high level of emotional intelligence so that you are able to understand, manage, and act on your own emotions as well as the emotions of others.
• Feeling gratitude when other people express compassion for your own hardships.

Compassion often comes in one of two forms, which vary depending on where these feelings are directed. Your experience of compassion may be either directed toward other people, or it may be directed inwardly toward yourself:

• Compassion for others : When you experience compassion for other people, you feel their pain and want to find a way to relieve their suffering. These feelings compel you to take action to do what you can to make the situation better.
• Self-compassion : This involves treating yourself with the same compassion and kindness that you would show to others. Rather than beating yourself up over mistakes you may have made in the past, you feel understanding, mindful, and accepting of yourself and your imperfections.

There are a number of different steps you can take to show compassion to others. 

• Speak with kindness
• Apologize when you've made a mistake
• Listen carefully and without judgment
• Encourage other people
• Offer to help someone with a task
• Be happy for someone else's success
• Accept people for who they are
• Forgive people for making mistakes
• Show respect
• Express gratitude and appreciation

When you practice compassion, you start by empathizing with another person's situation. You look at what they are going through without judgment and imagine how you might feel in their situation.

Compassion and empathy share common elements, but compassion goes a step beyond. Rather than just imagining yourself in their shoes, compassion drives you to take action to help that person. Because you are able to feel those emotions so keenly—almost as if it is happening to you—there is a strong motivation to find a way to change the situation or ease the other person's pain.

Compassion can have a positive impact on your life, ranging from improving your relationships to boosting your overall happiness. Some of the positive effects of compassion:

• Giving feels good : One of the reasons why compassion can be so effective is that both giving and receiving can improve your psychological well-being. Being the recipient of compassion can help you get the support you need to carry you through a difficult time. But giving compassion to others can be just as rewarding. For example, researchers have found that giving money to others who need it actually produces greater happiness rewards than spending it on ourselves.
• Compassionate people live longer : Engaging in activities such as volunteering to help those you feel compassion for can improve your longevity. One study found that people who volunteer out of concern for others tend to live longer than people who do not volunteer.
• Compassion contributes to a life of purpose : One study found that the happiness that comes from living a life of purpose and meaning—one that is fueled by kindness and compassion—can play a role in better health. In the study, participants who experience what is known as eudaimonic happiness—or the kind of happiness that comes from living a meaningful life that involves helping others—experienced lower levels of depression, stronger immunity, and less inflammation.
• Compassion improves relationships : Compassion can also help you build the social support and connections that are important for mental well-being. It can also protect your interpersonal relationships . Research suggests that compassion is a key predictor of the success and satisfaction of relationships.

According to one study published in the journal Emotion , compassion is the single most important predictor of a happy relationship. Interestingly, the study found that while people tend to gain the greatest benefits when their partner notices their acts of kindness, they actually experience benefits whether their partner notices or not. These findings suggest that compassion itself can be its own reward.

Compassion is good for both your physical and mental health. Not only that, it feels good to help others and can contribute to a greater sense of purpose and meaning in your life.

While some people tend to be more compassionate by nature, experts also suggest that there are steps you can take to cultivate a greater sense of compassion for both yourself and others:

• Bring your attention to the situation : The first component of compassion is to become more aware of what other people are experiencing. Imagine yourself in their shoes. Being able to see things from another person’s perspective can help you gain a sense of compassion for their situation. Practice putting yourself in someone else’s place and imagine how you might feel. Focus on feeling how they might be feeling.
• Let go of judgment : Accepting people as they are and avoiding judgment is important. Focus on accepting people for who they are without criticizing or blaming the victim .
• Practice mindfulness : Mindfulness is a practice of focusing on the present, becoming more aware of your own thoughts, and observing these thoughts without judging them. Research suggests that mindfulness-based interventions can be effective for improving self-compassion.
• Try loving-kindness meditation : This form of meditation, also known as compassion meditation, involves meditating while directing kind, compassionate thoughts toward yourself or others. Research suggests that this form of meditation can help people improve their connection to others and boost well-being.

One potential pitfall of compassion is that constant exposure to the distress of others may contribute to what is known as compassion fatigue.

What Is Compassion Fatigue?

Compassion fatigue involves feelings of physical and emotional exhaustion as well as a mental withdrawal from traumatized individuals. It can reduce feelings of empathy and compassion for people who are in need of help.

People who work in helping or caregiving roles (such as nurses, doctors, or emergency care workers) often experience an extreme state of tension as well as a preoccupation with those they are helping. Because of this, helpers can experience symptoms of trauma themselves, and this can potentially dampen their feelings of compassion.

Finding ways to combat compassion fatigue is particularly important in healthcare and other helping professions. Research suggests that interventions that involve mindfulness meditation can help people in these roles experience greater compassion for others, improve positive feelings, and reduce distress.

While it's good to have compassion for others, it's also crucial that you take the time you need for self-care.

A Word From Verywell

Compassion allows you to feel what others are feeling and motivates prosocial behaviors that can improve the well-being of others as well as improve your own physical and mental wellness. While some people experience compassion more often by nature, there are things that you can do to help improve your own ability to feel compassion for others.

Learning this ability takes some time and practice, but it's worth it to keep working on flexing your compassion skills. Being open to feeling what others are feeling can help you create deeper, more meaningful connections. Acting on these feelings of compassion can benefit others, but as the research suggests, sometimes compassion is its own reward.

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Sinclair S, Beamer K, Hack TF, et al. Sympathy, empathy, and compassion: A grounded theory study of palliative care patients' understandings, experiences, and preferences .  Palliat Med . 2017;31(5):437-447. doi:10.1177/0269216316663499

Dunn EW, Aknin LB, Norton MI. Prosocial spending and happiness: using money to benefit others pays off . Curr Dir Psychol Sci . 2014;23(1):41-47. doi:10.1177/0963721413512503)

Konrath S, Fuhrel-Forbis A, Lou A, Brown S. Motives for volunteering are associated with mortality risk in older adults . Health Psychology . 2012;31(1):87-96. doi:10.1037/a0025226

Fredrickson BL, Grewen KM, Coffey KA, et al. A functional genomic perspective on human well-being . Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences . 2013;110(33):13684-13689. doi:10.1073/pnas.1305419110

Reis HT, Maniaci MR, Rogge RD. Compassionate acts and everyday emotional well-being among newlyweds . Emotion . 2017 Jun;17(4):751-763. doi:10.1037/emo0000281

Conversano C, Ciacchini R, Orrù G, Di Giuseppe M, Gemignani A, Poli A. Mindfulness, compassion, and self-compassion among health care professionals: what’s new? A systematic review . Front Psychol. 2020;11:1683. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01683

Zeng X, Chiu CP, Wang R, Oei TP, Leung FY. The effect of loving-kindness meditation on positive emotions: a meta-analytic review . Front Psychol . 2015;6:1693. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01693

Cetrano G, Tedeschi F, Rabbi L, et al. How are compassion fatigue, burnout, and compassion satisfaction affected by quality of working life? Findings from a survey of mental health staff in Italy .  BMC Health Serv Res . 2017;17(1):755. doi:10.1186/s12913-017-2726-x

Cocker F, Joss N. Compassion fatigue among healthcare, emergency and community service workers: a systematic review .  Int J Environ Res Public Health . 2016;13(6):618. Published 2016 Jun 22. doi:10.3390/ijerph13060618

Klimecki OM, Leiberg S, Lamm C, Singer T. Functional neural plasticity and associated changes in positive affect after compassion training . Cereb Cortex . 2013 Jul;23(7):1552-61. doi:10.1093/cercor/bhs142

By Kendra Cherry, MSEd Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

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How to Be More Compassionate: A Mindful Guide to Compassion

Through loving-kindness and practicing awareness, you can connect more deeply with both yourself and others. Explore our new guide to lean into kindness and cultivate compassion every day.

What is Compassion?

• Practice Self-Compassion
• Loving-Kindness Meditation
• Empathy and Compassion
• Cultivate Compassion Every Day

Compassion helps us connect with others, mend relationships, and move forward while fostering emotional intelligence and well-being. Compassion takes empathy one step further because it harbors a desire for all people to be free from suffering, and it’s imbued with a desire to help.

Compassion is simply a kind, friendly presence in the face of what’s difficult. Its power is connecting us with what’s difficult—it offers us an approach that differs from the turning away that we usually do. 

We begin with empathy—that feeling of connection. When we can acknowledge the commonality of the human condition, something beautiful happens: we diminish the subtle cruelty of indifference.

What is Self-Compassion?

Self-compassion involves treating yourself the way you would treat a friend who is having a hard time—even if your friend blew it or is feeling inadequate, or is just facing a tough life challenge. The more complete definition involves three core elements that we bring to bear when we are in pain: self-kindness, common humanity (the recognition that everyone makes mistakes and feels pain), and mindfulness.

Why Self-Compassion Is Important

Individuals who are more self-compassionate tend to have greater happiness, life satisfaction and motivation, better relationships and physical health, and less anxiety and depression. They also have the resilience needed to cope with stressful life events such as divorce, health crises, academic failure, and even combat trauma.

When we are mindful of our struggles, and respond to ourselves with compassion, kindness, and support in times of difficulty, things start to change. We can learn to embrace ourselves and our lives, despite inner and outer imperfections, and provide ourselves with the strength needed to thrive.

The Common Myths of Self-Compassion

Myth : Self-compassion will make us weak and vulnerable .

Truth : In fact, self-compassion is a reliable source of inner strength that confers courage and enhances resilience when we’re faced with difficulties. Research shows self-compassionate people are better able to cope with tough situations like divorce, trauma, or chronic pain.

Myth : Self-compassion is really the same as being self-indulgent .

Truth : It’s actually just the opposite. Compassion inclines us toward long-term health and well-being, not short-term pleasure. Research shows self-compassionate people engage in healthier behaviors like exercising, eating well, drinking less, and going to the doctor more regularly.

Myth : Self-compassion is really a form of making excuses for bad behavior .

Truth : Actually, self-compassion provides the safety needed to admit mistakes rather than needing to blame someone else for them. Research shows self-compassionate people take greater personal responsibility for their actions and are more likely to apologize if they’ve offended someone.

Myth : Self-criticism is an effective motivator . 

Truth : It’s not. Our self-criticism tends to undermine self-confidence and leads to fear of failure. If we’re self-compassionate, we will still be motivated to reach our goals—not because we’re inadequate as we are, but because we care about ourselves and want to reach our full potential. Self-compassionate people have high personal standards; they just don’t beat themselves up when they fail.

How to Practice Self-Compassion

Find compassion: write a letter to yourself.

You can find your compassionate voice by writing a letter to yourself whenever you struggle or feel inadequate, or when you want to help motivate yourself to make a change. It can feel uncomfortable at first, but gets easier with practice.

Here are three formats to try:

• Think of an imaginary friend who is wise, loving, and compassionate and write a letter to yourself from the perspective of your friend.
• Write a letter as if you were talking to a dearly beloved friend who was struggling with the same concerns as you.
• Write a letter from the compassionate part of yourself to the part of yourself that is struggling.

After writing the letter, you can put it down for a while and then read it later, letting the words soothe and comfort you when you need it most.

A Self-Compassion Practice to Rewire Your Brain for Resilience

This is an exercise from resilience expert Linda Graham for shifting our awareness and bringing acceptance to the experience of the moment. It helps to practice this self-compassion break when any emotional upset or distress is still reasonably manageable—to create and strengthen the neural circuits that can do this shifting and re-conditioning when things are really tough.

• Any moment you notice a surge of a difficult emotion—boredom, contempt, remorse, shame—pause, put your hand on your heart (this activates the release of oxytocin, the hormone of safety and trust).
• Empathize with your experience—recognize the suffering—and say to yourself, “this is upsetting” or “this is hard!” or “this is scary!” or “this is painful” or “ouch! This hurts” or something similar, to acknowledge and care about yourself when you experience something distressing.
• Repeat these phrases to yourself (or some variation of words that work for you):

May I be kind to myself in this moment.

This breaks the automaticity of our survival responses and negative thought loops.

May I accept this moment exactly as it is.

From William James, considered the founder of American psychology: “Be willing to have it so. Acceptance of what has happened is the first step to overcoming the consequence of any misfortune.”

May I accept myself exactly as I am in this moment.

From humanist psychologist Carl Rogers: “The curious paradox is that when I accept myself exactly as I am, then I can change.”

May I give myself all the compassion I need.

Compassion is a resource for resilience, and you are as deserving of your own compassion as others are.

• Continue repeating the phrases until you can feel the internal shift: The compassion and kindness and care for yourself becoming stronger than the original negative emotion.
• Pause and reflect on your experience. Notice if any possibilities of wise action arise.

The RAIN of Self-Compassion Meditation

Tara Brach shares a four-step practice to offer ourselves a moment of compassion.

Self-compassion depends on honest, direct contact with our own vulnerability. Compassion fully blossoms when we actively offer care to ourselves. To help people address feelings of insecurity and unworthiness, I often introduce mindfulness and compassion through a guided meditation I call the RAIN of Self-Compassion. The acronym RAIN, first coined about 20 years ago by Michele McDonald, is an easy-to-remember tool for practicing mindfulness. It has four steps:

• Recognize what is going on
• Allow the experience to be there, just as it is
• Investigate with kindness
• Natural awareness, which comes from not identifying with the experience

You can take your time and explore RAIN as a stand-alone meditation or move through the steps in a more abbreviated way whenever challenging feelings arise.

R—Recognize What’s Going On

Recognizing means consciously acknowledging, in any given moment, the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that are affecting us. Like awakening from a dream, the first step out of the trance of unworthiness is simply to recognize that we are stuck, subject to painfully constricting beliefs, emotions, and physical sensations. Common signs of the trance include a critical inner voice, feelings of shame or fear, the squeeze of anxiety or the weight of depression in the body.

A—Allowing: Taking a Life-Giving Pause

Allowing means letting the thoughts, emotions, feelings, or sensations we have recognized simply be there. Typically when we have an unpleasant experience, we react in one of three ways: by piling on the judgment; by numbing ourselves to our feelings; or by focusing our attention elsewhere.

We allow by simply pausing with the intention to relax our resistance and let the experience be just as it is. Allowing our thoughts, emotions, or bodily sensations simply to be doesn’t mean we agree with our conviction that we’re unworthy. 

I—Investigating with Kindness

Investigating means calling on our natural curiosity—the desire to know truth—and directing a more focused attention to our present experience. Simply pausing to ask, what is happening inside me?, can initiate recognition, but investigation adds a more active and pointed kind of inquiry. You might ask yourself: What most wants attention? How am I experiencing this in my body? What am I believing? What does this feeling want from me? 

N—Natural Loving Awareness

Natural loving awareness occurs when identification with the self is loosened. This practice of non-identification means that our sense of who we are is not fused with any limiting emotions, sensations, or stories. 

Though the first three steps of RAIN require some intentional activity, the N is the treasure: A liberating homecoming to our true nature. There’s nothing to do for this last part of RAIN; we simply rest in natural awareness.

The RAIN of Self-Compassion is not a one-shot meditation, nor is the realization of our natural awareness necessarily full, stable, or enduring. Rather, as you practice you may experience a sense of warmth and openness, a shift in perspective. You can trust this! RAIN is a practice for life—meeting our doubts and fears with a healing presence. Each time you are willing to slow down and recognize, oh, this is the trance of unworthiness… this is fear… this is hurt…this is judgment…, you are poised to de-condition the old habits and limiting self-beliefs that imprison your heart. Gradually, you’ll experience natural loving awareness as the truth of who you are, more than any story you ever told yourself about being “not good enough” or “basically flawed.”

We each have the conditioning to live for long stretches of time imprisoned by a sense of deficiency, cut off from realizing our intrinsic intelligence, aliveness, and love. The greatest blessing we can give ourselves is to recognize the pain of this trance, and regularly offer a cleansing rain of self-compassion to our awakening hearts.

How Loving-Kindness Meditation Strengthens Compassion

If you’re familiar with meditation, then you’ve probably tried a basic loving-kindness practice. It involves bringing to mind someone you love, and wishing that they are safe, well, and happy—either out loud or to yourself. The practice continues by extending these well wishes outward to those around you: maybe a more neutral party, or even a difficult person in your life.

Repeating these phrases feels good in the moment, but they can also have long-term effects on our brain that stick with us after we’ve finished meditating. Daniel Goleman, author of Primal Leadership: Unleashing the Power of Emotional Intelligence and coauthor of Altered Traits , explains how this type of meditation can impact our mind and our outlook. 

Goleman says loving-kindness practices strengthen compassion and empathetic concern: our ability to care about another person and want to help them.

“We find, for example, that people who do this meditation who’ve just started doing it actually are kinder, they’re more likely to help someone in need, they’re more generous and they’re happier,” Goleman explains. “It turns out that the brain areas that help us or that make us want to help someone that we care about also connect with the circuitry for feeling good. So it feels good to be kind and all of that shows up very early in just a few hours really of total practice of loving-kindness or compassion meditation.”

There are three different types of empathy, and these are strengthened when we practice loving-kindness. The two most common types of empathy are when you understand someone else’s perspective, and when you connect to them emotionally; but the final, most powerful type is empathic concern.

A Beginner’s Loving-Kindness Practice

Follow this simple loving-kindness practice to open the heart and mind towards a greater sense of compassion from Elisha Goldstein.

• Gently close the eyes if you feel comfortable doing that , or direct the eyes towards the floor while seated or lying down.
• Begin with a few deep breaths. Check in with where you’re starting this moment from, physically, emotionally, mentally.
• Consider a person in your life who is easy to care about. This could be a good friend, a partner, perhaps an animal. Imagine them sitting in front of you and looking into your eyes.
• Get a sense of your heart in this moment , and with intention say to this person, “May you be happy. May you be healthy in body and mind. May you be safe and protected from inner and outer harm. May you be free from fear, the fear that keeps you stuck.”
• Again breathing in and breathing out , reconnecting with your heart.
• Now incline your heart and mind towards yourself and saying to yourself, “May I be happy. May I be healthy in body and mind. May I be safe and protected from inner and outer harm. May I be free from fear, the fear that keeps me stuck.”
• And now breathing and breathing out, and considering a person in your life you don’t know too well. Perhaps the check-out person at your local market, or someone at work you’ve never spoken to.
• Connecting with your heart once again , and just like you did for the person who’s close to you saying now to them: “May you be happy. May you be healthy in body and mind. May you be safe and protected from inner and outer harm. May you be free from fear, the fear that keeps you stuck.”
• And breathing in and out, now bringing to mind someone in your life who you’ve had difficulty with. Someone you’re frustrated, irritated or annoyed with.
• And imagine them sitting here, looking into your eyes and with the same intention and heartfulness that you had for the person who it was easy to care for, now saying to them: “May you be happy. May you be healthy in body and mind. May you be safe and protected from inner and outer harm. May you be free from fear, the fear that keeps you stuck.”
• And now imagining, expanding this sense of heartfulness and intention throughout the entire world. All countries, all people.
• Saying to them: “May you be happy. May you be healthy in body and mind. May you be safe and protected from inner and outer harm. May you be free from fear, the fear that keeps you stuck.”
• And breathing in and breathing out, as we end this practice gently do another mindful check-in. Get a sense of how you’re feeling now, without any judgments. What emotions are present? Is this mind busy or calm?
• Perhaps ending by thanking yourself , and all the people who you included in this practice.
• And when you’re ready, gently open your eyes.

The Difference Between Empathy and Compassion

What is empathy.

Empathy is being able to perceive others’ feelings (and to recognize our own emotions), to imagine why someone might be feeling a certain way, and to have concern for their welfare. Once empathy is activated, compassionate action is the most logical response. Many confuse empathy (feeling with someone) with sympathy (feeling sorry for someone).

Empathy Can Be Taught

We may find it hard to empathize with some people. But that doesn’t mean we can’t strengthen our empathy muscles, according to psychiatrist and researcher Helen Riess, author of the book The Empathy Effect . Riess uses the acronym EMPATHY to outline the steps of her program:

E: Eye contact. An appropriate level of eye contact makes people feel seen and improves effective communication . Riess recommends focusing on someone’s eyes long enough to gauge eye color, and making sure you are face to face when communicating.

M: Muscles in facial expressions. As humans, we often automatically mimic other people’s expressions without even realizing it. By being able to identify another’s feelings—often by distinctive facial muscle patterns—and mirroring them, we can help communicate empathy.

P: Posture. Sitting in a slumped position can indicate a lack of interest, dejection, or sadness; sitting upright signals respect and confidence. By understanding what postures communicate, we can take a more open posture—face forward, legs and arms uncrossed, leaning toward someone—to encourage more open communication and trust.

A: Affect (or emotions). Learning to identify what another is feeling and naming it can help us better understand their behavior or the message behind their words.

T: Tone. “Because tone of voice conveys over 38 percent of the nonverbal emotional content of what a person communicates, it is a vital key to empathy,” writes Riess. She suggests matching the volume and tone of the person you are talking to and, generally, using a soothing tone to make someone feel heard. However, when a person is communicating outrage, moderating your tone—rather than matching theirs—is more appropriate.

H: Hearing. Too often, we don’t truly listen to one another, possibly because of preconceptions or simply being too distracted and stressed. Empathic listening means asking questions that help people express what’s really going on and listening without judgment.

Y: Your response. Riess is not talking about what you’ll say next, but how you resonate with the person you are talking to. Whether or not we’re aware of it, we tend to sync up emotionally with people, and how well we do it plays a role in how much we understand them.

How to Care Deeply Without Burning Out

Reining in over-empathy requires emotional intelligence; its underlying skill is self-awareness. You always need to be prepared to explore and meet your own needs. Whenever your empathy is aroused, regard it as a signal to turn a spotlight on your own feelings. Pause to check in with yourself: What am I feeling right now? What do I need now?

• Know the difference between empathy and compassion. Empathy is our natural resonance with the emotions of others, where we sense the difficulty someone might be feeling. Compassion is one of the many responses to empathy.
• Realize when you’re feeling overwhelmed. It’s inevitable that we will all experience burnout. What’s important is recognizing what’s happening and moving toward balance. Compassion implies a stability of attention and caring in a wise and balanced way—caring about yourself and others.
• Recognize that you can’t change others. Compassion also implies a wisdom and intelligence to know that it’s not up to you to fix the world for others. You can’t function if you’re just taking in others’ pain all the time. There’s a balance that’s crucial: You can acknowledge the pain, you can want to help, but you have to recognize that you can’t change other people’s experience of the world. That’s the letting go. Dan Harris puts it this way: “My father says the hardest thing about having kids is letting them make their own mistakes. That’s compassion with equanimity.” 

How to Cultivate Compassion Every Day

How to be more compassionate at work.

Have you ever dreaded going into work because the people around you were in a negative spiral of energy? We are emotional beings and we can’t help but be affected by the varying moods and interactions we have with others. Life is always changing and this constant change can create difficult thoughts and emotions, which can flow into the workplace. The silver lining is that if we can meet suffering at work with concern and care, compassion naturally arises. Work environments that cultivate compassion create a much more positive and productive place to work. Compassion in the Workplace:

• Take greater notice of your fellow employees’ psychological well-being . For example: If an employee has experienced a loss, such as a divorce or death in the family, someone should contact that employee within 24-48 hours and offer help. A study in 2012 demonstrated that people who act compassionately are perceived more strongly as leaders and that perceived intelligence (i.e., how clever and knowledgeable the person is) bridges the relationship between compassion and leadership.
• Encourage and display more positive contact among employees.  In many workplaces where I consult, there are meeting spaces that can be utilized for informal groups and gatherings. Planned groups can be encouraged weekly or monthly and allow for more opportunities to notice when someone needs help or support and then to offer it.
• Invite more authenticity and open communication in the workplace . If we can keep the communication lines open with respect and kindness, we allow for time to talk about what may need attention and/or empathic connection.
• Take on the perspective of the other person.  In other words, this person is “just like me.” This is also known as “cognitive empathy,” or simply knowing how the other person feels and what they might be thinking. This type of empathy can help in negotiating or motivating people to give their best effort.
• Start with self-compassion.  In order to truly have compassion for others, we must have compassion for ourselves.

How to Be More Compassionate Through Email

Emailing feels almost like a conversation, but without the emotional signs and social cues of face-to-face interactions. If there’s any challenging content to convey—and if you’re sending an email out to more than one person—it’s easy for problems to arise. Here’s how you can communicate more thoughtfully and compassionately via email.

• Keep it short and sweet. Using fewer words usually leads to more clarity and greater impact. Your message can easily get lost in the clutter, so keep it simple.
• Ask yourself—should I say this in person? Some messages are just too touchy, nuanced, or complex to handle by email. You may have to deliver the message in a phone call, where you can read cues and have some give and take. Then, you can follow up with a message that reiterates whatever came out of the conversation.
• Notice your tone. If there’s emotional content, pay close attention to how the shaping of the words can create a tone. If you have bursts of short sentences, for example, it can sound like you’re being brusque and angry.
• Consider your role. If there’s a power dynamic (for example, you are writing to somebody who works for you or who reports to you), you need to take into account how that affects the message. A suggestion coming from a superior in an email can easily sound like an order.

A Mindful Emailing Practice

• Begin by composing an email as usual. Try using the Enter key more. Shorter paragraphs are easier to read on screens.
• Then stop, and enjoy a long deep breath. Put your hands in front of you and wiggle your fingers to give them a little break. Now, lace your fingers together and place them behind your head. Lean back and give your neck a little rest. Now you’re in a good position for the next step.
• Think of the person, or people, who are going to receive the message. How are they reacting? How do you want them to react? Do they get what you’re saying? Should you simplify it some? Could they misunderstand you and become angry or offended, or think you’re being more positive than you intend when you’re trying to say no or offer honest feedback?
• Look the email over again and make some changes if necessary. Notice any spelling or grammar errors you may have missed the first time.
• Don’t send your email right away . If it’s not time-sensitive, leave it as a draft, compose some other messages or do something else, and then come back to it.
• Take one last look, and press send.

How to Be More Compassionate When We Speak

Bringing awareness, or  mindfulness , to the way we communicate with others has both practical and profound applications. During an important business meeting, or in the middle of a painful argument with our partner, we can train ourselves to recognize when the channel of communication has shut down. We can train ourselves to remain silent instead of blurting out something we’ll later regret. We can notice when we’re over-reacting and need to take a time-out.

We begin practicing mindful communication by  simply paying attention  to how we open up when we feel emotionally safe, and how we shut down when we feel afraid. Just noticing these patterns without judging them starts to cultivate mindfulness in our communications. Noticing how we open and close puts us in greater control of our conversations.

Practicing mindful communication often brings us face to face with our anxieties about relationships. These anxieties are rooted in much deeper, core fears about ourselves, about our value as human beings. If we are willing to relate to these core fears, each of our relationships can be transformed into a path of self-discovery. Simply being mindful of our open and closed patterns of conversation will increase our awareness and insight. We begin to notice the effect our communication style has on other people. We start to see that our attitude toward a person can blind us to who the person really is.

What Does Compassionate Listening Look Like?

1. The first step is “listening with the whole body.” This means literally tuning in to the person who is speaking.  

“Compassionate” body language includes:

• Turning toward the speaker, not just with your head, but positioning your whole body to face the speaker.
• Open body language, such as arms and legs not crossed (and certainly no distractions, like a cell phone, in your hands!).
• “Approach” signals, such as learning toward, not leaning back from the speaker. This counters our usual instinct to “avoid” or withdraw from suffering, even at the subtle level of body language.

In previous studies, people who felt high levels of compassion spontaneously shifted into this posture. Just assuming this body language can make it easier to make a compassionate connection with someone.

2. The next step is called “soft eye contact.” When it comes to listening, eye contact is usually better than avoiding eye contact. But the most supportive and comfortable eye contact isn’t gazing deeply into a person’s eyes, or staring them down without a break in eye contact. Instead, it’s a soft focus on the triangle created by a person’s eyes and mouth. This allows you to take in the speaker’s full facial expressions. It also includes occasional breaks in eye contact to reduce what can be an uncomfortable intensity.

3. The last step is to offer “connecting gestures.” These gestures let a person know that you are feeling connected to what they are saying. The most appropriate connecting gestures are smiles and head nods, without interrupting the speaker. Connecting gestures encourage a speaker to continue, and often feel more supportive than when the listener jumps in verbally to make comments. When appropriate, touch is an even more powerful connecting gesture. Previous research has shown that people can more easily recognize compassion through touch—such as a comforting hand on your shoulder—than through voice or facial expressions.

How to Add a Healthy Dose of Self-Compassion to Your Meals

A lack of self-compassion closes the door to learning about our habits, patterns, triggers and needs when it comes to food. By adopting a forgiving and curious attitude instead, you can foster a healthy relationship with eating and food and yourself that can open the door to improved health and happiness.

1. Give up black-and-white thinking.

Embrace the fact that healthy eating is flexible and can include a wide variety of foods, some of which are richer than others, such as a pizza. And sometimes the healthier choice may be the richer choice.

For example, which would be a healthier choice at a party: Pizza or salad? The salad is only healthier if that’s what you really want. Otherwise, you might feel deprived and end up overeating later. Enjoying pizza mindfully as part of a celebration allows for the many roles that food plays in our lives. We can often end up feeling satisfied with less when it does.

2. Become aware of how you talk to yourself when eating.

Does a tape start running in your head that admonishes you not to eat too much or not to eat certain types of foods? Or that you’re a failure if you do? Write down what you say to yourself.

3. Write down kind responses to your inner critic.

Have readily available responses that you can “turn on” when you hear yourself starting to go down the familiar road of negative self-talk.

4. Practice those kind responses to yourself.

Every time you hear yourself talking negatively to yourself about your eating, take a moment to be kind to yourself. Try carrying around a small notebook with your new messages to refer to. Remember, the first time you do something differently is the hardest. Every time you do it thereafter, it gets easier.

Empathy Fatigue is All Too Real  

• Sharon Begley
• October 22, 2020

A Guided RAIN Meditation to Cultivate Compassion  

• Michelle Maldonado
• November 30, 2020

Savor Your Values: Finding Strength In Compassion  

• Steven Hickman
• November 17, 2020

A Loving-Kindness Meditation to Expand Your Perspective  

• Mark Bertin
• November 9, 2020

You Can Change Your Life by Loving Yourself  

• Ali Smith, Atman Smith, and Andres Gonzalez
• June 10, 2024

How to Give Your Full Attention  

• Laurie J. Cameron
• May 17, 2024

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

The Compassionate Instinct

Humans are selfish. It’s so easy to say. The same goes for so many assertions that follow. Greed is good. Altruism is an illusion. Cooperation is for suckers. Competition is natural, war inevitable. The bad in human nature is stronger than the good.

These kinds of claims reflect age-old assumptions about emotion. For millennia, we have regarded the emotions as the fount of irrationality, baseness, and sin. The idea of the seven deadly sins takes our destructive passions for granted. Plato compared the human soul to a chariot: the intellect is the driver and the emotions are the horses. Life is a continual struggle to keep the emotions under control.

Even compassion, the concern we feel for another being’s welfare, has been treated with downright derision. Kant saw it as a weak and misguided sentiment: “Such benevolence is called soft-heartedness and should not occur at all among human beings,” he said of compassion. Many question whether true compassion exists at all—or whether it is inherently motivated by self-interest.

Recent studies of compassion argue persuasively for a different take on human nature, one that rejects the preeminence of self-interest. These studies support a view of the emotions as rational, functional, and adaptive—a view which has its origins in Darwin ’s Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals . Compassion and benevolence, this research suggests, are an evolved part of human nature, rooted in our brain and biology, and ready to be cultivated for the greater good. The biological basis of compassion

First consider the recent study of the biological basis of compassion. If such a basis exists, we should be wired up, so to speak, to respond to others in need. Recent evidence supports this point convincingly. University of Wisconsin psychologist Jack Nitschke found in an experiment that when mothers looked at pictures of their babies, they not only reported feeling more compassionate love than when they saw other babies; they also demonstrated unique activity in a region of their brains associated with the positive emotions. Nitschke’s finding suggests that this region of the brain is attuned to the first objects of our compassion—our offspring.

But this compassionate instinct isn’t limited to parents’ brains. In a different set of studies, Joshua Greene and Jonathan Cohen of Princeton University found that when subjects contemplated harm being done to others, a similar network of regions in their brains lit up. Our children and victims of violence—two very different subjects, yet united by the similar neurological reactions they provoke. This consistency strongly suggests that compassion isn’t simply a fickle or irrational emotion, but rather an innate human response embedded into the folds of our brains.

In other research by Emory University neuroscientists James Rilling and Gregory Berns , participants were given the chance to help someone else while their brain activity was recorded. Helping others triggered activity in the caudate nucleus and anterior cingulate, portions of the brain that turn on when people receive rewards or experience pleasure. This is a rather remarkable finding: helping others brings the same pleasure we get from the gratification of personal desire.

The brain, then, seems wired up to respond to others’ suffering—indeed, it makes us feel good when we can alleviate that suffering. But do other parts of the body also suggest a biological basis for compassion?

It seems so. Take the loose association of glands, organs, and cardiovascular and respiratory systems known as the autonomic nervous system (ANS). The ANS plays a primary role in regulating our blood flow and breathing patterns for different kinds of actions. For example, when we feel threatened, our heart and breathing rates usually increase, preparing us either to confront or flee from the threat—the so-called “fight or flight” response. What is the ANS profile of compassion? As it turns out, when young children and adults feel compassion for others, this emotion is reflected in very real physiological changes: Their heart rate goes down from baseline levels, which prepares them not to fight or flee, but to approach and sooth.

Then there’s oxytocin, a hormone that floats through the bloodstream. Research performed on the small, stocky rodents known as prairie voles indicates that oxytocin promotes long-term bonds and commitments, as well as the kind of nurturing behavior—like care for offspring—that lies at the heart of compassion. It may account for that overwhelming feeling of warmth and connection we feel toward our offspring or loved ones. Indeed, breastfeeding and massages elevate oxytocin levels in the blood (as does eating chocolate). In some recent studies I’ve conducted, we have found that when people perform behaviors associated with compassionate love—warm smiles, friendly hand gestures, affirmative forward leans—their bodies produce more oxytocin. This suggests compassion may be self-perpetuating: Being compassionate causes a chemical reaction in the body that motivates us to be even more compassionate.

Signs of compassion

According to evolutionary theory, if compassion is truly vital to human survival, it would manifest itself through nonverbal signals. Such signals would serve many adaptive functions. Most importantly, a distinct signal of compassion would soothe others in distress, allow people to identify the good-natured individuals with whom they’d want long-term relationships, and help forge bonds between strangers and friends.

Research by Nancy Eisenberg , perhaps the world’s expert on the development of compassion in children, has found that there is a particular facial expression of compassion, characterized by oblique eyebrows and a concerned gaze. When someone shows this expression, they are then more likely to help others. My work has examined another nonverbal cue: touch.

Previous research has already documented the important functions of touch. Primates such as great apes spend hours a day grooming each other, even when there are no lice in their physical environment. They use grooming to resolve conflicts, to reward each other’s generosity, and to form alliances. Human skin has special receptors that transform patterns of tactile stimulation—a mother’s caress or a friend’s pat on the back—into indelible sensations as lasting as childhood smells. Certain touches can trigger the release of oxytocin, bringing feelings of warmth and pleasure. The handling of neglected rat pups can reverse the effects of their previous social isolation, going as far as enhancing their immune systems.

My work set out to document, for the first time, whether compassion can be communicated via touch. Such a finding would have several important implications. It would show that we can communicate this positive emotion with nonverbal displays, whereas previous research has mostly documented the nonverbal expression of negative emotions such as anger and fear. This finding would also shed light on the social functions of compassion—how people might rely on touch to soothe, reward, and bond in daily life.

In my experiment, I put two strangers in a room where they were separated by a barrier. They could not see one another, but they could reach each other through a hole. One person touched the other on the forearm several times, each time trying to convey one of 12 emotions, including love, gratitude, and compassion. After each touch, the person touched had to describe the emotion they thought the toucher was communicating.

Imagine yourself in this experiment. How do you suppose you might do? Remarkably, people in these experiments reliably identified compassion, as well as love and the other ten emotions, from the touches to their forearm. This strongly suggests that compassion is an evolved part of human nature—something we’re universally capable of expressing and understanding. Motivating altruism

Feeling compassion is one thing; acting on it is another. We still must confront a vital question: Does compassion promote altruistic behavior? In an important line of research, Daniel Batson has made the persuasive case that it does. According to Batson, when we encounter people in need or distress, we often imagine what their experience is like. This is a great developmental milestone—to take the perspective of another. It is not only one of the most human of capacities; it is one of the most important aspects of our ability to make moral judgments and fulfill the social contract. When we take the other’s perspective, we feel an empathic state of concern and are motivated to address that person’s needs and enhance that person’s welfare, sometimes even at our own expense.

In a compelling series of studies, Batson exposed participants to another’s suffering. He then had some participants imagine that person’s pain, but he allowed those participants to act in a self-serving fashion—for example, by leaving the experiment.

Within this series, one study had participants watch another person receive shocks when he failed a memory task. Then they were asked to take shocks on behalf of the participant, who, they were told, had experienced a shock trauma as a child. Those participants who had reported that they felt compassion for the other individual volunteered to take several shocks for that person, even when they were free to leave the experiment.

In another experiment, Batson and colleagues examined whether people feeling compassion would help someone in distress, even when their acts were completely anonymous. In this study female participants exchanged written notes with another person, who quickly expressed feeling lonely and an interest in spending time with the participant. Those participants feeling compassion volunteered to spend significant time with the other person, even when no one else would know about their act of kindness.

Taken together, our strands of evidence suggest the following. Compassion is deeply rooted in human nature; it has a biological basis in the brain and body. Humans can communicate compassion through facial gesture and touch, and these displays of compassion can serve vital social functions, strongly suggesting an evolutionary basis of compassion. And when experienced, compassion overwhelms selfish concerns and motivates altruistic behavior.

Cultivating compassion

We can thus see the great human propensity for compassion and the effects compassion can have on behavior. But can we actually cultivate compassion, or is it all determined by our genes?

Loving-Kindness Meditation

Strengthen feelings of kindness and connection toward others.

Recent neuroscience studies suggest that positive emotions are less heritable—that is, less determined by our DNA—than the negative emotions. Other studies indicate that the brain structures involved in positive emotions like compassion are more “plastic”—subject to changes brought about by environmental input. So we might think about compassion as a biologically based skill or virtue, but not one that we either have or don’t have. Instead, it’s a trait that we can develop in an appropriate context. What might that context look like? For children, we are learning some answers.

Some researchers have observed a group of children as they grew up, looking for family dynamics that might make the children more empathetic, compassionate, or likely to help others. This research points to several key factors.

First, children securely attached to their parents, compared to insecurely attached children, tend to be sympathetic to their peers as early as age three and a half, according to the research of Everett Waters , Judith Wippman , and Alan Sroufe . In contrast, researchers Mary Main and Carol George found that abusive parents who resort to physical violence have less empathetic children.

Developmental psychologists have also been interested in comparing two specific parenting styles. Parents who rely on induction engage their children in reasoning when they have done harm, prompting their child to think about the consequences of their actions and how these actions have harmed others. Parents who rely on power assertion simply declare what is right and wrong, and resort more often to physical punishment or strong emotional responses of anger. Nancy Eisenberg , Richard Fabes , and Martin Hoffman have found that parents who use induction and reasoning raise children who are better adjusted and more likely to help their peers. This style of parenting seems to nurture the basic tools of compassion: an appreciation of others’ suffering and a desire to remedy that suffering.

Parents can also teach compassion by example. A landmark study of altruism by Pearl and Samuel Oliner found that children who have compassionate parents tend to be more altruistic. In the Oliners’ study of Germans who helped rescue Jews during the Nazi Holocaust, one of the strongest predictors of this inspiring behavior was the individual’s memory of growing up in a family that prioritized compassion and altruism.

A more compassionate world

Human communities are only as healthy as our conceptions of human nature. It has long been assumed that selfishness, greed, and competitiveness lie at the core of human behavior, the products of our evolution. It takes little imagination to see how these assumptions have guided most realms of human affairs, from policy making to media portrayals of social life.

But clearly, recent scientific findings forcefully challenge this view of human nature. We see that compassion is deeply rooted in our brains, our bodies, and in the most basic ways we communicate. What’s more, a sense of compassion fosters compassionate behavior and helps shape the lessons we teach our children.

Of course, simply realizing this is not enough; we must also make room for our compassionate impulses to flourish. In Greater Good magazine, we feature articles that can help us do just that. Our contributors provide ample evidence to show what we can gain from more compassionate marriages, schools, hospitals, workplaces, and other institutions. They do more than make us reconsider our assumptions about human nature. They offer a blueprint for a more compassionate world.

About the Author

Dacher Keltner

Uc berkeley.

Dacher Keltner, Ph.D. , is the founding director of the Greater Good Science Center and a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of The Power Paradox: How We Gain and Lose Influence and Born to Be Good , and a co-editor of The Compassionate Instinct .

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Born to Help

Born to be good.

Lovely, important discussion.  The reality is that while we all innately have an instinct for compassion, we also have a much stronger instinct for survival. The two don’t compete when a threat to our survival is present.  Survival instincts win out; unless we are trained to recognize what is happening and respond differently. This is what we teach at the Compassion Movement. http://compassionmovement.org Great blog, I will add it to my blogroll!

Melody Brooke | 5:26 pm, June 30, 2010 | Link

This is an important article because increasing compassion can truly change the world.  It can not only lead to altruistic behavior that changes the world for the better but leads to happier individuals regardless of circumstances.

It’s also important to note that it’s important to develop self compassion as well as compassion for others. 

In this blog post I explain why it’s so important and how increasing self compassion can change our lives.

http://www.selfinfluence.net/a-trait-more-powerful-than-self-esteem/

Rodney Daut | 11:07 pm, August 2, 2010 | Link

great article!it is very meaningful and informative..we should have compassion in our lives.greed is we have if compassion does not evolve on us.compassionate is love.so if we have compassion love will be on us. thanks a lot

Jonh Clemms | 2:15 pm, August 11, 2010 | Link

We are biologically set up to be compassionate, but it needs to be practiced to acquire compassion. Just like we are biologically set up to walk and talk, but it takes experience with either to get that ability.

Scientists again find evidence supporting the Biblical view of humanity, and how we ought to live: we have to practice compassion to fully realize our potential for compassion, and take care of each other, or we end up guided by the parts of our nature that are more selfish, a reaility noted in the beginning of the article.

MeToo | 6:41 am, November 9, 2010 | Link

great article!

i also find interesting shelley taylor’s research, which builds a case for natural human instincts of “tend & befriend”—as opposed to “flight or fright” : http://taylorlab.psych.ucla.edu

gary gach | 4:09 pm, November 12, 2010 | Link

Thank you for this informative articles on compassion. I used it on my radio show Mastering the Shift Living Your Noetic Reality. The blog link is above. Blessings in the shift

Rebecca Skeele | 12:24 pm, March 22, 2011 | Link

“Compassion is the beginning of being; without it everything is chaos. Everything has come into existence through compassion and by compassion it continues to exist in harmony. Every thing speaks of compassion and promises compassion. Because of this, the universe can be considered a symphony of compassion. All kinds of voices proclaim compassion so that it is impossible not to be aware of it, and impossible not to feel the wide mercy encircling everything. How unfortunate are the souls who don’t perceive this Man has a responsibility to show compassion to all living beings, as a requirement of being human. The more he displays compassion, the more exalted he becomes, while the more he resorts to wrongdoing, oppression and cruelty, the more he is disgraced and humiliated, becoming a shame to humanity.”  (Fethullah Gulen) Fethullah Gulen Fethullah Gulen News

Dr. McClay | 6:47 am, January 13, 2012 | Link

also find interesting shelley taylor’s research, which builds a case for natural human instincts of “tend & befriend

tarjetas de visita | 7:23 am, January 22, 2012 | Link

Wow. This post is an eye-opener for those who think that people are selfish. We may be sometimes, but we also have our compassionate side and no one can deny that. This post of yours is really inspiring. Thank you.

Life Quotes | 2:42 am, May 4, 2012 | Link

I’m so grateful for having found The Greater Good and Dacher Keltner’s article, The Compassionate Instinct. Knowing that we humans vary in compassion all the way from that of the psychopath to people like Mother Teresa, I’m looking for the reasons for this variance as well as what changes will occur in the decrease of confict in the world and the increase in contentment and joy as our compassion for all others is realized. Greater Good and Keltner’s article have given me a great path for answers.

Dean Hinmon | 8:54 am, August 8, 2012 | Link

REVIEW article

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.

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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....

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"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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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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The Role of Compassion Essay

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In her book, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, Anne Fadiman explores the experience of a Hmong family struggling through the healthcare system of California. This book can throw light on the challenges faced by these people who have to confront a different socio-cultural environment. This source can be better analyzed with the help of the essay Mother Tongue written by Amy Tan.

This author also discusses the interactions between people who have different cultural and linguistic backgrounds. It is possible to apply such a concept as compassion in order to examine the themes which Anne Fadiman explores in her work. This notion can be defined as the ability of an individual to understand and fill pity for the suffering of another person. To a great extent, this ability is critical for interactions between people who can have different cultural or linguistic backgrounds.

While Anne Fadiman’s this book seems to be primarily related to the impact of linguistic and cultural barriers on the experiences of immigrants, Amy Tan’s essay suggests that their difficulties can be explained primarily by lack of compassion which is essential for the emotional well-being of individuals. This is the main thesis that should be elaborated more closely.

Anne Fadiman’s book is a valuable source that can illustrate the problems which emerge when immigrants have to interact with healthcare professionals. It should be kept in mind that the representatives of foreign cultures often question “the efficiency of Western medical techniques” (Fadiman 23). As a rule, these people “require more time and attention” since the services of an interpreter are needed (Fadiman 25). These are some of the details that should be considered.

This text’s text can be analyzed with help of Ami Tan’s essay Mother Tongue, and this reading indicates that language barriers can significantly impair the experiences of immigrants. This source demonstrates that a person may find it extremely difficult to express his/her thoughts very clearly.

It is usually argued that they speak in “broken or fractured English” (Tan 48). Moreover, it is often assumed that these people think in a primitive way. The author speaks about her mother who also struggled with the language barrier. Many people assumed that “her English reflected the quality of what she had to say” (Tan 48). Thus, one can speak the discrimination against these individuals.

Admittedly, Anne Fadiman also provides numerous examples indicating that linguistic and cultural differences can prevent people from integrating into the society. For instance, the author mentions that medical professionals often have to communicate with teenaged children of patients and discuss such issues as surgery or resuscitation of “a dying family member” (Fadiman 25).

In most cases, such experiences are extremely stressful for family members. Moreover, Anne Fadiman’s book shows that physicians often had “no way of taking a patient’s medical history”; as a result, their choices of treatment could often be questioned (Fadiman 25). Therefore, the emphasis on linguistic barriers is quite justified.

Nevertheless, it is important to remember that this problem is not the only reason why many immigrants can face significant difficulties. In many cases, their hardships can be explained by the inability or unwillingness of many individuals to feel compassion for the problems of others.

In order to illustrate this argument, one should look at the situation described by Amy Tan. In particular, this author mentions that her mother was suspected to have a benign brain tumor (Tan 48). The physicians lost her CAT scan and did not apologize for this mistake.

These people did not consider that she had been very “anxious to know the exact diagnosis” (Tan 49). Nevertheless, they only said that “she had come for nothing” (Tan 49). As a rule, individuals, who are treated in this way, often feel helpless or even desperate. This is why lack of compassion is one of the factors that profoundly affect the experiences of immigrants who are often left to their own devices. This is one of the main arguments that can be put forward.

It is possible to examine Anne Fadiman’s work from this specific perspective. For instance, when Lia was brought to the hospital, she was immediately diagnosed with “early bronchiopneumonia” (Fadiman 26). Yet, the physician did not consider the possibility that her symptoms could be explained by epilepsy (Fadiman 26).

A single conversation with parents could have helped him make the correct diagnosis. However, he did not try to do it. Later, Lia’s parents were asked by to give her certain drugs, and she was almost immediately discharged from hospital (Fadiman 26). Lia’s father was asked to sign the following statement, “I hereby acknowledge receipt of the instructions indicated above” (Fadiman 26).

The physician did not even make sure that parents could fully understand his instructions. This medical worker did not want to make extra effort. So, his indifference is one of the aspects that should be considered. Later, Lia was hospitalized once again, and the physicians made the same misdiagnosis. This is one of the most striking examples that should be considered. Provided that physicians had some compassion for this family, they would have used the services of an interpreter who could speak the Hmong language.

In this way, they could have eliminated the risk of misdiagnosis. Moreover, they might have considered that Lia’s parents felt virtually helpless when they had to deal with healthcare professionals. The main issue is that the physicians were not willing to discuss Lia’s condition with her parents. This is why this child did not receive appropriate medical assistance on time. This is the main problem should not be overlooked by the readers. Admittedly, there were some people who were genuinely willing to help Lia’s parents.

For example, one can mention Dan Murphy who immediately realized how frightened these people had been because they did not know how to help their daughter. Due to his effort, Lia’s parents received at least some support. This example is important for showing how the attitudes of physicians could differ from one another.

To a great extent, these examples suggest that immigrants may face a great number of challenges while trying to integrate into a new community. Certainly, their limited knowledge of English can be the cause of their hardships. However, more attention should be paid to the lack of compassion since this attitude makes their hardships virtually unbearable.

Admittedly, the role of cultural barriers should not be disregarded, but their impact can be mitigated provided that people try to put themselves in the position of one another. One can say that Anne Fadiman is useful for understanding the peculiarities of cross-cultural interactions. In turn, Amy Tan’s essay can throw a new light on the ideas that Anne Fadiman tries to express. These are the main details that should be taken into consideration.

Works Cited

Fadiman, Anne. The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures . New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012. Print.

Tan, Amy. “Mother Tongue”. Across Cultures: A Reader for Writers . Ed. Sheena Gillespie and Robert Becker. New York: Longman, 2010. 46-52. Print.

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Student Essays

Essay on Compassion | Meaning, Purpose, Importance of Compassion in Life

Compassion is the powerful motivating force that is essentially important in our lives. The following essay, written by our experts, sheds light upon the meaning, purpose and importance of having compassion in life This essay is quite helpful for children & students in their school exams, college test, etc

Essay on Compassion | Meaning, Purpose & Importance of having Compassion in Life

The Compassion is an emotional energy that we feel for someone or something else and which draws us to offer our support. If we have compassion for someone in need, it means that we feel their pain in our own hearts and are motivated to alleviate it in some way.

On a broader scale, compassion is loving kindness. It’s the heartfelt intention to offer hope and support, to feel someone else’s pain as if it is our own and to offer help.

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Compassion vs Empathy:

Empathy can be defined as, “the feeling that you understand and share another person’s experiences and emotions.”

While both compassion and empathy are about relating to the feelings of others, empathy is more focused on the other person’s emotions. Compassion expands that focus to include a desire to help. It shows up as wanting to support, to be there for someone in a time of need, and to offer help.

Empathy often causes an emotional resonance within us that motivates us to action, which is an aspect of compassion. However, empathy can be limited by our own feelings and experiences. For example, if someone else is feeling sad, but the only thing you can relate to in that moment is your own sadness, you may feel empathy for them but not be able to experience their sadness fully. This might lead you to try to cheer them up instead of letting them feel what they need to feel in order to heal.

On the other hand, compassion is more about emotional resonance and less about our own emotions. Because of this, it can be a more effective motivator for both giving and receiving help.

Kinds of Compassion

Compassion can be broken down into two categories: familial and altruistic. Familial love is the kind of compassion that comes from our personal family experiences. Whenever we feel love for someone in our family, we are experiencing familial compassion. For example, your parents showed you love and support when you were growing up—those are moments of familial compassion.

Altruistic love is the kind that focuses on loving others without any expectation for reciprocity. It’s the kind of love that you can feel for people you don’t know or have just met. It’s what leads to charity, volunteering, and philanthropy. People who dedicate their lives to helping others are often motivated by altruistic love.

Compassion in our daily Life

Having compassion for ourselves and others is an important part of keeping our hearts open. We all experience challenges in life that can cause us to shut down and close our hearts. When we have compassion for ourselves in these moments, it can prevent us from closing down further.

Compassion is also often necessary when helping others. If we are trying to support a homeless person on the street, for example, it’s much more helpful if we can offer them compassion. If we are judgmental of their situation, if we think that they “should” be doing something about it or that this is “their own fault,” we are not offering effective support. The same can be said for trying to help someone who is grieving, or a person struggling with anxiety.

It’s important to receive compassion as well as offer it. We all need support sometimes, and when we don’t get it, we can feel even worse about ourselves and the situation. If you are going through a tough time, it’s important to receive compassion from others to keep your heart open.

In order to offer compassion, we have to practice awareness of the suffering in our world and take a stand against it. We can’t offer compassion if we don’t know about the problem. In addition, mindful awareness of our own thoughts and feelings is a crucial part of compassion. Without self-awareness we can’t know what others need and we won’t be able to relate to them properly.

Developing Compassion in Life

Compassion can be developed by practicing mindfulness and meditation. Mindfulness is the practice of keeping our attention on the present moment and noticing how we’re feeling. We can think of this as “taking a moment” to check in with ourselves. Meditation is another way to practice mindfulness.

Compassion can also be encouraged by focusing on people’s beneficial qualities rather than their shortcomings or mistakes. If you focus mainly on the negative qualities of someone who is suffering, it can be harder to feel compassion for them. Another way to develop more compassion is by trying to imagine

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Compassion is essential to keeping our hearts open, and developing more of it will ultimately help us build better relationships with others. When we feel compassion, we feel motivated to help and support others, but it’s important to recognize that compassion is a whole-hearted feeling, not an emotion. Therefore it’s important that we also receive compassion from others, especially when we need it.

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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

Compassion is important because it makes the world a kinder place. When people help each other, it creates happiness and peace. It’s like a warm blanket on a cold day. Compassion brings us together and helps us to understand one another.

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.

Compassion is a feeling of wanting to help someone who is in trouble or is having a hard time. Imagine you see a friend fall off their bike and hurt their knee. If you feel bad for them and want to help them feel better, that’s compassion. It’s like having a little voice in your heart that tells you to be kind and caring towards others.

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.

Sometimes, being compassionate can be hard. You might be busy, or you might not want to share your things. But even when it’s tough, it’s important to try to be compassionate. It’s like a muscle that gets stronger the more you use it. The more you practice compassion, the easier it becomes.

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.

If you’re looking for more, here are essays on other interesting topics:

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Home / Essay Samples / Life / Emotion / Compassion

Compassion Essay Examples

Personal reflection on compassion analysis.

What I know and I have learned is we need to have compassion. Compassion makes everything fit in place. It makes a harmony of unity among the people making us one in reaching a peaceful world. The world now is so cruel. Leaders are unfair...

Practicing Compassion: Its Role in Everyday Life - Personal Reflection

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Steps to Become More Compassionate

Compassion is one of the few abilities in life that can create both short – term and long – term joy for you. It involves realizing that we are not the only ones who suffer, and trying to create a better world for other people....

The Power of Compassion and Its Main Aspects

Compassion is the term we use for a complex emotion, that involves empathy, altruism and desire; where empathy is the ability to take the perspective of and feel the emotions of another; altruism is the kind, and selfless behavior; and desire is the strong feeling...

Medicine for Me – the Art of Being a Compassionate Caregiver

Compassion, commitment and collaboration are important competencies that I believe I intrinsically possess, which makes me a strong candidate to read Medicine. My nature of being a caring and principled inquirer, alongside my interest in Human Biology is what initially steered me in this direction....

Love and Compassion as a Cure for Loneliness

Love and compassion are essential in human life, as it is shown everywhere around us, if we take that away, humanity cannot survive without them. Love and compassion are such fundamental qualities, that animals, who have lesser cognitive abilities than us humans, possess. Animals would...

The Importance of the Principles of Determination and Compassion in My Life

Principles are the reasons in which we live our lives. Principles are key elements that can help bring out both growth and development. There are a variety of principles that can bring balance, and great substance. Every individual has some kind of principles that drives...

People Skills and Personal Attributes: the Compassion in Practice and the 6 C’s

I will be explaining the compassion in practice program and the 6 c’s. The compassion in practice was introduced in 2010 after the patients at Winterbourne View and mid Staffordshire hospital were treated badly and inhumanely. The 6 c’s were put in place to provide...

Applications of Matrices in Computer Graphics

Abstract-Column matrices can be used to represent points in 2D or 3D, while matrices of dimension 2×n and 3×n can be used to represent sets of points in 2D or 3D. Matrices allow arbitrary linear transformations to be represented in a consistent format (T(x)=Ax for...

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